Glorification of war

Rating: Null/10 (12 September 2005)

Sex is hotter in war. Love is more passionate. Women are turned on by it. No one experiences pain. Misery is a chance to act out. Looting and burning are a gas. Everything is sorted in a flash. Hormones make the world go round.
The battle of Troy --- in fact the war for Ilium, but don't let's bother about a mere detail like the name of the city in question --- according to those who lived much closer in time than we, bore no resemblance whatsoever to this utter travesty, which sacrifices all to make war into glamorous entertainment and, ultimately, recruitment propaganda.
The war was determined by the gods, and took longer to decide than Julius Caesar's eight-year campaign to conquer France. "The gods" is no mere word. A scientist called Julian Jaynes has written a fascinating study (look it up) of how The Iliad shows that men thought differently in that era, before men's capacities were externalised into technology. "The gods" describes a superior mentality that we would do well to research and attempt to restore, if we want a livable future world.
The idea of men fighting a war over a woman had an irony for the Classical world that we have lost, because the Greek ruling class was entirely bisexual, as was Achilles (although that is censored out here). Menelaus was doubly moronic for dragging Greece into a drawn-out bloodbath over a dame when he had innumerable boys on whom to sate his lust.
To view the supplementary features about this film, you really start wondering how far off the day is when no actors or sets will be required for an epic. Brad Pitt must have pondered the deeper significance of his lines about immortality when he reflected that his image could be recreated on screen in any number of roles indefinitely, using the powers of CGI.