Well, Troy Was On Again Last Night…

Normally I love watching this movie.  While I can’t help but notice all of the film’s glaring inaccuracies, I also can’t help but love it.  It helps if you think of it as something entirely made up rather than any attempt at following the actual events of the battle of Troy.

But last night I had a difficult time, since for the past few days I’ve been avidly reading “The War that Killed Achilles” by Caroline Alexander.  It’s a great book – short, readable and interesting – all that I require from a book.  In it, the events of the Iliad are summarized, from beginning to end (the most pivotal moments in the story, obviously, not the whole thing) and are explained, given historical context.

I find it interesting that the Iliad was not, in fact, a story of the glories of war, but of its horror and pointlessness.  This was something that I’d forgotten since I last read it, which was, as I’m ashamed to say, about five years ago.  I don’t get around to reading that thing as often as I should.  Alexander’s book helped me to recall the events of the story and see them in a whole new way.  She dissects the endless battle scenes, pointing out that Homer gives us back story only on those who die – revealing to us a brief summary of the lives that are cut short on the field of battle.  We pity these men who will never return to their homes or see their families.  And those who are most often depicted in horrible death are not the Greeks, but the Trojans, the enemy.  Homer makes them pitiable, describing their deaths in gruesome detail.  Troy should not have been a summer blockbuster of an epic, it should have been Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, showing all of the gruesomeness and horror of battle.

When I read the Iliad in my junior year of high school I saw Achilles as a man who sulked in his ship and refused to aid his fellow men because of some petty grievance with the king.  But his refusal is not only due to his having the last straw with the poor leadership of Agamemnon, whose behavior toward the men who fight his war has been less than kingly, but a realization that he would rather live than die.  Achilles goes to his mother, Thetis, the sea goddess, and she tells him that he has one of two choices:

“Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, the excellence of my glory is gone; but there will be a long life left for me, and my death will not come to me quickly.  And this would be my counsel to others also, to sail home again.”

Achilles does not want to fight – he wishes to return home to his father, Peleus, in Phthia and have a family and to grow old.  And so he returns to his ship, refusing all attempts to bribe him into rejoining the effort.  In a scene which I had completely forgotten over the years, Achilles relates to Odysseus and the two other men sent to persuade him that life is more precious than the glory one receives upon losing it in battle:

“Not worth the value of my life are all the possessions they fable were won for Ilion… of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting, and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses, but a man’s life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted nor captured again by force once it has crossed the teeth’s barrier.”

When I was 16, this must have gone right over my head, but reading those lines now gives me chills.  How could anyone look at Achilles and think that he only cares for glory and personal gain?  He doesn’t care for either of those things and it is only the death of his dear friend, Patroclus, that moves him to join the battle once more – for vengeance.

Caroline Alexander’s book is remarkable for many reasons, but one thing I especially enjoyed was her relating events in the Iliad to stories of modern warfare.  Because war is a timeless tale – the way we fight it may change, but there are aspects of it that remain the same.  The bond between those who fight side-by-side is one of them.  In the chapter “Man Down” which covers the events surrounding Patroclus’ death, Alexander conjures powerful imagery of a grieving soldier, returned from Iraq, walking the corridor of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, “in the bloodied combat boots of a friend he watched bleed to death.”  Most of us will never understand the bond between soldiers who fight together in battle, but it has been a subject of many stories and poems throughout the centuries.  When his closest friend dies at the hands of Hector, the prince of Troy, Achilles completely loses himself.  He is so beyond himself with grief and rage that he rejoins the battle, a changed man.  No longer will he show any pity to those who beg for it, as he says to Lykaon, one of King Priam’s many sons:

“In the time before Patroklos came to the day of his destiny then it was the way of my heart’s choice to be sparing of the Trojans… now there is not one who can escape death… not one of all the Trojans and beyond others the children of Priam. So, friend, you die also.”

“Troy” could have been an amazing film.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the sets and the costumes and I always choke up when Hector dies, but what a movie this could have been.  No amount of glory or wealth is worth a man’s life.  The only thing worth dying for is one’s friends.  The death of his beloved companion turns Achilles into a merciless killer, hell-bent on destroying every Trojan in his path to kill Hector.  Which he does.  His hatred is so strong that Achilles even refuses to bury the prince who had threatened to put Patroclus’ head on a pike.  But only upon hearing a plea from King Priam, in person, for his son’s burial does Achilles agree to release him.  This is another strong scene from the book that the film actually does good by.

“Honour then the gods, Achilles, and take pity upon me remembering your father, yet I am still more pitiful; I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through; I put my lips to the hand of the man who has killed my children.”

