Saturday - May 15, 2004
Briseis was a Lesbian
Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of
Peleus' son Achilles,
Murderous,
doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless
losses,
hurling down to the House
of Death so many sturdy
souls,
great fighters' souls, but
made their bodies carrion,
feasts
for the dogs and birds,
and the
will of Zeus was moving toward its
end.
Begin, Muse, when the two
first broke and
clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men
and brilliant Achilles.
I watched
the movie "Troy" yesterday with great hopes for seeing The Poet's immortal work
come to life. With the excellent cast and after seeing what a fine job the
movie industry did with The Lord of the
Rings trilogy, I was hoping for an intelligent
treatment of one of my favorite works of literature. And yet, despite its many
good points, I left the cinema convinced that Hollywood is incapable of
understanding great literature. Every Hollywood attempt to make a Tolkein movie
was a disaster and it took a colossal effort in New Zealand for Peter Jackson to
come close to recreating Middle Earth.
Like Peter Jackson's
The Lord of the
Rings,
Troy
has parts that are good and parts that are bad. Unfortunately, there are just
too many bad parts in
Troy.
For starters, Briseis is made to be a Trojan and a member of Priam's extended
family. Yet in the original story she was captured in Lyrnessus but originally
comes from Lesbos. The movie made her some sort of temple priestess or devotee,
but this is all bunk and not supported. I'm all in favor of simplifying a story
to make it fit the cinematic format, but they ruined the entire relationship
with Achilles and Briseis. Since she is the whole purpose for Achilles' sitting
out the war, and thus the cause of Patroclus' death, it pretty much sets the
stage for ruining the story line.
Where do I begin my complaints of this
movie?
It's typical of the denizens of
Hollywood to not understand the importance of male-female relationships.
Briseis, which is Greek for "daughter of Briseus" and we don't know that she had
her own name, Briseis is described as having a deep love for Achilles and he
for her, yet this is all dismissed as a one night stand. I sometimes wonder if
people in Hollywood even understand long term relationships and real love
because they only seem capable of explaining love in terms of short term
carnality. The idea that Achilles might have a mature capability for love is
completely dismissed and Briseis is likewise dismissed as a woman that is only
won over by a hop in the sack.
Many
have commented on the lack of gods taking part in the story. I think this is
regrettable, but I can understand leaving out the gods to keep the story
simpler. I agree with simplification, I despise altering the story and the
characters.
For instance, the movie has
Hector kill Menelaus. How can that be? Menelaus survives the war and is an
important part of the Odyssey. (By the way, where did they get these name
pronunciations? It's "men-e-LAY-us", and it doesn't rhyme with mouse. It's
Pr-eye-am, not Pree-am. Sheesh. Oh well, the spelling and pronunciation of
Greek words and names is an on going
debate.)
One of the popular things to
do is to say that Achilles and Patroclus were homosexual lovers. This is also
bunk, even if it is very, very old bunk. This nonsense started about three
hundred years after the story was written, but there is no basis for this claim
in the Homeric version of the story and no reason for it. I'm so glad that this
Brad Pitt version of Achilles wasn't made into a bisexual. I suspect this has
less to do with a desire for keeping to the story, and more to do with the image
that Brad Pitt wishes to project as an
actor.
There were also numerous other
pointless errors, like one time they referred to the "port of Sparta." Since
Sparta was located in the middle of the mountains of the Peloponnesian
peninsula, that's a rather strange term to use. Why did they do that? What was
the point?
Here's the gist of my
complaint with the movie. This Iliad is a long, complex story with many themes,
but just as the Odyssey can be distilled down to a story about the obligation of
hosts to guests and guests to hosts, so the Iliad can be distilled down to a
story about the honor and rage of
Achilles.
Many of the details that were
changed in this movie so distort this theme that I wonder if anyone literate
even lives in Hollywood. Just like when the writers of
The Lord of the
Rings movies were weakest when they deigned to
add to the story with their pathetically weak understanding of Tolkein's themes,
so the writers of
Troy
failed when they deigned to dither with the greatest story told in 2800 years.
The story goes like this: Achilles
was one of several kings of the Greeks recruited by Agamemnon to fight in the
war against Priam, king of Troy, who was not Greek. During the first nine years
of the war, Achilles' army of the Myrmidons (which was the largest contingent
among the Greeks, not a platoon of fifty as shown in the movie) sacked Lyrnessus
and captured Briseis and gave her as a reward to Achilles. Back then it was
considered a good thing to sack cities.
Briseis, although a prisoner
initially, became Achilles' consort and loved him deeply. This was no frivolous
one night stand under duress as portrayed in the movie. When Agamemnon took
her, Achilles response was to refuse to allow his army to fight with the Greeks
anymore. While they were preparing to leave Troy, the Greeks were attacked and
pushed back to their ships by the Trojans.
Missing from the movie is the
extraordinary offer made by Agamemnon through the embassy of Ajax and Odysseus.
Here is the amazing offer made (feel free to skip to the last few
lines):
Here
before
you all, I'll name in full the splendid gifts I
offer.
