Troy From Homer's Iliad to Hollywood Epic - Amazon Web Services

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8 Martin M. Winkler You develop such a story [for your film], and then almost the identical thing happens when you turn on the television. You can’t help thinking that this Homer was a real genius, that he exactly understood us humans who apparently need wars again and again; also that someone like Agamemnon reappears again and again. Still, Homer was never interested in black–white, good–bad. Such a concept doesn’t exist in reality. Only in the mind of George W. Bush . . . But this direct connection between Bush’s power politics and that of Agamemnon in the Iliad, this desire to rule the world, to trample everything underfoot that gets in your way, that became evident only during filming. Only gradually did we realize how important Homer still is today. Homer’s story shows that projects driven by belief and fanaticism often end in disasters. You need only open the newspaper to notice that nothing has changed in this regard. 21 Why Petersen thinks that nothing in human nature has changed since Homer becomes evident when we consider his views on war and politics in connection with his perspective on cinematic storytelling: With my camera I want to tell grand stories that touch everybody. I don’t want to preach, I don’t offer any definite solutions. I want viewers to be able to recognize their personal experiences in a film. What makes grand stories interesting is the feeling that we’re part of this story, that something is treated there that forms the endless complexity of our own existence, that my longings, my dreams, or my sorrows are being addressed . . . For me, friendship is one of these grand topics . . . I love grand stories. When a viewer notices that a largely unknown world is being described with genuine curiosity, he’ll find what happens on the screen especially credible. 22 Petersen is not the only contemporary director to believe in the everpresent appeal of myths and other stories, as the very title of Die unendliche 21 I have translated these passages from the following sources, listed here in the order in which they are cited: Tobias Kniebe, “Homer ist, wenn man trotzdem lacht: ‘Troja’- Regisseur Wolfgang Petersen über die mythischen Wurzeln des Erzählens und den Achilles in uns allen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (May 11, 2004), at http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ kultur/artikel/607/31576/print.html; Frank Arnold, “Wolfgang Petersen: Keine Welt in Schwarz und Weiss,” Kölner Stadtanzeiger (May 14, 2004), at http://www.ksta.de/ artikel.jsp?id=1084203219381; Zander, “Deutscher Härtetest”; and Tobias Wiethoff, “Interview mit dem Regisseur Wolfgang Petersen: ‘Ich gehe dahin, wo der Stoff ist’,” Westdeutsche Zeitung (May 7, 2004), at http://www.wz-newsline.de/seschat4/200/ sro.php?redid=58942. 22 Quoted from Petersen and Greiwe, “Ich liebe die grossen Geschichten”, 95, 317, and 330. Years later, Petersen reiterated his love for grand stories (Russell, “Helmer of Troy”).
Editor’s Introduction 9 Geschichte (The Never-Ending Story, 1984), his film based on a modern German fairy-tale novel, indicates. (The success of the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter films points in the same direction.) To Petersen, the Iliad is the source of all grand stories in the Western tradition and the best example of the timeless modernity of larger-than-life heroic plots: “I think you can say that Homer’s work – for the first time in the history of mankind, in an unbelievable, breathtaking way – describes the brutality and suffering of people in war.” 23 But in order to preserve their appeal and importance over millennia, such stories must change – or better: must be changed by their modern tellers, not least when they tell them in a medium different from the original’s. Writer Benioff has well summarized this aspect of turning an ancient literary epic into a modern film epic: I can’t measure up to Homer. His composition has survived for nearly three millennia and remains the world’s most beautiful and mournful depiction of war. But the story of the Trojan War does not belong to Homer. The characters he employs were legendary long before he was born. Dozens of different versions of the War have been told, and my script ransacks ideas from several of them. The script is not, truly, an adaptation of The Iliad. It is a retelling of the entire Trojan War story. So I’m not worried about desecrating a classic – Homer will survive Hollywood. 24 Despite the extensive criticisms leveled at Troy by reviewers and classical scholars alike for the changes to Greek myth and the Iliad that the film contains, Benioff is surely correct about Homer’s survival. Troy well illustrates, even exemplifies, some of the major aspects of any adaptation or translation of a long textual narrative to a long narrative in images: of an epic or a novel – the latter the logical and legitimate descendant of the former in the age of prose rather than verse narratives – to the screen. 25 Rather than making things easy for ourselves by grumbling about a film’s lack of faithful adherence to its literary source or declaring it hopelessly inferior, we may take what Walter Benjamin wrote in 1921 about translation – if only translation from one language to another – as a starting point for a brief consideration of translation from 23 Quoted from Russell, “Helmer of Troy.” 24 Quoted from “David Benioff . . . Web Access” at www.bbc.co.uk/print/films/ webaccess/david_benioff_1.shtml. 25 John Kevin Newman, The Classical Epic Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), provides a classical scholar’s perspective on novel and film as successors to ancient epic.
