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catsidheTroy, a movie based on characters created by Homer.
I went and saw this on Friday night as part of a junket, and noticed one or two differences between the book and the movie.
Yes, the sequence of events is: Greeks land on beach, warships from horizon to horizon, there is Fighting on the Beaches, that was the first day. The Greeks attack Troy. Woe and suffering, and the Greeks lose. Agamemnon is Not Happy. The Trojans attack the Greeks and Hector accidentally kills Achilles' cousin. Achilles is Not Happy, and goes and kills Hector. After 12 days to mourn, the Trojans go out to find a damn great horse on the beach, and a distinct lack of Greeks. Despite Paris giving forth the only reasonable words he says in the entire movie, Priam takes the horse into Troy, and the Greeks wreak havok. That adds up to 14, maybe 15 days to me.
Not all was bad, however. Ajax was cool - a giant with a big hammer. Sean Bean as Odysseus was just about perfect - a minor king who could not deny Agamemnon, but really only wanted to get home to his wife. Achilles was an irritating shit, who just happened to be as good as he thought he was. Hector was a man who would vastly have preferred not to have needed to have been as good as he was. Paris was an irritating little shit, with next to no redeeming features. Priam was just trying to do his best and the honourable thing by his people and the Gods, Agamemnon was an egomaniacal tyrant, who never let anyone forget who was King.
Achilles' and Hector's fighting was brilliant. It seems like someone had been reading the Irish myths, because Achilles' moves reminded me of Cú Chulainn or Fionn mac Cumhal. His 'trademark' move is to jump in the air and thrust down into the neck, which I described in my mind as the 'salmon leap'.
One small quibble I will take up with the armoury is that while the swords were bronze, everyone was slashing. Now, those who have read Oakeshott will know that most swords of that era were made in two parts, haft and blade, which were rivetted together, so they were designed for thrusting, and slashing would have sheared the rivets. Single piece swords were found, though, and many swords of the period were found with sheared rivets, so it's not much of a quibble.
I will say this about the movie: now I have faces to put to names, and a much clearer idea about who was on what side. Next time I read the Iliad, I might just be able to make a little more sense out of it.
So Usuakari... how was your weekend?
I went and saw this on Friday night as part of a junket, and noticed one or two differences between the book and the movie.
- No Gods.
Alright, I can understand this, they wanted to present the human face of history's most famous war. I'll give them this. - Achilles does spend most of the war sulking in his tent, but:
- He is there with a woman.
- He is there for about a fortnight, instead of almost twelve years.
- He is there with a woman.
Yes, the sequence of events is: Greeks land on beach, warships from horizon to horizon, there is Fighting on the Beaches, that was the first day. The Greeks attack Troy. Woe and suffering, and the Greeks lose. Agamemnon is Not Happy. The Trojans attack the Greeks and Hector accidentally kills Achilles' cousin. Achilles is Not Happy, and goes and kills Hector. After 12 days to mourn, the Trojans go out to find a damn great horse on the beach, and a distinct lack of Greeks. Despite Paris giving forth the only reasonable words he says in the entire movie, Priam takes the horse into Troy, and the Greeks wreak havok. That adds up to 14, maybe 15 days to me.
Not all was bad, however. Ajax was cool - a giant with a big hammer. Sean Bean as Odysseus was just about perfect - a minor king who could not deny Agamemnon, but really only wanted to get home to his wife. Achilles was an irritating shit, who just happened to be as good as he thought he was. Hector was a man who would vastly have preferred not to have needed to have been as good as he was. Paris was an irritating little shit, with next to no redeeming features. Priam was just trying to do his best and the honourable thing by his people and the Gods, Agamemnon was an egomaniacal tyrant, who never let anyone forget who was King.
Achilles' and Hector's fighting was brilliant. It seems like someone had been reading the Irish myths, because Achilles' moves reminded me of Cú Chulainn or Fionn mac Cumhal. His 'trademark' move is to jump in the air and thrust down into the neck, which I described in my mind as the 'salmon leap'.
One small quibble I will take up with the armoury is that while the swords were bronze, everyone was slashing. Now, those who have read Oakeshott will know that most swords of that era were made in two parts, haft and blade, which were rivetted together, so they were designed for thrusting, and slashing would have sheared the rivets. Single piece swords were found, though, and many swords of the period were found with sheared rivets, so it's not much of a quibble.
I will say this about the movie: now I have faces to put to names, and a much clearer idea about who was on what side. Next time I read the Iliad, I might just be able to make a little more sense out of it.
So Usuakari... how was your weekend?
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-05-19 02:37 am (UTC)I know, I know. It's more of a rhetorical question, and a bad pun besides. If we were talking about swords with edges but no points, I'd be just as irritated. A sword's only really useful if you can do both. And hit people with the quillions or pommel. And beat them with the flat bits. It's like my approach to playing a musical instrument; you need to consider the whole instrument and what you can do with it, not just what everyone expects.
So Usuakari... how was your weekend?
Long, and eventful. I think I'm recovering. I don't feel any older, just annoyingly coldified. But on the upside, I do have a funky new waistcoat. ;)
Bronze Age swords
Date: 2004-05-19 04:51 pm (UTC)Spears were the usual weapon before swords. (It's a lot easier to make a stone spearhead than a stone sword.) Most military training would have been based around efficient use of the spear, which is to say, thrusting attacks. Maybe the first swords (as opposed to the first knives) were big spearheads with handles for close combat? That would make the old training still largely relevant, and only after people began to realise that these things also worked well as sharp clubs would they start to design them as such, using such techniques as one-piece swords and tangs. Up until that point, when people used their sword as a club and swung with it, and it broke, it would have been seen just as much a misapplication of a tool as hitting someone with an M-16 is now. (That is, something only ever done in extremis, but don't expect the weapon to work afterwards.)
This doesn't explain the Middle-Eastern khopesh, but works just fine for explaining the usual European bronze leaf-shaped blades. Now I just need a course of post-grad study in the bronze-age archaeology of weapons, and I can test the theory. Now the khopesh as an extension of the observation of what happens when you hit someone with a sickle...
People often under-estimate the power of procedural inertia (aka 'tradition').
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-08 04:27 am (UTC)Umm, who?
Date: 2004-06-08 06:38 pm (UTC)Re: Umm, who?
Date: 2004-06-08 07:19 pm (UTC)Thank goodness for that- it'd be worse than the taunting of the French in Monty Python.