Regarding spectacles

Perhaps I was prepared to dislike Troy. The idea of having Brad Pitt playing Achilles instantly warns Homer-lovers that this latest cinematic rendition of The Iliad would be skewed in favor of the ill-fated heel, er, hero of the bullyboy Greeks.

Well, from the time I enjoyed the epic, mythic entertainment as comicbook fare (and I’ve kept my bound collection of Classics Illustrated, gathered since I was nine), sacrosanct have I held it in terms of grand tale and panoply of heroism —- one that starred an array of heroes, not just one particular bida.

Odysseus or Ulysses had the smarts besides the courage. Ajax the Greater was stronger than any man on either shore of the Aegean. Ajax the Lesser, while of ordinary human proportions, strove to be part of a team, and did more than his fair share in battle. And Agamemnon had vision and ambition.

Across the battlefield was the noble Hector, a family man yet a grand warrior. He fought fair, since he didn’t enjoy the advantage of being a demigod like Achilles, whose first bath turned him well-nigh invulnerable.

Everyone was but part of a great cast of contenders for gods’ and goddesses’ favors, all throughout a dragdown of a 10-year war.

Priam was as indomitable a king as he was symbolic of the grieving father. Paris was the sniveling lover boy, a fitting counterpart of the man whose wife he stole, Menelaus who was a kid bro himself. The latter made sumbong to big bro, and thus were the thousand ships of war launched. For pride, for honor. Or for what Troy’s scriptwriter kept harping on as some kind of posterity. "We will be remembered, etc." What a version.

My 14-year-old daughter, who nightly sleeps under a thick cotton blanket, actually a throw, that has the oversized face of a somber Legolas, aka Orlando Bloom, will hate me for this. Maybe she already does. She had to see Troy a second time, but with her Mom, cuz she said I kept distracting her the first time out with my putdown remarks.

Sorry, dear girl, but I couldn’t help it. Much as I was prepared to dislike the movie, I initially gave it the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, this lasted only for the first 20 minutes.

Okay, it’s alright to play favorites and boost up the Pitt/Achilles character, since he’d be best to adore on the big screen, anyway – golden locks, perpetual pout, buffed and all that.

And it was okay to introduce his character as the orgiast still in bed while the rest of the Greeks faced another army in battle. The call comes, and Achilles/Pitt puts on his battle mini, saunters off and smites down the giant champion with what looks like a dunk of a blow accomplished with athletic hangtime. Fine, fine. Up to that point I’m all for the entertainment quotient.

Legolas’ bravado with bow and arrow in downing the cave troll in Lord of the Rings 1, his trick with the shield turned skateboard in LOTR 2, and his grandstanding exploits atop of and alighting from an oliphaunt or mumak (the singular form of mumakil, or so my daughter tells me) in LOTR 3 were all entertaining in a Hollywood manner. You know, playing for the peanut gallery that will surely burst into applause once its idea of swashbuckling heroics is handed on a silver-screen platter.

But the classic LOTR trilogy gets away with this Errol Flynn-type action sequence that glorified Legolas/Bloom because the rest of it is a solid triumph of cinema – all the way from storytelling to acting, production values to scripting, the marvels of digitalization to the strong empathy we feel for everyone: Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Wizards, why, even the Orcs and Uruk-hai.

In Troy, the first clear betrayal of cinematic prodigiousness happens, for me at least, with the first scene between Achilles and Patroclus. Bad enough that this adaptation takes much license and skirts Hellenic homophilia altogether, so that Patroclus is just a favorite cousin, never a lover of the "AC-DC" Achilles. The sword training scene is poorly executed, and cannot compare with any broadsword scene in Gladiator. Bloom is okay as Paris, just the right soft looks for a wimpy Lothario. Or am I saying that just to make amends with the daughter? But Diane Kruger is no raving beauty; in fact she looks quite ravaged and old, in a Teutonic way. Or am I just biased for the memory of sweet old times, when Helen of Troy was no less than the alluring Rosanna Podesta? Does this then tell us that an Italian bambina can appropriately play a Greek femme fatale better than a cold-looking Alemanya?

Sean Bean is wasted as Odysseus. He had just about the same screen time as Boromir in LOTR 1, but his Boromir we remember; here his Ulysses has scant, turgid lines of dialogue and a perpetually sly look. The scene with him thinking up the Trojan horse almost begs for a cartoon-type balloon suddenly floating above his head, or a light bulb icon flashing in animation.

Eric Bana was okay in Black Hawk Down, and credible as The Hulk. Here he just looks perturbed over having swallowed some golden apple that stuck to his throat. And that’s not even his own objective correlative, but his kid bro’s. One more thing: the striking resemblance to Peja Stojakovich of the Sacramento Kings has Bana suffering from disfavor; the NBA three-point shooter looks nobler and more heroic.

Only Peter O’Toole comes away halfway believable as King Priam; only he manages to cut away from the director’s clunky handling of intimate scenes.

I can forgive what’s-his-name and who’s-his-scenarist (who reportedly first thought up this "modern" take, sans the gods’ fateful meddling) for raising Briseis into a romantic interest, or for having Achilles finally struck down within the walls of Troy, just to serve up that grand, confabulated love angle. I can forgive them for compressing the full decade of war into what seemed like a weekend escapade for both Greeks and Trojans, or for presenting the brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus as Mafiosi hitmen. But everything else is shoddy even as entertainment, and specially so as spectacle.

The battle scenes aren’t even as admirable as those in The Last Samurai, which our favorite Makati congressman actually lavished with eloquent approval in an editorial. And Troy is certainly a far cry from Gladiator.

Why is that? It can’t be just because it’s an adaptation from a familiar work of literature. Peter Jackson did magnificent work with Tolkien. While Gladiator was a full-blown cinematic tale, an original narrative, the writing, acting and directing all turned up first-class, which is why it merited Oscars and remains memorable.

Troy lands in the dungheap of spectacles. And it’s just Brad Pitt’s luck (I actually like him, honest!) that once again his romantic (let alone sex…) appeal gets the better of him. It happened with Legends of the Fall, which was a fine, excellently written and multi-layered novella, but was turned into a schmaltzy, ersatz Western as a prime vehicle for Pitt with a ponytail.

It’s not the inherent difficulty of adaptation from literary sources that proves a pitfall for cinema. Ultimately, it’s the quality of the tandem of scriptwriter and director, plus the production team involved, that spells success.

The Harry Potter movies, thus far, have been gratifying efforts. The third edition, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which comes up this week, promises a more fascinating take, based on the trailer alone. The new director, Alfonso Cuaron of Y Tu Mama tambien adulation, departs from Christopher Columbus’ brightly wholesome prequel and sequel with an obvious partiality for a dark, Gothic, hard-edged look. Let’s see if Spiderman 2 does the same, given the collective teenage angst involved.

Does Troy simply suffer in comparison to recent blockbusters? I think not. I really think it’s just poorly done. Much as I’m still wondering how it could have gained positive reviews from certain quarters, no way can it get into the Oscar race.

Until Peter Jackson serves up a five-part film honoring Homer’s twin blockbusters, I’ll just have to content myself with the memory of Rosanna Podesta in Helen of Troy and Anthony Quinn in the well-done Ulysses. And till then, maybe I’ll remain wary of regarding spectacles.