Loreena McKennit's new CD is entitled "An Ancient Muse" and makes reference to Homer's invocation to the muses in the telling of his tales. What is arguably one of the greatest Homeric epic is of course the Iliad, which was portrayed relatively correctly in the film "Troy", a film which was ultimately unsatisfying because it does not portray the homosexual relationship between Achilles and his shield-bearer Patrocles. To a reader of the Iliad, the absence of this passionate union takes out the main source for Achilles' anger, so in the film he looks like an idiot, or worse, just a plain ***hole.
Troy was such a disaster. Never let a man named 'Wolfgang' do Greek mythology. Almost every single actor starring had the chops to handle the story, but they turned it into a mishmash of Western action hero nonsense. It still aches of 'what might have been' whenever Eric Bana and Sean Bean are on the screen.
I suppose this can be compared with "Alexander", the theatrical release that painted a human standard so Homeric that the American audience had difficulty connecting with it and which spawned a Director's Cut where the scenes make even less sense than the theatrical version. In other words, I suppose there are some things that should remain in the written or oral traditions because they make the most sense there and not converted to a theatrical rendition.
Overall, both films failed to incorporate the ancient Greek or Hellenistic ideals that made the stories so great for their time period, and wondrous for those that can grasp even the barest hints of those ideals: masculine softness, emotionally complex subtlety, a ponderous or inquisitive nature, and the most important one of all, human fallibility. The films paint the Greek and Hellenistic armies as savage, trained warriors and while some may have had a little military training, it is more likely that the armies would have been composed of civilian conscripts. This is made very clear in the Homeric epics, where he does what he can to paint the warriors' private and civilian lives in addition to their military ones. These are not bloodthirsty savages but gentle country folk being forced by their kings to fight against those who were previously trading partners and competitors.
I loved
Alexander and still do. I wrote extensively on the movie while on IMDb a now bygone spring two years ago. To research the era, culture and Alexander himself and to try to make a movie about him, is a near impossible task. To film the man's life would have filled a full mini-series of movies.
The man needed a movie made about him, but Alexander lived in a culture so far distant from current Western society that one may as well be making a sci-fi movie about aliens from another planet as get a modern American audience to understand.
One has to try to win an audience's empathy or understanding for Alexander himself. A man who loved warfare. A man who conquered entire regions for no other reason than for the power and wealth it brought him. People who surrendered to him were given generous terms, people who dared to want their freedom were slaughtered down to the women and children at times. Or else the women and children were sold into slavery.
Alexander lived in the Classical/Hellenstic age, where Greek/Macedonian society thought little wrong with men who loved men and women and boys. Where sexual relationships with children was the norm. Where buying a sexual slave was just another 'luxury' in life to aspire to.
And all of this was perfectly acceptable.
John Doe moviegoer, raised in an era of Enlightenment, has to sympathize with Alexander somehow.
I'm normally a blunt person, but when a male friend asked me what history thought Pausanias' motive was in assasinating Phillip, Alexander's father, I found myself tripping over the explanation of what I had read, though in the reading, it was perfectly in line with the culture, but taking it out of context to explain to a friend, had me fumbling.
To bring an ancient civilization to life for film - if done as accurately as possible - risks alienating an entire modern audience.
To have brought
Troy to life, hewn as close to the story as possible, would have had Sean Bean as Odysseus, throwing the infant son of Hector (Eric Bana) off the walls of Troy (I can't recall for certain, but wasn't that in the 'Iliad'?) and still somehow convince a modern audience to consider Odysseus a great hero. The scene where Achilles denies Hector a decent burial and mocks him is pretty much the tone of how Achilles would have acted in the 'Iliad'.
Human sacrifice would have to be rationalized because they did do it and you can, if you think like they do. I think it was Polyxena who was slaughtered at Achille's pyre, simply because he had wanted her in life and she was by then a royal prisoner.
It is a difficult task to bring ancient civilizations to life with their different cultural values and social mores and not make them the 'bad guys' as apparently Mel is doing with his
Apocalypto.
The HBO series 'Rome' does a lot better job. The two main characters are casual killers, one a recreational rapist, brutal xenophobic soldiers sold on the superiority of Rome and Romans and male status and both are quite willing slaveholders, yet they are also loving family men and fathers, great hearted friends you can't help but like.
Perhaps the show is more palatable to an audience because they only hint at homosexuality (except where women are concerned
) and gloss quickly over the sexual slavery and pederasty with throw away lines and scenes. But perhaps that's the show's strength as well. It shows these things as normal everyday things and doesn't make much fuss about it.
