There Were Some Very Good Moments in This Movie: CLIP OF THE DAY
Only 52% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer <https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/troy> for the 2004 “Troy”, which I can see but which I still think too low. As spectacle it is extraordinary. Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector, Sean Bean as Odysseus, and Peter O’Toole as Priam are, I think, brilliant. Brian Cox as Agamemnon, Orlando Bloom as Paris, and Diane Kruger as Helen are all very good professionals, but somehow they do miss. Fans say the Director’s Cut at 3.5 hours is much better. But they would say that, wouldn’t they?
“Look at him. Hogging all the glory” vs. “The man wants to die!”.
The best scene may be the beach landing, for the spectacle and for the relationship dynamics within the Greek command. Achilles his the beach. Agamemnon worries about maintaining dominance and loyalty.
Achilles: Myrmidons! My brothers of the sword! I’d rather fight beside you than any army of thousands. Let no man forget how menacing we are. We are lions! Do you know what’s there, waiting, beyond that beach Immortality! Take it! It’s yours!
Trojans (various): Fight positions! Archers! Archers, draw! Draw!
Trojan Commander: Keep forward!
Achilles: Form up! Formation!
Agamemnon: The man wants to die!
Achilles: On my command! Break off! Break off!
Greeks: Achilles! Achilles! Achilles! Achilles! Achilles! Achilles! Achilles! Achilles!
Nestor: Give him the battle, we'll take the war.
Agamemnon: Give him too many battles and the men will forget who's king.
Greek Warrior: Ajax, you need to see this.
Ajax: Look at himL. Hogging all the glory. Row, you lazy whores, row! Greeks are dying! Row!
Hector: Those men down there need help. Now! Tekton, with me.
Ajax: I am Ajax, breaker of stones! Look upon me and despair!
Achilles: Flank! To the flank!
Trojan Warrior: No!
Greeks: Achilles! Achilles!
Hector: Back to the city! Back to the city!
I actually have a lot of thoughts about this Troy movie, the Odyssey Troy movie, the Iliad and Odyssey themselves, and indeed about the whole Trojan cycle. I suppose I will never have time to pull them all together properly.
However.
Do note:
We moderns have lost the capacity to see Achilles as glorious. We do not see sheer excellence in the techniques of war as glorious in itself. And an earlier generation would. We admire the honor of Hector. We admire the strategic genius of Odysseus. But we do not see sheer excellence in the techniques of war as glorious in itself. And an earlier generation would. An earlier generation would see the march of the 3rd Infantry Division from Kuwait to Baghdad as glorious, even though the strategic fruits of that operational victory were thrown away by the incompetence of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Franks, Bremer, and company. We do not.
And so, for us, it is Hector fighting to defend his home and family (even though the war waged by the Achaeans against Troy does, by their lights, have a just cause) who is the hero of the Illiad.
And yet: Who would you rather have standing beside you when spear meets shield? Achilles, Hector, or Odysseus? With Hector, the man of honor, you will wage war when you should. But you may well lose. With Achilles, the man of skill, you will win. But you will wage war all the time, whether or not you should.
With Odysseus, the man of strategy, you will wage war only when you can win. But will you always be happy with your victories?
I think I would take my place beside Odysseus. But who should I take my place beside?
Since the story of the Iliad is the story of the glory and the rage of Achilles and, secondarily, Agamemnon, that is not one that will resound favorably with modern American audiences. And so the filmmakers, I think rightly, chose to tell another different story in their Troy movie <http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/01/the-concept-of-the-hero-in-modern-civilization-or-the-best-of-the-akheans.html>.
Plus I have:
<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/rakes-rage-and-the-rationality-racket>
<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/hoisted-from-e-archives-homer-odysseus>
<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/christopher-nolans-remix-of-the-story>
<https://braddelong.substack.com/p/should-we-read-steven-pressfields>
And some long, disorganized notes on the character of Briseis—which is, actually, not a name but simply an adjective meaning “the daughter of Briseus”. She is a character who speaks once and only once in all the Iliad, in Book XIX after the killing of Patroclus by Hector:
Briseis, fair as Venus, when she saw the mangled body of Patroclus, flung herself upon it and cried aloud, tearing her breast, her neck, and her lovely face with both her hands. Beautiful as a goddess, she wept and said:
"Patroclus, dearest friend, when I went hence I left you living; I return, O prince, to find you dead; thus do fresh sorrows multiply upon me one after the other. I saw him to whom my father and mother married me, cut down before our city, and my three own dear brothers perished with him on the self-same day; but you, Patroclus, even when Achilles slew my husband and sacked the city of noble Mynes, told me that I was not to weep, for you said you would make Achilles marry me, and take me back with him to Phthia, we should have a wedding feast among the Myrmidons. You were always kind to me and I shall never cease to grieve for you."
She wept as she spoke, and the women joined in her lament-making as though their tears were for Patroclus, but in truth each was weeping for her own sorrows…
If one were to key off of this revelation, it makes the magnitude of Achilles’s inordinate rage more understandable. And it is inordinate rage. Achilles’s rage is menis. That is not kotos (holding a grudge). That is not kholos (hot bile anger in the moment). That is not even lyssa (mad frenzied rage. The word menis denotes the rage and wrath of a god, something that brings on catastrophic consequences and has cosmological power. Agamemnon did not then commit the theft of a “four-oxen’s-value commodity”, of yet another spear-won captive, slave useful as a seamstress and a bed-warmer. Agamemnon raped the affianced future queen of Phthia, a woman with divine aspects worthy to wed the son of a minor goddess.
Add to this the character of Achilles, who is, as Q. Horatius Flaccus puts it, “active, hot-tempered, inexorable, and fierce… believing that the spear rules all”. Then you understand why a third of the whole poem consists of other Greeks pleading with Akhilleus to stop being unreasonable.