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troy
THE MOST EAGERLY
AWAITED ACTION
MOVIE OF THE
SUMMER, TROY IS AN
EPIC WAR MOVIE, BUT
IT’S ABOUT A LOT MORE
THAN JUST BATTLES,
SAYS HAL HAYES >>>>>
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The first film that bought German-born director Wolfgang Petersen international recognition was, like his new movie Troy, a war-time epic. The Boat (Das Boot) is one of the very few screen accounts of World War II to be told from the German point of view. And, while it may not be on anything like the same scale as Troy, it did capture the horror - and the heroics - of battle.
So how, 30 or so years later, does Petersen feel about making another war film? “There is an old saying that war brings out the worst and the best in human beings,” he says. “But war is a disaster for everyone involved. While our film shows the spectacle of battle between tens of thousands of soldiers in a way that audiences have never seen before, the focus of our story is the timeless human aspect of the victories and defeats that Homer recorded.”
Shot on location in Malta and Mexico over most of 2003, with studio work done at Shepperton Studios in the UK, and based on one of the first masterpieces of western literature - Homer’s The Iliad - Troy is a story that blends love and war, the personal and the public, politics and passion in a way that the sword-and-sandal epics of the sixties never attempted, let alone achieved.
It gives Brad Pitt one of the most iconic roles of his career as Achilles, the warrior who was thought to be invincible and whose way of fighting was described as ‘godlike’ (some even believed he was, in fact, a god). It has Lord of the Rings discovery Orlando Bloom as Paris, the mythically handsome Prince of Troy, whose love for Helen (played by Diane Kruger) triggers the catastrophe. And it features a stellar array of award-winning actors - including Peter O’Toole, Julie Christie, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson and Saffron Burrows - in supporting roles.
“The story is very complex,” says Petersen. “There are so many different characters who are all interwoven with each other – they’re all part of an incredible human landscape. This is an ensemble piece, and you cannot just pull two or three characters out because then the whole thing will fall apart like a house of cards.”
As the title suggests, the climax of the story is the Trojan War, culminating in the sacking of a city once thought impregnable, after the inhabitants have been tricked into wheeling a giant horse inside the walls. The horse has Greek saboteurs hiding inside, and they set fire to the city.
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