Gone to America

This is a movie with some good bits, and some bad bits. So it’s a lot like most movies in that respect. But this is a big movie. A very big movie. One of the most expensive the world has ever seen, based on one of the oldest stories around. A story so good it has survived for thousands of years.

Of course, they couldn’t just make it – they had to change it. I have no problem with this. For the most part they’ve done a pretty good job of elucidating things and keeping us interested. They have left out all the gods, though, which is a shame – not because I just really wanted to see people with big beards playing with cool chess pieces (although I did), but because it fundamentally changes the characters reasons for doing things, and our perception of their motivations.
As an example, Achilles and Hector are both presented to us as modern men, resisting the superstition of their elders. Hector particularly can barely conceal his frustration when his father Priam takes the counsel of the high priest of Apollo over his own sound military thinking. We groan with him, because we know that Priam is dooming them all due to superstition. Silly Priam! But he is in every other way a noble and wise figure. An unneccessary contradiction?

This wholesale discounting of the gods creates quite a few holes, mainly to do with Achilles. Brad Pitt has gotten some, er, “mixed reviews” for his performance ( justifiably, I might add – he seems to have wandered in from a Ray Harryhausen movie) – but really, he was fighting an uphill battle. His character doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Is he invincible or isn’t he? Is he actually protected by the gods, or is he just a shit hot fighter? It’s not clear. The film seems to come down on the “shit hot fighter” side of the fence – he is killed when an arrow strikes his heel, but we’re never told why this should be signifigant. And it doesn’t appear to be the arrow in his heel which kills him, anyway – all the other arrows kill him. It seems that he could have been taken out at any time, if only it had ever occurred to somebody to shoot something sharp at him while he wasn’t looking. All that ennui was pointless, Achilles! There’s no need to look so surprised! You were perfectly vulnerable the whole time! You should have just enjoyed life!

There are some things that probably made sense on the page, but strain credibility when you actually have to watch them. I find it hard to believe that, in the middle of a pitched battle with fifty thousand men, everybody would stop to watch two soldiers fight, and then just go home when that fight was over. Very disciplined, these soldiers. And good communications.

But there are good bits – Paris’ battle with Menelaus is fantastic. Paris is so pathetic! Hector’s battle with Achilles is great too. Hector is so cool – he’s the really heroic one in this movie. Go Eric Bana! Peter O’Toole is clearly going all out for an Oscar as King Priam, and good luck to him. It’s Brad Pitt’s misfortune to have to act against him all on his own at his most emotional, as he pleads Achilles to return the body of his son. Poor Achilles – he may be a demigod, but he seems like a pouting teenager here. Brad is like a deer in the headlights.

It’s entertaining, but there are just too many dropped balls for it to be really considered a success. In a way, I hope they do the Odyssey – Sean Bean makes a good Odysseus, and this ancient world is an impressive creation – but I don’t know if that’s even possible without Zeus taking a hand.