In an attempt to marry my review of Troy with the teacherofhooch end of term report challenge, this is what I have come up with… The title refers to the National Curriculum level descriptions for primary children, if you'll forgive me. It implies that Petersen reached his Key Stage 2 potential!

ENGLISH:

Once there was a pair of epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. The first told of a cluster of days of fighting at the tale end of a ten-year siege of a proud, walled city: Troy (or Ilium, city of the sun). Wolfgang Petersen has taken the key events of those few days, distorted them and ladled on the poetic license, and produced a film that is, whilst mercilessly unfaithful to the text at times, nevertheless a slick and mostly enjoyable production. I give you a synopsis of Petersen’s Iliad:

Paris, the impetuous ladies’ man of Troy has become infatuated with the beautiful queen of Sparta, the wife of Menelaus and sister-in-law to power hungry, arrogant and vicious King Agamemnon, whose ruthless ambition has led him to unite most of Greece under one banner: his own. Helen rashly takes up Paris’s offer to return with him to the powerful city of Troy, setting into motion a chain of events that allow Agamemnon to use the excuse of his brother’s honour as the catalyst for a bloody war against the last remaining threat to his dominance of the Aegean. To complicate matters, Agamemnon both needs and resents the services of the greatest warrior of the age, the fearless Achilles, an anti-hero if ever there was one, with his apparently heartless arrogance and devotion only to himself and the greater glory of his name…

Oh, and there’s something about a wooden pony, too.

MATHEMATICS:

The numbers are as follows:

Achaeans / Danaans / Greeks:

Achilles BRAD PITT
Agamemnon, King of Mycaenae BRIAN COX
Menelaus, King of Sparta BRENDAN GLEESON
Odysseus, King of Ithaca SEAN BEAN
Helen of Sparta DIANE KRUGER

Trojans:

Priam, King of Troy PETER O’TOOLE
Hector, Prince of Troy ERIC BANA
Paris, Prince of Troy ORLANDO BLOOM
Andromache SAFFRON BURROWS
Briseis ROSE BYRNE

Screenplay by David Benioff

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm)

Music by James Horner

ART AND DESIGN:

The film seems all golden and blue to me, from the royal blue costumes to the sun-bleached stone, from the white-golden shore to the twinkling azure sea that stretches to a glowing horizon. Petersen's skill in marrying the barren scrubland and endless burning sand of the battlefield to the distant mist-shrouded mountain and smooth-walled ochre city makes for some stunning vistas and evocative settings. The opulence of the cities of Sparta and Troy was marred for me only by the fact that I always think the (beautiful) clothes and props look too new in these films… a failing of my own, certainly, and not Petersen. Certainly throughout the battle scenes there was a sense of a director with great purpose and vision; despite the fact that thousands of hurtling soldiers is now, post-LOTR, nothing new to the cinema-going public, there is still much that is breathtaking about the huge, detailed scope of the sweeping wide shots, and much that is painful and shocking in the up close and personal clashing and gnashing of the battlefield, even if in many ways the slaughter is less graphic than that of Gangs of New York, or even Saving Private Ryan.

SCIENCE:

Petersen’s vision of Troy is certainly a beauty to behold (see Art and Design). It’s a shame, then, that Petersen’s directorial skill did not extend to wringing a full emotional arc from his protagonists. The necessity to have a good side and a bad side leads to a two-dimensional quality amongst some of the characters, and the grudge-match between Achilles and Agamemnon seems reduced to a rather adolescent pettiness, rather than two proud giants facing up against each other in a tragic battle of wills. Brian Cox, whilst he invests a great deal of repulsive majesty in Agamemnon, looks a little like he’s watched Quo Vadis? one too many times, although it is left to Brendan Gleeson as Menelaus, portrayed rather differently than usual as not the forgiving, loving husband but a violent and unpleasant individual, to carry out the full range of camp, Peter Ustinov-style carousing. Brad Pitt has dignity, grace and athleticism on his side, and certainly puts in a tremendously committed performance, but this does not distract from the fact that occasionally, he speaks English in a peculiarly disjointed way, which makes it sound a little like his second language. In addition, there's a particularly dodgy directorial moment where he strares into middle distance as if he knows full well the camera is there. Nonetheless, he is admirably watchable and does his best with what he is offered in terms of a rather patchy script. And it is entirely not his fault that Petersen has chosen first to hype up the arch self-centredness of the character in the early moments when there is little but athletic prowess to base it on, and then to puncture and deflate it, just at that moment when, in the text, Achilles really demonstrates the depth and viciousness of his wrath when his emotional core is threatened. I can’t really go into depth here without spoilers. Hopefully those who know the Iliad will know to what I refer; those who don’t will probably feel that there was no real problem; I am willing to concede that given the trajectory of the character in the film, it seems that he follows a natural enough progression.

