Saturday - May 15, 2004

Category Image 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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