I enjoyed this scene in the film, especially Achilles’ line: “You are a far better king than the one who leads this army.”  That is the whole reason that Achilles refused to fight in the first place.  And I don’t think that Agamemnon would personally plea for the body of his son – he would sacrifice the lives of his own men to take it by force.  But Priam uses words and appeals to Achilles’ remaining compassion.  He even agrees to give the king twelve days of truce in order to perform the burial rites for his fallen son.  Alexander compares this to the Christmas Truce in the first year of World War I, a spontaneous cease-fire during which soldiers on both sides sang carols, lit candles, and even met together in No-Man’s-Land.  This meeting of enemies brings back Achilles’ argument against fighting in the war:

“I for my part did not come here for the sake of the Trojan spearmen to fight against them, since to me they have done nothing… indeed there is much that lies between us, the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea.”

The Iliad is a story of the horror of war – the pointless destruction of men who fight for someone else’s cause.  Men who otherwise would not be enemies, who fight on behalf of those who lead them, but not for themselves.  Many of these men find other reasons to fight – for wealth or glory – but not Achilles.  He knows that his life is not worth any of these things – only to avenge his fallen companion.

I’ll end this now, as it’s getting quite long, but reading this book, “The War that Killed Achilles” really made me see the Iliad in a new light and, unfortunately, made me realize what a truly great film Troy could have been, but sadly wasn’t.  I still love it though.

Lyssie’s Guide to a Kick-Ass PowerPoint

Okay, here’s what boggles my mind:  There are college seniors out there who still do not know how to make a simple Powerpoint presentation.  Really, people?  How long have you been doing Powerpoints – since the eighth grade?  And in eight years or so you still haven’t been able to figure this out?

*sigh*

Don’t worry, people.  I’m here.  I’m not gonna blow my own horn or anything, but I’d say I’m pretty good at making a Powerpoint presentation.  My teachers and professors think so, too.  So I’m going to share some helpful tips with you so that you’ll never have to stare out on a sea of faces who look like they might either a) pass out from boredom; or b) violently murder you.

Pick the Right Background

The background on a powerpoint is the first thing people notice about your presentation.  So here’s my first helpful hint: powerpoint comes with background options for a reason – use them.  Please do not use a picture as a background, it makes the text totally illegible.  Also, stay far away from dark colors, it makes people fall asleep.  But don’t make it too bright, either, if it’s going to be a color.  Light blue or green are good colors I’d recommend.  A white background, while it may seem boring, is another good option.  It makes your presentation seem professional and you can also accentuate with color to make it look interesting.

Flashcards Are Your Friends

As someone who has to sit through your presentation, here’s what I don’t want to see: everything you’re saying already spelled out on your presentation… in paragraph form.  There’s a rule that I learned in high school english that said that you should use no more than seven words per bulletpoint.  Wait, let me say that again:

SEVEN WORDS PER BULLETPOINT – NO MORE!!!

Okay, you got that?  If you’re going to write paragraphs on your slides and read them to me, that is just damn lazy.  Your teacher shouldn’t even let you speak at that point.  Just shut up and I’ll tell you when you can click to the next slide, because there is nothing you’re saying that I can’t get without you talking to me.  Look, when people do this, I see red.  It’s extremely juvenille and totally unprofessional.  Instead of writing the paragraphs on your slides, pick out the main points and, in seven words or less, put them on your slides.  This leads me to my next big point…

Speak to Me, Don’t Read To Me

So you’ve got your seven-words-or-less bulletpoints, but what are you going to say?  Well, this is when you open Microsoft Word (or Notebook, you cheepskate) and type those bulletpoints up, son.  Then, go in and put… wait for it… even more bulletpoints in there.  Now they’re on a piece of paper that only you can see.  These are called your “NOTES.”  The more of these you can memorize, the more eye contact you can give your audience.  If you’re just reading paragraphs to me, I will once again ask you to hand me that piece of paper and sit down, becasue you’re wating my freaking time.  But if you’ve just got a couple of notes written down on a paper that you look at every now and then, then I think you really know about what you’re saying.  This makes you more interesting.  Congratulations, I’m paying attention to you.

Intro, Thesis, Points, Conclusion

It’s good to think of your powerpoint like a paper you present.  Because sometimes, that’s what it is: a presentation of a paper you’ve written.  In high school, I was required to present my senior english paper to the class with a powerpoint.  In college, I often have to write 10-15 page research papers that I have to present to the class.  So, like a research paper, your presentation should begin with an introduction.  This does not require its own slide – you should be talking about this while your title slide is up.  This is just stating the topic of your paper and highlighting what your presentation is going to be about.  You should mention your thesis here, too (unless your teacher wants it to have its own slide)

*For those of you who don’t know, the thesis is the main argument of your paper.  In the following slides, you will be presenting information that supports your thesis.  Duh.