Seven tripods never
touched by fire, ten bars of
gold,
twenty burnished cauldrons,
a dozen massive stallions,
racers who earned me trophies
with their speed.
He is no poor
man who owns what they have
won,
not strapped for goods with
all that lovely gold –
what
trophies those high-strung horses carried off for
me!
Seven women I'll give him,
flawless, skilled in
crafts,
women of Lesbos –
the ones I chose, my
privilege,
that day he captured
the Lesbos citadel himself:
they
outclassed the tribes of women in their
beauty.
These I will give, and
along with them will go
the one
I took away at first, Briseus' daughter [Briseis is the daughter of
Briseus]
and I will swear a
solemn, binding oath in the
bargain:
I never mounted her bed,
never once made love with her
–
the natural thing for
mankind, men and women
joined.
Now all these gifts will
be handed him at once.
But if,
later, the gods allow us to plunder
the great city of Priam, let him
enter in
when we share the
spoils, load the holds of his
ship
with gold and bronze –
as much as his heart desires
–
and choose for his
pleasure twenty Trojan
women
second only to Argive Helen
in their glory.
And then, if we
can journey home to Achaean
Argos,
pride of the breasting
earth, he'll be my
son-by-marriage!
I will even
honor him on a par with my
Orestes,
full-grown by now,
reared in the lap of
luxury.
Three daughters are mine
in my well-built halls
—
Chrysothemis and Laodice
and Iphianassa —
and he may
lead away whichever one he
likes,
with no bride-price asked,
home to Peleus' house.
And I will
add a dowry, yes a magnificent
treasure
the likes of which no
man has ever offered with his
daughter!
Seven citadels I will
give him, filled with
people,
Cardamyle, Enope, and the
grassy slopes of Hire,
Pherae the
sacrosanct, Anthea deep in
meadows,
rolling Aepea and
Pedasus green with vineyards.
All
face the sea at the far edge of sandy Pylos
and the men who live within
them, rich in sheep-flocks,
rich
in shambling cattle, will honor him like a
god
with hoards of gifts and
beneath his scepter's sway
live
out his laws in sleek and shining
peace.
All
this
I would extend to him if he
will end his anger.
Let him
submit to me!
That's quite an offer
and I quoted it entirely to show how rich it was. But the last line is the
kicker. Achilles was no brooding brat as portrayed in the movie. He was a good
man, and honorable man. No man has ever lived with such a fine sense of honor.
Wisely, Odysseus left out the last line when he repeated the offer to Achilles,
but Achilles wasn't fooled. He knew that accepting this gift, this bribe, from
Agamemnon would mean forsaking his honor and he refused to do it.
And that is the crux of the whole
story. Instead this is missing from the movie and all we see is Odysseus coming
by to chat with Achilles and ask nicely for him to fight. They really make
Achilles look bad, like a deserter.
I'm
also offended by the fact that Patroclus' body was not stripped of its armor in
the movie. In Homer's tale Achilles had to wait until morning to avenge his
death while his mother had another set of armor made for him. This is a very
dramatic point in the story that was completely left out.
Then after the death of Patroclus, and
the donning of new armor, Achilles explodes in a killing spree that is climaxed
by the fight with Hector. I fail to understand how you can make a movie about
the Iliad and leave out the most dramatic parts where Achilles kills and kills
and kills without remorse, without pity, and without relenting.
But then, I guess the mindset of
Hollywood is to make war and killing seem evil despite that it was considered a
great compliment to be called a sacker of cities by Homer. Hollywood seems to
refuse to consider that others have different outlooks on the world. Even their
portrayal of Hector is slightly twisted. Hector as a family man is presented
quite well, after all this is what Hollywood excels in, but they've even robbed
Hector of his warring spirit by translating his "nicknames" peacefully.
Usually, Hector is called "Breaker of Horses" because Troy was famous for its
horses, but the movie calls him "Tamer of Horses." It kind of lacks the same
punch, don't you think?
Also, Hector is
repeatedly described as having a "flashing helmet" but they give him a dull iron
helmet. Iron was invented between the waging of the war and the writing of the
Iliad, so there are many confused references to iron in Homer's work, and he
frequently misunderstands the use of chariots and other weapons are presented
anachronistically, but I think with the epithet of "flashing helmet" they could
have given him a shiny bronze age helmet, or even a shiny iron helmet with a
magnificent horse hair plume on it.
I
guess what it all comes down to is that the story is too complex for a two and a
half hour telling. Just as Peter Jackson insisted on ten hours to tell
Tolkein's tale, a truly worthwhile cinematic telling of the Iliad needs more
than the short time it was given.
I'm
disappointed. Not only because the movie bordered on being bad, not only
because of distortions to the story that should never have been added by the
mental pygmies in Hollywood, but mostly that another opportunity was lost. The
greatest story ever told has lived for 2800 years because it's brilliant. I
don't see any reason to tamper with a success. Now, modern sentiments and
cliches are added to a watered down and distorted version. This movie won't be
remembered for very long. Or let's hope not anyway. Briseis was a Lesbian, not
a Trojan, and they've ruined the story of her love and her
plight.
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