Troy (DVD)

Brad Pitt is the Rock Hudson/Jackie Chan of Ancient Greece. This epic movie, based on The Iliad, and The Aeneid, does take a lot of creative liberties with its portrayal of this noble period of Greek history. However, history exists to be interpreted by creative minds, and the result in this case is an uplifting couple of hours examining the human pathos.

“The face that launched a thousand ships”, the “Trojan horse”, the Spartan method of battle, the gods and the temples – all these images bring back high school memories of beginning awareness of different cultures and the romance to be found in history.

Brad Pitt’s portrayal of Achilles, with a battle style somewhere between dance and martial arts, and a body that would launch a thousand delicate hankies, (well, probably a lot more than a thousand) poses the soldier’s eternal paradox. Why indeed do kings not fight their own battles? And there are good men of honour who will die on each side of the battlefield. Achilles is remembered, and who better to remind us of his story than Brad? Perhaps one of the most fitting incidents in the making of the movie is the delay in shooting Achilles’ big fight with Hector due to an injury to Brad Pitt’s Achilles tendon.

Paris (Orlando Bloom) as prince, lover, poet and coward. This part of the story is open to interpretation, but Hector’s reluctance to kill him as he crawls to his brother’s feet is viable, and probably easier to portray than a rescue by a goddess. As the gods are continually being put into question during this depiction of Homer’s great epic, the mood of the story would be radically changed if a goddess actually intervened in the human drama.

This is a movie to purchase. It improves with multiple viewings, and not many movies live up to that type of scrutiny.