The other notable Greek here is Odysseus, diplomatically portrayed as the wily young king (who early on mentions his famously loyal wife! Although, now I think about it, he wasn’t yet king since as far as he knew his father, Laertes, was still alive) and likeably, warmly presented by Sean Bean as the sole voice of reason to penetrate the ice-cold exterior of Achilles. Diane Kruger, being largely ornamental, merits so little mention that it is hard to imagine her as the face that launched a thousand ships. Her prettiness is beyond dispute, but she is also about as seductive as a steel bar, being largely cold and lacking in any sort of depth other than pseudo-guilt about the blood of men on her hands (well, it must be fake, so easily is she convinced otherwise).

In amongst the Trojans there’s a lot of frantic, blue-eyed soul-searching from kindly gods-botherer King Priam and a brave, honest and affecting performance from Eric Bana as his decent, dedicated and upright eldest son, Hector. The devoted family man of the proceedings, Bana pulls together the emotional centre of the film much more effectively than the Helen-Paris romance (mostly because much more screen time is afforded to him than to Bloom and Kruger). He remains appealing, interesting and, let’s face it, outrageously sexy throughout. Orlando Bloom has been described as having “the charisma of a slug” as Paris… this is grossly unfair. It is Paris who has the charisma of a slug, being the largely useless milkfed pretty boy of Troy, and I hasten to defend Bloom, not least of all because he was very good at playing him. I’m not being sarcastic, either! I’ve seen enough of Bloom recently to know that although I’m not overly keen on his beauty, I like the way he acts and to blame him for the woodenness of the dialogue he is paid to speak is to fail to separate the material from the actor. Both the Trojan women are skilfully and warmly presented by Byrne and Burrows and lend a little softness and femininity to a testosterone-driven film.

HISTORY:

A lot happens in Troy that doesn’t happen in The Iliad. Now, to be fair, no-one knows how much of The Iliad actually has any reference to actual history. There were several battles of Troy; excavations of sites presumed to be the location of ancient Troy have unearthed several layers of city razed to the ground and as such Homer (if it was in fact, him!) may have sung of more than one battle amalgamated into an epic siege. As controller of the straits, Troy was a target for local warlords. But leaving aside the historical accuracy of that, be aware that Troy is only inspired by The Iliad, it is not a re-telling of it. As such people die that shouldn’t, people do things they didn’t and don’t do things they should. And a lot is left hanging in the balance at the end for the sake of neat personal narrative. It really irritates me that I can’t explain how silly and open the ending is in the name of a good story, but that would mean spoilers and those are unforgivable. :) So all I would say is that in going to see Troy, one should leave the Iliad at the door. No doubt several things that bothered me will not bother you if you’ve never read it/forgotten it/don’t care, and this can only be a good thing in the name of entertainment.

GEOGRAPHY:

I have already commented on the beauty of some of the settings. . The setting cannot be faulted, but for a minor geographical slip-up. There is no port of Sparta, whatever the subtitles might say. The Spartans did follow the river down to a port on the open sea, but Sparta as a state was rather famously land-locked.

PSHE (Personal Social and Health Education):

As an emotionally challenging, interesting personal story, Petersen’s Troy fails on many levels: There is an emotionally stunted Achilles, bristling with meaningless rage because his central relationship with his great friend and protégé Patroclus is reduced to affectionate cousins, and Achilles’s role in the fate of Patroclus is severely curtailed. There is a totally unbelievable romance between Paris and Helen… as a smouldering passion that sparked some very real flames it fizzles rather damply into a sort of pubescent attraction; the relationship between Briseis and Achilles is much more tender and affecting. Even the battle of wills between Agamemnon and Achilles is relieved of much of its impact with weak dialogue; of all the insults Achilles hurls at Agamemnon in The Iliad, it seems the scriptwriters chose poorly when they resurrected “you sack of wine!”.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION:

