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Article Excerpt
The Benioff-Petersen 2004 movie Troy is the latest in a series of films that feature the world famous lovers Helen and Paris. The film acknowledges its debt to Homers Iliad but, like ancient works before, freely adapts source material to its own vision and aims. This paper compares Benioff-Petersen's treatment of Helen with that of the Iliad emphasizing the difference in the two works' characterization of Helen, which is anchored in their fundamentally different conceptions of love and, with this, of the type of woman who inspires and is inspired by it. In both, the story of Helen's elopement with Paris and of the war it engendered is a story of passion. In both, erotic love is an all-powerful emotion, and Helen is drawn as simultaneously arousing it and being carried away by it. But here the similarities end. The Iliad offers a contemplation of the nature of this love, Tioy a fantasy of it. The two Helens are drawn accordingly.
At the time of this writing, Troy (2004), scripted by David Benioff and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, is the latest in a series of films that feature the world famous lovers Helen and Paris. Two film versions were produced in the silent era: the German film Helena (1924), scripted by Hans Kyser and directed by Manfred Noa, and The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927), scripted by Carey Wilson, on the basis of John Erskine's novel by the same name and of Robert Sherwood's play The Road to Rome, and directed by Alexander Korda. (1) In the 1950s, the ancient love story featured in the never-released Italuian production The Face that Launched 1000 Ships (1953), (2) scenes from which were included in the third part of the short-lived Loves of Three Queens (1953), directed by Marc Allegret and Edgar G. Ulmer. In 1955, Warner Brothers released the fantastically successful production, Helen of Troy, adapted by Hugh Gray, N. Richard Nash, and John Twist and directed by Robert Wise. Then, after a break of almost half a century, the story surfaced again in the TV miniseries Helen of Troy (2003), written by Ronni Kern and directed by John Kent Harrison, and most recently in Benioff-Petersen's Troy.
The last three films all acknowledge their debt to Homer's Iliad but, like the ancient works before them, freely adapt their source material to their own vision and aims. (3) This paper compares Benioff-Petersen's treatment of Helen with Homer's. In doing so, it also looks at the two Helen of Troy films (the major cinematic treatments of the story before Troy) in order to get a better idea of what distinguishes Helen's treatment in Troy not only from her treatment in the Iliad but also from other modern renditions.
Since comparison often implies a comparability of caliber, I believe it necessary to state at the outset that there is none. The Iliad is a monumental and profoundly satisfying epic whose richness and depth have riveted readers for three millennia and which offers new insights with every reading; Troy is a new wisp of a film, rich in spectacle and thin on characterization, whose repeated viewing does not increase appreciation. Homer's Helen is a richly conceived and well developed character, Benioff's and Petersen's Helen is poorly elaborated and flat. The two Helen of Troys are more satisfying films, but no match for Homer's epic either. (4)
To some extent, the difference in Helen's characterization may be attributed to the difference in the media. In the twenty-four books of the Iliad, Homer could elaborate on Helen's character without detracting either from his central story line, namely the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, or from the detailed depiction of the grandeur and heroism of the warriors. Troy is a two-hour film which could not. Thus there is no trace in Troy of at least three of the six scenes through which the Iliad shows Helen's personality and predicament: the scene of Iris coming to fetch her as she weaves her tapestry (3.121-46), her altercation with Aphrodite (3.380-420), and the eulogy she delivers at Hector's funeral (24.761-76). The constraints of space are compounded by the fact that Troy tries to tell the entire story of the Trojan War from beginning to end, while Homer limited his story to a short period of time in the tenth year of the fighting. The problem of space is common to many film versions of long and complex books. The constraints are more severe in Troy, where Helen is a minor character, than in the other two films, which focus on her story. (5)
Nonetheless, the limitation of space is not the main source of the difference in the characterization of the two Helens. After all, Troy also added scenes with Helen, such as her elopement and its antecedents, her introduction to the royal family of Troy, and her escape from the burning city. Essentially, the differences in the two works' depictions of Helen are anchored in their fundamentally different conceptions of love and, "with this, of the type of woman who inspires and is inspired by it. In both, as in most extant treatments of the myth, the story of Helen's elopement with Paris and of the war it engendered is a story of passion. In both, erotic love is an all-powerful emotion, and Helen is drawn as simultaneously arousing it and being carried away by it. But here the similarities end. The Iliad offers a contemplation on the nature of this love, Troy a fantasy of it. The two Helens are drawn accordingly.