Page 1: Troy From Homer’s Iliad to Hollyw
Page 4 and 5: © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Page 6 and 7: vi Contents 7 From Greek Myth to Ho
Page 8 and 9: viii List of Plates 11 Maria Corda
Page 10 and 11: x Notes on Contributors (South Slav
Page 13 and 14: Editor’s Introduction Editor’s
Page 15 and 16: Editor’s Introduction 3 stress di
Page 17 and 18: Editor’s Introduction 5 expected
Page 19: Editor’s Introduction 7 Das Boot
Page 23 and 24: Editor’s Introduction 11 The grea
Page 25 and 26: Editor’s Introduction 13 are also
Page 27 and 28: Editor’s Introduction 15 The most
Page 29 and 30: Editor’s Introduction 17 regina d
Page 31 and 32: Editor’s Introduction 19 Zewadski
Page 33 and 34: Was There a Trojan War? 21 And we d
Page 35 and 36: Was There a Trojan War? 23 this:
Page 37 and 38: Was There a Trojan War? 25 Geograph
Page 39 and 40: chapter two From Homer’s Troy to
Page 41 and 42: From Homer’s Troy to Petersen’s
Page 55 and 56: chapter three The Iliad and the Cin
Page 57 and 58: The Iliad and the Cinema 45 ignore
Page 59 and 60: The Iliad and the Cinema 47 memorab
Page 61 and 62: The Iliad and the Cinema 49 spectac
Page 63 and 64: The Iliad and the Cinema 51 Ancient
Page 65 and 66: The Iliad and the Cinema 53 And the
Page 67 and 68: The Iliad and the Cinema 55 to smas
Page 69 and 70: The Iliad and the Cinema 57 chariot
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The Iliad and the Cinema 59 ends as
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The Iliad and the Cinema 61 shot mi
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The Iliad and the Cinema 63 Roman p
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The Iliad and the Cinema 65 is also
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The Iliad and the Cinema 67 Trojan
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The Story of Troy Through the Centu
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chapter five Viewing Troy: Authenti
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Viewing Troy: Authenticity, Critici
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chapter six Troy and the Role of th
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Troy and the Role of the Historical
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Troy and the Role of the Historical
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3. Troy and the British Museum Troy
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chapter seven From Greek Myth to Ho
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From Greek Myth to Hollywood Story
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chapter eight The Fate of Troy Step
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The Fate of Troy 121 she can relate
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The Fate of Troy 123 It hardly seem
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The Fate of Troy 125 Not like you w
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The Fate of Troy 127 son, / will ta
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The Fate of Troy 129 Petersen does
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chapter nine Helen of Troy Monica S
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Helen of Troy 133 awarded the golde
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Helen of Troy 135 literary traditio
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Helen of Troy 137 mane of the Spart
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Helen of Troy 139 people of the fut
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Helen of Troy 141 well versed in gi
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Helen of Troy 143 epic, Hector goes
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Helen of Troy 145 demands that its
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Helen of Troy 147 portrays Agamemno
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Briseis in Homer, Ovid, and Troy 14
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chapter eleven Troy and Memorials o
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Troy and Memorials of War 165 him.
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Troy and Memorials of War 167 invad
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Troy and Memorials of War 169 every
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Troy and Memorials of War 171 ing t
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Troy and Memorials of War 173 Peter
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Troy and Memorials of War 175 Peter
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Troy and Memorials of War 177 every
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Troy and Memorials of War 179 Troy
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Troy and Memorials of War 181 paral
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Troy and Memorials of War 183 Congr
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Troy and Memorials of War 185 movin
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The Realist Politics of Troy 187 Gr
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The Realist Politics of Troy 189 In
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The Realist Politics of Troy 191 of
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The Realist Politics of Troy 193 Ag
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The Realist Politics of Troy 195 th
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The Realist Politics of Troy 197 of
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The Realist Politics of Troy 199 Sp
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The Realist Politics of Troy 201 th
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The Trojan War on the Screen 203 th
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1927 The Trojan War on the Screen 2
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The Trojan War on the Screen 207 th
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The Trojan War on the Screen 209 of
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The Trojan War on the Screen 211 pr
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The Trojan War on the Screen 213 La
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1996 The Trojan War on the Screen 2
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Bibliography 217 Bazin, André. Wha
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Bibliography 219 Fagles, Robert (tr
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Bibliography 221 Lauring, Palle. A
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Bibliography 223 Quintus of Smyrna.
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Bibliography 225 West, M. L. (ed. a
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Batrachomyomachia 88 Battle of Brit
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Jones, Terry 91 n. 11 Joyce, James
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Thucydides 73, 89, 187, 192, 198 Ti
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Allie
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Allie
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Plate 1 The ruins of Troy today (vi
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Plate 3 Computer reconstruction of
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Plate 6 Achilles tending the wound
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Plate 8 The duel of Achilles and He
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Plate 10 Priam begging Achilles for
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Plate 12 The Bronze-Age palace of K
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Plate 14 The model set of Troy, “
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Plate 16 The wooden horse approache
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Plate 18 A tiny Achilles before the
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Plate 20 Which is the face that sho
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