Troy

[natlyn]

Last night, Troy was on. I'd never seen it. Still haven't, but I saw parts of it. Along with the pretty costumes and stilted language, there was an amazing fight scene between Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Hector (Eric Bana). It was intense, desperate, furious, and showed great physical prowess. The training that Mssrs. Pitt and Bana endured must have

Comments

[amedia]

Ah, the Achilles and Hector battle! It is made of awesome. It's not much like the battle in the Iliad, which is surprisingly short, but in and of itself, it's savagely beautiful.

There's a chapter in the Latin book that I use in which a Roman schoolteacher tells parts of the story of the Iliad to the schoolchildren, and I show the students that scene after we translate it. The book also includes the part where Priam comes to Achilles to beg for his son's body, which I thought the movie handled particularly well, so I show that too.

[natlyn]

Yes! While I thought pretty much the rest of the film that I saw was a lot of pretentious proclaiming, I thought Peter O'Toole's performance was quite moving as was Achilles gradually being swayed.

[amedia]

It also had one spectacular moment of laugh-out-loud humor. That was the part at the end where the words come up on the screen: "Based on the Iliad of Homer." I had been holding myself back from screaming "NOOOOOOOOOO!" so many times during the movie that I had a good belly-laugh at that. :-)

But it did make an awesome couple of posters for TODS' Greek class!

http://amedia.livejournal.com/100999.html#cutid1

[natlyn]

You guys are so cool! How will the rest of the faculty live up to your non-stuffy ways?

[twistedchick]

That's one of the scenes that I can't turn away from. The other took me by surprise: Paris, shooting arrows while he's angry and scared, hitting the target precisely every time. (Just goes to show that Legolas's aim was not entirely a special effect.) There are a lot of good moments in this movie, not so many good scenes, and I truly dislike their versions of Menelaus and Agamemnon. But I dearly love Eric Bana's Hector.

[natlyn]

Re: Paris shooting arrows, I did not get that far into the film. (I think Torchwood was starting.) Perhaps I should watch the entire thing at some point.

::makes note on list of 3,587,998 things to do before death::

[wcngdss]

I have this if you ever want to borrow it to watch. Me, I wasn't too impressed. Then again, Ancient Greece/Rome is my thing so the historical make beleive was a little hard to swallow. I'm also not a Brad ArmPitt fan, so that could be it.

[natlyn]

I wasn't impressed with the overall movie, just with the battle. And while I do believe Pitt is very easy on the eyes, I don't rush off to see everything he's in, so wouldn't count myself as a fan. In fact, I thought his blank affect here was very offputting. I know that it was intentional because his expression is usually more lively.

Anyway, yes, I'd like to borrow this sometime. Thanks.

Troy

[shadow51]

Hey, I was watching Troy as well. Although I didn't come into it until the first half hour was over so missed that. Will have to catch it another time. I have seen the first few minutes so I'm only missing a bit there. And that battle scene is awesome. Sometimes I get annoyed at the end of the movie because I'm thinking hey that's not how it ended but last night it occurred to me, duh, it's not like the Iliad was a documentary (and The Iliad actually ends with the death of Hector). So I suppose that ending is as good as any. Much better than seeing the Greeks through Hector's infant son off the battlements and all the women either killed or becoming slaves. And the beginning (of the Iliad) is good "Sing, goddess, the rage of Achilles . . ." Which does seem how the movie starts.