July 02, 2004
 

I went on a company sponsored movie outing today to watch the movie Troy starring Brad Pitt, Julian Glover & Peter O'Toole among others & directed by Wolfgang Petersen. In case you didnt know, Petersen has quite a few nice/hit movies to his credit: Never Ending Story in the mid 80s, In the Line of Fire, Outbreak, Perfect Storm etc.

The movie is only loosely based on the Trojan war as described by Homer & Aeschylus which forms part of the wonderful epic, Iliad, which I must confess I have hardly read properly. I remember reading an abridged version nearly 10-15 years ago. Clearly there's no way justice will be done in a scenario where a 10 year war is abridged into a couple of hours. The movie goes far away from the original story on a number of occasions.

Menelaus is shown as being killed by Hector when he tries to kill Paris in a one-on-one battle while the truth is that Menelaus survived the war and let Helen live, smitten by her beauty.

Achilles is shown as being in the Trojan horse which was sent as a 'gift' to Troy by the Greeks who were withdrawing the siege. The reality is that Achilles wasn't there. Why? Because he was already dead. Paris does kill Achilles, but it is before Troy is destroyed, not after.

Samanth condescendingly writes that Petersen's Helen isn't even beautiful enough to launch a dinghy, let alone a thousand ships. I wondered about that too! Surely they could have found someone really stunning to play that role. It doesnt involve any acting anyway!

Labels: movies, review