In the various reviews I read, much was made of the missing presence of the gods. Back to the text: divine intervention is responsible for many of the tragic last moments of the Trojan war. In Petersen’s vision, the gods are essentially for credulous morons (does he know Dylan Moran?) and Priam’s devout king makes some essential tactical errors based on the divining of priests and a fearful respect for the gods of Troy, particularly Apollo. The gods are conspicuous by their absence (it’s a “one-sided romance”, decides Achilles) and I believe that does leave rather a gaping hole in the film, and it mercilessly weakens the repeated idea that Priam is a strong leader and was once a brave warrior… he is left to look like a wittering fool because of his respect for his religion, a controversial enough point on its own, but when combined with questionable battle tactics, just makes him look something of an idiot. He is however, a strong voice of fair play: “have you no honour?!” he cries.

Despite all this, Petersen returns to the burial rites repeatedly, mining them as a source of emotional clarity, and his lingering shots of funeral pyres and the respect shown over them drives in his emphasis on the beauty and harshness of mortality and also in the necessity of dignity and ritual to accompany hideous, choking deaths.

ICT:

Cross curricular links to DESIGN TECHNOLOGY

The special effects of Troy are rather stunning to behold. The massed ranks of bristling shields and spears have a wonderful sense of drama about them, and the combination of sharp bursts of speeded-up film and slow-mo arcs that focus on the spry athleticism of Achilles with his trademark shoulder-stabbing move are like a hymn to the graceful dexterity of the hulking warrior. The beautifully detailed sets (enhanced, I imagine, with careful CGI) and scurrying anthill scenes of fighting do the budget of the film justice and enhance, rather than distract from, the action, which is directed with a slick and sure hand. The wooden horse looked rather fake in the trailer, but was really rather impressive in the film; it had the realistic feel of being hacked hastily together from wooden scraps rather than the rather glossy appearance it has had in former films. (Perhaps the Trojans should have paid heed to the air-holes, though).

MUSIC:

A Mediterranean melancholic keening and wailing opens and accompanies the film to great effect - a serious surprise to me with my loathing of James Horner scores (such as the emetic offerings surrounding Titanic). It is complemented by more traditionally urgent battle music, but that is largely unmemorable compared to the soaring of hollow female voices that seem to herald death and doom and immortal glory from the rooftops. I was really very taken with the passionate ululation… not usually my kind of thing at all, but I felt it was the perfect complement to the spirit of a film essentially about glory and love.

In terms of musical speaking voices, it appears most actors aimed for somewhere around Britain although they seemed to be allowed to retain aspects of their accents (perhaps to retain a sense of regional accents?) so there is a Sheffield-tinged Odysseus narrating over the amusingly Star Wars-esque exposition, a mildly Teutonic Helen and a Hector that bares traces of lyrical Australian speech, not to mention a slightly Celtic Agamemnon (not helped by the almost-tartan robes!) and a noticeably American Achilles.

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT AND TARGETS:

Troy suffered from a weak script and the attempt to cram in a lot of detail whilst at the same time jettisoning a lot from the text (the reduction of Ajax to a sort of pro-wrestling champ warrior, for one). On the other hand, it was certainly not something I suffered through. Despite the 2 and a half hour length of the film, it did not become tiresome, and the pace of the action was nicely varied. It was also unwittingly rather amusing towards the end: a long haired Sean Bean in armour in the thick of battle, an immaculate Orlando Bloom clutching a bow and arrows... where have I seen THIS before?!

The main target would be to develop a sound emotional core. If this is to be a tale of love amongst politics and greed, that love has to be real and passionate. (Of course, in the text it remains deliberately ambiguous whether Helen was abducted – as the promised prize from Aphrodite to Paris - or ran away…).

Otherwise, I have to give it three stars, slightly rounded down from four for being entertaining, interesting and beautiful, although not enough for me to be raring to see it again.

Certificate 15 for violence (including headbutting, which is usually omitted by censors these days), and nudity (though not as much as you’ve heard, and mostly oiled pecs rather than anything else!). And that, my friends, takes care of PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

Running time: 163 minutes

I hope that next time Wolfgang will do his homework.

Alexandra R****** (unreadable signature)

PS I also think Petersen missed a golden opportunity to sum up with this text at the end:

Anger be now your song, Immortal one,
Achilles’ anger, doomed and ruinous,
That caused the Achaeans loss on bitter loss
Leaving so many dead men – carrion
For dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.

xxx