Sanctity of Life

Rating: Null/10 (24 August 2011)

One of my most loved films is the recent Troy directed by Wolfgang Petersen. This work touches me profoundly, for in the pivotal scene I watch Achilles in all of his power, and bathed in the praise and glory which has come to him because of its cultivation, kneel and fall over the dead body of the equally valorous Hector, as if to shelter him from any more pain or humiliation. In deep travail the nearly indomitable Hellenic hero lies mourning not only over the loss of a peer, but over his own flagrant and egregious profaning of the corpse which would have been allowed a heroes' burial were it not for his own hubris. Here in these saddening moments, and with copious tears, the broken heart of Achilles beckons knowledge and, in a sense, also invites beauty into his perception; the beauty that was the dynamic Hector, perhaps, but living memory can be sweet. Tempered by his wrenching anguish, the renowned Greek warrior becomes a whole person imprinted not only with strength of will, but with both knowledge and beauty revealing to him a place transcending his former experience; a place unmistakably marked with the ideal of sanctity of life an ideal not easily heard, and easily forgotten, when quest for power is undertaken by the soul not tempered first by love; by serving.