Good and original, unfortunately

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2007)

This movie is named "Troy." It is not named "The Iliad." Troy was a real place, and the Greeks really did besiege it and destroy it. The Iliad is a work of fiction written some centuries after the fall of Troy by a guy named Homer, who guessed at what happened based on the chants and oral histories handed down to him. The movie Troy is not an attempt to recreate the Iliad word for word; it is an attempt to show the kind of real events that might have given rise to the myths retold in the Iliad So it is no crime that the movie leaves out much of the Iliad. The problem is that the new inventions that substitute for the Iliad's version often didn't work. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, Troy is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
To review the good part: as in the Iliad, Hector is the most noble and impressive character in the story. In fact, he's even nobler here than in the Iliad, as he faces Achilles down directly, while Homer's Hector understandably but ingloriously flees the Greek champion for as long as he can. Eric Bana does the role justice, showing his devotion to his family and his city, and there is a streak of true Greek tragedy in how his love for the one destroys the other.
On paper, Brad Pitt looks like a disastrous choice to play Achilles, so I'm pleased to say he did a fine job. He does very well in his scene with Priam, and he manages to convey with his tears over the body of Hector that he has finally realized that the man he has killed and whose corpse he has desecrated was a better man than he. Also, the movie comes up with a fairly imaginative explanation of how Achilles got his reputation for invulnerability to mortal weapons.
Peter O'Toole, meanwhile, gives a radically different performance from his customary acting, investing Priam with far more dignity and majesty than he usually gets. It's delightful to see O'Toole still willing to strike out in a new direction at his age.
I'm sorry, but that's it for the good part. The bad choices are overwhelming.
To start with, making Agamemnon into a villain was a perfectly defensible decision, but making him into an incompetent was not. It is impossible to believe that a man like Brian Cox's Agamemnon could have united Greece despite lacking not only scruple but also courage, foresight, diplomatic skill, and military prowess. The pious complaints that kings don't fight, but let their underlings die for them is an almost charmingly clueless modernism: from ancient Greece to the Middle Ages, personal skill at arms and tactical mastery were the qualities most demanded of a king, and kings who lacked those qualities were usually deposed and killed by kings who had them.
The second major failure is that the movie wants us to like Achilles, and I left the theater wishing that Briseis had cut his throat when she had the chance. Then Hector would have lived, and possibly Troy would have been saved. And what, precisely, would have been lost by Achilles' death? A talented killer whose only motivation for killing is so that generations untold will sing of his butcheries. Who is worse: Agamemnon, who slaughters people who did him no harm in order to unite warring nations under his rule, or Achilles, who also slaughters people who did him no harm, but does it only to make a name for himself in the epics? Achilles gives a high-falutin' final speech to Briseis, saying "you brought me peace," but what exactly did she do to bring him "peace" that the woman he slept with in the opening scene didn't do too?
It would be easier to like Achilles if there were at least some justice to the Greeks' cause; if, for instance, Paris had been the sniveling coward he was in the original text, or had kidnapped Helen, and if Menelaus had really been in love with her. But in this version, Paris is doing Helen a favor, Menelaus is fighting not for love of his wife but for his wounded pride, and Paris bravely (if incompetently) challenges Menelaus to single combat. Who can possibly want the Greeks to win?
Rating: **1/2 out of ****.
Recommendation: See it on TV.