A tragedy preserved, in spite the absence of the Gods

Rating: Null/10 (24 July 2004)

I'd been sort of waiting for this movie to come out for quite a while, and after seeing it i feel it's a decent job, for what it's worth. And by that, i mean a big budget movie by Hollywood with the dual ambition of attracting the general audience as well as assuming a position in the epic movie category and becoming an instant classic. It surely could have been much better given the magnitude of the theme but the director did at least one thing right -- staying truthful to the epic storyline and more importantly, preserving the gist of an ultimate tragedy of human kind in its matter-of-fact way of story-telling.
The director made an interesting yet dangerous choice by actually not including any God in this movie, cause Trojan war is, if anything, a war between Gods. I'm no man to comment on Greek mythology but the way i see it, "The Iliad" is such an important piece of literature in human history, aside from being the first epic poem ever, is that it is the first to express the futility of the efforts of mere mortals and thus the tragic nature of human being in such a magnitude. Odysseus and Achilles didn't want to go to the war in the first place, and Hector surely wouldn't bring an enemy like Greece upon himself if he had a choice. Yet these three are the ones who suffered most (aside from the faceless people in the once magnificent Troy who got ruthlessly slaughtered). Hector and Achilles were DOOMED to die even before the war started for no obvious reasons, and Odysseus suffered a ten-year odyssey :) after single-handed brought down the unbreakable Troy and literary wiped the city from the map.
To follow that logic, Heroes like Hector and Achilles were invented not to show how glorious human being can be but rather how insignificant and futile we are as a race in the face of history and divinity. Unmatchable heroes as they are, they were totally unable to defy destiny. Hector is no less formidable a fighter than Achilles, but in their duel, his javile was deflected not by Achilles but Athena herself, who also guide Achilles sword across Hector's throat. That's why no matter how great he was and whoever he was fighting, if the Gods decided he should die he didn't even have a chance. Achilles was killed in the same fashion by Apollo, who favored Hector and chose a wuss like Paris to be Achilles's terminator, almost as a mockery.
I think the director choose the exclusion of Gods at least partly for practical reasons. 3-hour movie as it is, it probably can't afford to accommodate the complicated nature of Olympians if the movie was to tell a complete story. But it managed to deliver the sense of an epic tragedy without the help of the Gods. It so happened that the director made Achilles fight for fame, Hector for survival so more justified and humane, but, in "Iliad" Achilles was a soldier without a cause. He was dissed by Agamemnon and was on his way home until he heard his "dearest friend" (NOT his cousin, u guys do the math :) was killed by Hector. Thus began the chain reaction of Heroes dropping dead like flies. It deepened the sense of helpless of mortals cause even God-like Heroes like Achilles was totally played by Fate. And again, the reason Hector was slain by Achilles in the duel is because Zeus put the death of both heroes in his balance, and the side with Hector's sank down. So again, it's Fate, not God, who's running the show here.
Fate, in Greek myth, is a force (not an entity like the Olympian Gods) that's beyond EVERYONE, including the almighty Zeus himself. the Greek myth is filled with stories of Gods lamented over the sorrowful yet unchangeable course of Fate. So the Greek thought, not mere human, but even their Gods were dominated by the shapeless yet irresistible Fate. Apathetic and unpredictable as the Gods were, there's a more powerful and fearful force that the Greek couldn't even give a form to help themselves understand like they did with the Gods.