The first two sections of the paper focus on how this difference can be seen in and how it governs the way in which Homer and Petersen handle two tasks related to the depiction of Helen: showing the tremendous power of love and creating audience sympathy for her. The last section focuses on differences in Helen's characterization: in how she is elaborated and developed and in the personality she is given.
Showing the Power of Love
The difference in the way that the two works treat the power of love may be demonstrated by comparing the two-part episode in the Iliad that follows Paris' ignominious exit from the duel that he and Menelaus fight for possession of Helen (Il. 3.383-420, 421-47) with two episodes in Troy: the sequence that introduces Helen and Paris and the scene in Paris' bedroom following the same duel.
The episode in the Iliad consists of Helen's encounter with Aphrodite and her meeting with Paris in his bedchamber after the duel. It is Helen's third appearance in the Iliad. We have already seen her silently weaving her tapestry when Iris came to fetch her to watch the duel, and we have heard her conversing with Priam at the Scaean gate before the duel. We know that she is full of self-recrimination, regret, and longing for the family and friends she left behind in Sparta. The time is ten years after the elopement, and the passion that drove Helen's flight has been tempered by familiarity and suffering. (6)
The episode begins with Aphrodite waylaying Helen after having miraculously saved Paris from being killed by wrapping him in a mist and transporting him to his bedchamber. Disguised as an old wool-carding woman of whom Helen had been fond in Sparta, she summons Helen to join him. Paris has sent for her, she tells Helen. Helen initially resists, but eventually succumbs. Through its descriptions of Aphrodite's behavior, of the dynamic between Helen and Aphrodite, and of Helen's reproaches to Paris, the episode reveals the nature of love and shows how and why Helen succumbs despite her efforts not to.
Aphrodite's summons may be regarded as the summons of erotic love. To induce Helen to go to Paris, Aphrodite highlights his sexual appeal as she describes him waiting on his ornamented couch, "shining in beauty and [fine] clothes" and looking as though he had come from a dance (Il. 3.392-94). The goddess's speech, the narrator tells us, in an apt description of unwanted desire, "stirred the heart in Helen's breast" (3.395). Helen recognizes Aphrodite through her disguise, berates her for trying to deceive her, and pointedly ignores the sexual temptation that Aphrodite holds out. In mocking and sarcastic terms, she tells Aphrodite that if she is so fond of Paris, she can go to him herself and become his wife or slave. As Helen resists Aphrodite, she can be said to be resisting a love that inveigles its way into one, that is as wily, deceptive and commanding as the goddess who embodies it, and that, if succumbed to, binds and enslaves.
Helen gives in to Aphrodite--to love--after an emphatic rejection: "Not I. I am not going to him." What brings her to yield is Aphrodite's threat to forsake her to the wrath of the Greeks and Trojans and leave her to die "a wretched death" (Il. 3.417) at their hands. On the social plane, Helen's submission stems from her helplessness as a foreigner in a strange land, hated by her former and present countrymen alike, and in need of protection. Psychologically, Aphrodite's threat defines love as a life force and makes yielding to love a condition for emotional and spiritual survival. A woman who rejects love, who ceases to love and to be loved, is as good as dead, her threat implies. The scene suggests that Helen yields because otherwise she would die, if not physically, then spiritually.
In the second part of the episode, Helen, having lost the argument, follows Aphrodite to Paris' bedchamber, sits down on the chair that Aphrodite places in front of him, and addresses Paris in Aphrodite's presence, since Aphrodite does not leave the room (Il. 3.421 -36). In other words, Helen follows the dictates of love in going to Paris and speaks to him under the influence or control of love, whether she wants it or not. As in the previous scene, Helen again tries to resist. Refusing to look Paris in the face, she addresses him in a speech full of derision and contempt. She tells him that she wishes he had perished, mocks him as a coward and braggart, and compares him adversely to "my own first husband" (3.429), whom she lauds not only as the stronger man and better warrior, but also as (scholars interpret) the better looking of the two. Her address, however, also suggests a certain ambivalence. In an agitated reversal, she first commands Paris to challenge Menelaus and fight him again and then, two lines later, retracts and orders him not to, lest he be...
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