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The
Iliad According to Hollywood
By HENRY P. RALEIGH
ART TIMES June, 2005
LUCKILY
THE TITLES prefacing last summer's blockbuster film "Troy" includes
a statement that it was 'inspired' by Homer's Iliad
implying therefore that it certainly wasn't based on this classic story —
otherwise you might come away thinking the writers had only gotten part way
through the Iliad before throwing up their hands in hopeless confusion over
all those old Greek names. I mean some are real tongue twisters all right and
who could keep them straight? Why it's as bad as trying to read a Russian novel.
Hector, Ajax and Paris are easy enough but how about Agamemnon, Chryseis, Tyndareus,
Briseus, or Astyanax? Try saying these while storming the wall of Troy and see
how far you get. Common sense tells you its just best to forget about some of
these name-burdened characters and while you're at it throw out all that celestial
bickering, jealousies, double-dealing, lying, manipulating and general interference
that Zeus and his gang were up to no matter how important Homer seemed to think
this was.
You
see, the real trick in jiggering around with the Iliad is what to do
with Brad Pit who is getting $17.5 million for playing Achilles and you don't
want him absent from too many scenes which might hurt his feelings and probably
those of his thousands of adoring fans. It's risky enough to have Brad shot
full of arrows at the film's finale but there's no way you can let him miss
the big Trojan Horse episode. After all, the Trojan Horse is just about as close
as the average film goer can get to Homer and the Iliad. "My Big
Fat Greek Wedding" is one thing but a squabble that took place 3,200 years
ago is something else. So who cares that Achilles was knocked off long before
the famous wooden horse was trucked through the gates of Troy? Homer could have
gotten it wrong just as he may have about who really was the first one off the
Greek's boats to charge up the beach. OK, so maybe it was Proteselaus and maybe
he did get quickly skewered by a Trojan spear but its pretty clear you can't
have a bit player upstage Brad
that way so its Brad, practically a one-man Normandy invasion, slashing and
stabbing and single-handedly and untouched capturing the Temple of Apollo. I
think you'll agree that's a lot better than Homer's version.
Now
there's always someone around who will surely make little, carping remarks about
a film. Is it important, I ask you, to question why a war that went on for nearly
ten years age the actors not in the slightest? Look, be reasonable; you have
to hasten the Trojan War along before that splendid beach where all the battles
are shot fills up with luxury hotels and cabanas and ice-cream sellers. And
don't ask where the Greeks got the lumber to throw up those enormous funeral
pyres when Troy appears to have been built somewhere on the Sahara desert —
they just did, that's all there is to it. And didn't the duel between Paris
and Menelaus go very much as Homer scripted it? Why point to the missing goddess
Aphrodite for whom Homer had the incredulous notion that she bore off Paris
in a cloud before Menelaus could chop him up. That certainly would have looked
silly in a film that abounds in manly gore, wouldn't it? And so what if Brad
looks exactly the same as he did in the 1997 "Seven Years in Tibet"
even to the long, scraggly blond hair. It's not Brad's fault Hollywood no longer
has any Kirk Douglas's or Charlton Hestons to take those roles of heroically
proportioned, fully grown, adult males. If sometimes Brad looked like a nice
high school senior suiting up for the championship county football game just
keep in mind that pulling in $17.5 mil is damn good for a high school senior
or anyone else for that matter.
Oh,
by the way, Orlando Bloom made a terrific Paris, a cowardly wimp just as Homer
described him and curiously, for you older folks, he bears a remarkable resemblance
to John Derek who never made the millions Brad does but did marry Ursula Andress
and Bo Derek to make up for it. All in all, I'd say if Homer was alive today
I'd bet he would be gratified to see how Hollywood cleaned up his old Iliad
and turned it into a good, fast-paced action story — especially if he
could have gotten a piece of the box-office to say nothing of maybe having his
name up there in the credits alongside of Brad's.
