Will the real Wolfgang Peterson please stand up?

Rating: 6/10 (24 July 2006)

Even though I am fervent admirer of Wolfgang Peterson's TV film in German "Black and white like day and night" made in 1978, his later films including his "Das Boot" and "In the line of fire" and "Troy" lack the ingredients of superior cinema. In the 1978 film Peterson came up with a brilliant performance from Bruno Ganz that will be etched in the memory of any film-goer, backed up by brilliant indoor shots.
If someone thinks Troy is a great effort, they ought to compare the 1956 "Helen of Troy" (directed by Robert Wise) where the late Stanley Baker's Achilles was powerful though not having any penchant for reflection. Baker's Achilles was all brawn. Pitt's Achilles had the brooding hero shifting from the philosophical to the flippant, never letting the character develop to evoke sympathy for his fate, a character who knows his future actions (that he has to kill Hector in only in public and thus gain eternal fame). Pitt's and Peterson's Achilles taunts the gods and kings but is silenced by a woman. Peterson had a great opportunity to develop the contradictions in the character, but chose instead to truncate the useful scene with his mother (Julie Christieshe is good even in such brief appearances) that could have been developed further.
I have read that Peter O'Toole did not appreciate Peterson's inputsyet O'Toole is the saving grace of the film (a film where Paris kills Achilles by shooting arrows at his chest rather than his Achilles tendon!). So was Nigel Terry whose stage voice stood out in stark contrast to the other actors. For me, O'Toole, Christie and Terry were the saving graces in an unremarkable filmunless you judge a film solely for its stunts and special effects.
Peterson did make a great decision to enhance the appeal of the film by employing the singing talents of Tanja Tzarovska. But why did Peterson and screen-playwright David Benioff tamper with Homer's work to make Achilles one of the Greeks who entered Troy in the belly of the horse? That's totally out of character. Achilles was not a man who would adopt such tactics. In the original epic, Achilles dies outside the ramparts of Troy by an arrow shot at his heel.
Even though most of his recent films have been lack-luster, I believe the Peterson who made "Black and white like day and night" is a talented director. I wish the real Peterson will stand up in the future and not be swayed by big budgets and studio pressures and deliver decent cinema as he used to decades ago.