Troy
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Written by David Benioff
Starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Brian Cox, Orlando Bloom
Classification: 14A
Rating: * *
T roy takes all the wind out of Homer's sails. This is an epic made by a modernist who doesn't believe in epics. Doesn't believe in the honour of battle, or the status of a tragic hero, or the ideal of romantic love, or the dictates of an omnipotent god.
What's left? Not mythology, to be sure, but a rather bland sociology lecturing us on the realpolitik of power and the human waste of war. Now, such a contemporary sermon is well and good, but ancient Greece ain't the place to preach it. All costume and scant drama, the result is a curiously flat spectacle, neither offensive nor compelling. In fact, the only thing really wrong about Troy is that it never once feels truly right.
The script borrows loosely from The Illiad to recount the celebrated story of the Trojan war, but it's clear from the opening frame that director Wolfgang Petersen is determined to liberalize the legend. In the past, Petersen has proven himself a dab hand at the logistics of warfare ( Das Boot) and no stranger to acts of God ( A Perfect Storm). Here, though, he's quick to cut down the Homeric icons to Everyman size.
Right away, Agamemnon (Brian Cox in a tenacious ducktail) emerges as just another power-hungry pol with a taste for regime change and a healthy appetite for world domination.
And what of the great Achilles? The guy is a hell of a warrior, yes; and, played by a pumped-up Brad Pitt boasting a new set of pecs and long tresses flecked with L'Oréal highlights, he's quite the looker too. But the poor guy is stripped of his semi-divine ancestry and the superpowers that go with it — here, it's not just the heel that makes him mortal. What's worse, after dispatching some hulking Thessalonian in the kick-off action scene, he surveys the carnage and, with an ironic smirk, comes off sounding like Wilfred Owen: "Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn't that be a sight."
Watch this early battle sequence closely, because it typifies Petersen's style for the next 2½ hours. Our first look is superb, as his camera pulls way up to capture the sheer scope of two huge armies poised to clash on an open plain. The digitalized backdrop blends seamlessly with the live action and, together, they work brilliantly to convey the vast scale of the impending slaughter — the distant sight is simultaneously awesome and horrifying.
But when the panorama gives way to the close-ups, the rhythm gets lost and so do our emotions — the tight shots are just cinematic clutter. Furthermore, as his heavenly aerial views compete with his mundane sociology, Petersen seems to be fighting himself here, elevating the style to the sky while bringing the substance down to Earth. Visually, he can be truly Homeric; thematically, he's merely generic.
Things don't get much livelier when love rears its pretty head — you know, when pretty Paris (Orlando Bloom) whisks pretty Helen (Diane Kruger) away from her old-coot husband and back to the walled sanctuary of Troy. Alas, they make for an awfully tepid twosome — the chemistry between them wouldn't start a Bunsen burner, let alone a war.
Not that Petersen seems to care. He closes in on Kruger's vapid face, then cuts lazily to the 1,000 ships it launched, and leaves us to compute the disparity (as launching pads go, I'd put her down for 10 or 12 at most). So when the paramours essentially disappear from the yarn, who's to miss them? As older brother Hector (Eric Bana) reminds us, "This is about power, not love."
Yes, Hector too is an arch-pragmatist and devout skeptic — a gallant lad, certainly, but afflicted by nothing more profound than a relatively weak pair of biceps. In case anyone doubts this humanist perspective, wise Odysseus pops up brandishing an aphorism that might have been swiped from Lewis Lapham: "War is young men dying, and old men talking." Speaking of old men talking, Peter O'Toole takes a wrong turn as King Priam and ends up as King Lear — dazed and confused, just a lost soul looking for a heath.
Consequently, in lieu of heroism and hubris, pathos rules the epic agenda — it's a watered-down version without much emotional punch, but pathos nonetheless. Even our great warrior signs on. He sings a chorus of the pathetic blues (seems his Achilles heel is really just a bad case of angst), and then gives the sad song a positive spin: "The gods envy us. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed."
Easy for handsome Brad to say. Actually, it's not: Handsome Brad has trouble with his elocution here. Lines like, "Immortality, take it, it's yours," don't slide trippingly off his American tongue. Also, his eyes seems distant and unfocused, as if they're not in synch with the rest of him. Maybe that's inevitable when a body spends too many self-admiring hours in a mirrored gym. Maybe the gym is where pumped-up actors leave their performance.
The only time Achilles (and the film) displays any raw passion is over the death of his cousin Patroclus, who happens to be just as manly and every bit as blond and fetching. Too bad the love dare not speak its name. Dressed to the IX's, costume dramas of the sword-and-sandal variety have always had a gay undercurrent — remember Gore Vidal's uncredited contributions to Ben-Hur? Given his obvious lack of interest in the central heterosexual coupling, Petersen might have had some fun letting that undercurrent drift up to the surface. But fun just isn't on his call sheet.
That's not to deny an admirable intent in his strategy to give a classic myth some modern resonance. After all, no less an artist than James Joyce put Homer to contemporary use. But Joyce did so in a contemporary setting. This is back on Homer's own turf where, in trying to humanize the epic, Petersen only succeeds in deflating it. So he's content to dish out more of that diluted pathos spiked with an occasional burst of bellicosity. One such outbreak, a grand battle, starts with a preliminary where the Trojans set ablaze giant orbs of thatch and bowl them straight at the massed enemy. Scary it isn't, but you sure do want to sing along: Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire.
Did I mention that, along with his famous heel, Achilles also made a famous choice? Fate offered him the chance to select from two forks in his life's road: One led to longevity and a safe banality, the other to brevity and a blaze of glory. He picked the fast track to Troy; Troy picks the slow path to tedium. Such a tame and timid epic — it's all meek to me.
