An insult to western civilization!

Rating: 2/10 (24 September 2007)

I had high hopes for this movie. But this was one of the biggest letdowns of the first decade of film in the 21 century. The plot should be well known to any high-school educated person it the western civilization. The Iliad is one of the pillars, along with the Bible, of that same civilization. Hollywood is well known to trivialize and take from the original works for dramatization and wider audience appeal, but a work such as the Iliad should get no such treatment.
The main problem is that every age views the world thru its own lens, and it is even for the most informed person from the 21 century almost impossible to understand Achilles and all the heroes of Troy. Hollywood also has a lens, unfortunately, and I don't mean the camera lens. It is the lens of major Hollywood producers and studios and that lens is what it lead to this insulting movie that claims is inspiration comes from Homer. There are many other errors in this production, but first I would give some pros to it too.
The movie was made by a director whose movie "Das Boot" I consider one of the best I have seen in my life. A man who proved that does have vision and knows how to tell a story. The cast was exceptional. Brad Pitt a man known too choose his roles well, Fight Club is enough said, the talented Eric Bana, Brian Cox and Brendan Gleeson who are one of the most reliable actors when it comes to period pieces. Sean Bean a men who, in my mind, was more Bond the James Bond himself. And two young talented, and above that beautiful people Orland Bloom and Diane Kruger. It also had screen legends like Julie Christie and Peter O'Toole in it. Millions of dollars, beautiful sets, modern technology that could create the most epic battles of history and myth and, in my mind, the best story ever written.
What could possible get into the way of making this one of the best movies ever made? The Hollywood lens is the answer. The lens that can't see the difference between Homer and Homer Simpson. And the difference between a person that is called a movie goer, and a cactus (apologies to the cactus).
When you take a story like the Iliad, which doesn't cover the entire Trojan War, just its tenth year, it is necessary to provide more content. The Greek myths, scholarship, even discovery channel documentaries can provide that. Here are the biggest failures of the production. The Trojan War lasted for ten years; the movie depicts it in ten days. This is a major error but a far more fatal is the absence of gods.
Gods are the center of Greek myths; it is their decisions and their battles what moves the action. That is what drives the war between men. The heroes of the movie are not action men like Rambo or John McClane, they are not self dependent, they are influenced and torn apart by the gods. It is not possible to understand the story if it doesn't have gods. Why doesn't it have gods? There are no gods in the in the movie because today the movie going audience is not polytheistic. Most of them are monotheistic; some of them are even agnostics and atheists. The Hollywood lens doesn't show us the Greek gods because it figures the audience just doesn't care for them.
There are four more big weaknesses in the movie. One concerns the characters overall and three concern only Achilles. The problem is that the movie randomly kills Greek heroes as its goes along. Menelaus and Agamemnon for example. Why not, they are bad guys? True for the movie, but their lives are involved in a bigger story, in a bigger history that is totally neglected if they are killed off.
As for Achilles. The first is the unnecessary relationship with him and Briseis. Why is it not necessary, not because it didn't exist, but because you have the greatest love story at the core of the movie, the love story of Paris and Helen.
The second is the relationship that should be in it but it isn't the, relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. They were not cousins they were best friends, and they were lovers. The movie depicts the rise of Achilles anger and rage because the death of a family member. His wrath comes from the loss of, what is today seen as family values. The truth is he couldn't care less about family, at least in the Iliad (the Odyssey is a different case). His wrath comes from the loss of the love of his life, the lust and love that is gone leads him to anger and vengeance, and ultimately to his doom.
The third is his doom. The point is that Achilles must not witness the fall of Troy, it was not his fate, the absent gods have decided so. He dies before the end of the war and his place it not in the horse. In the movie it is the direct opposite.
People would say "It's just an action flick, think gladiator." The problem is that the story that is the basis of Gladiator is just a smaller and in part historical episode, that had a smaller impact on the western civilization, and the Iliad is one of the pillars of the same civilization, that is why this movie is so insulting. The film should have give more respect to it, and with that it would get more respect for itself.
Why the two stars then. First goes to the powerful score by James Horner. And the second to Paris and Helen, Orlando Bloom and Diane Kruger, what are for me the only redeeming qualities of this disaster.