Moving on, you should have one or two slides for all of your supporting arguments.  The title of these slides should be the argument, and the bulletpoints will be details of the argument and how it supports your thesis.  And, finally, you might want to have a conclusion slide.  Title it “Conclusion,” if you want.  Then just list your supporting arguments in bullet form and quickly go over what you just said.  Wrap it up with something clever, then look at how amazed and informed everyone is.

Confidence and Knowledge Are Key

Always be prepared for your presentation.  Practice it, time yourself (especially if you have a time requirement), and get it exactly how you want it.  Like I said – the more eye contact you can make, the more confident you appear.  Confidence is so important to giving a good presentation.  You have to let everyone know that you really know what you’re talking about.  If there are difficult names to pronounce on your slides, then look up how to pronounce them.  Nothing is more embarassing than stumbling over a word that you yourself put on your powerpoint.  Know your material – especially in college, professors will ask you questions on things you haven’t covered in your presentation.  You will look so awesome if you know enough about your subject to anwer them.

And that’s pretty much it.  If you follow those guidelines, I can pretty much guarantee that your presentations will improve.  I know that you may think that this doesn’t matter at all, but I can tell you now that public speaking is a very important skill.

Oh, and one more thing: Clipart… don’t do it.

An Addendum to My Previous Post

I didn’t want my last post to be too long, but I really do have more to say on the subject that I thought of on my car ride home from school this afternoon.

And so continues my rant about the new “Dorian Gray” film.

I titled my last post “Oscar Wilde for the Twilight Set” because I feel that in this day and age, Hollywood loves to use classic literature as their source for films.  But they also have a tendency of oversexualizing the story and obscuring its central theme.

The central theme of the book – I think – is Wilde’s critique of astheticism.  Astheticism is the 19th century artistic movement that emphasized the value of physical beauty over morality.  I find it odd that Wilde is said to be an asthete while when reading his works it is clear that they are criticisms of Victorian society, not merely art for art’s sake.  Many asthetes, however, criticised their own movement from within.  Like Victorian hipsters, I guess.

In the novel, Basil Hallward is a follower of the asthetic movement much like Wilde is.  He states that an artist must put nothing of himself into what he creates.  The purpose of art is to create something beautiful – not meaningful.  When Lord Wotton tells him that he should send it to Grosvenor for exhibition, Basil tells him that he could never exhibit his painting as it has “too much of himself in it.”  Basil claims that Dorian Gray has led him to discover a new school of art:

“Unconciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit.  The harmony of body and soul – we in our madness have separated the two and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void.”

Basil laments that his art until that point has been purely asthetic, with no moral content, none of the desired harmony between soul and body which he considers the “perfection of the spirit that is Greek.”  In the novel Basil is the moral compass of the story and, in the end is detroyed by hedonism, cynicism, and, yes, astheticism.

Lord Wotton leads Dorian Gray onto a new philisophical path that is ultimately destructive.  He convinces the young man that youth and beauty are the only two things worth having.  When one is young and beautiful (and rich) one does not have to abide by the laws of common society – one only has to appear to do so.  Henry encourages Dorian to “live his life fully and completely, to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.”  No inhibitions, just the single-minded pursuit of physical pleasures.

This is the central theme of the whole novel.  Even though Dorian remains physically beautiful, his soul (and the painting) becomes hideous.  It is a statement about Victorian society and the importance of keeping up appearances rather than living a truly virtuous life.  And I really don’t see this in the film at all.

Something else that confuses me about this film that I touched on briefly was the fact that the script downplays the relationship between Basil and Dorian.  There has been a trend in film lately of featuring gay subject matter.  We see many more films with queer themes than we ever have before.  Before I watched this movie I thought that a modern film of Dorian Gray would finally have the chance to highlight one of the main tragic storylines of the book in a way that the 1945 and 1970 films were unable to.  And yet, even with the added gay content the script still manages to all but eliminate the relationship between Basil and Dorian that is seen in the novel.

This relationship is central to the novel’s theme.  Basil’s love of Dorian is textbook Platonic love.  “Platonic” is a word that’s commonly thrown around and very widely misused in today’s society.  It is not a non-physical relationship, but is rather the desire to possess the beautiful.   Plato stated that beautiful objects bring us closer to an appreciation of moral goodness.    Basil is so moved by Dorian’s beauty that he tells Henry “As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me.”  He believes that Dorian is so beautiful that he must be the embodiment of morality and beauty.

That is what makes Basil’s revelation so tragic.  Basil must learn the hard way that physical beauty has no relation to a person’s moral character and, while Dorian stays young and beautiful forever, he is, in fact becoming a monster.  Basil comes to revile the one thing he found most beautiful in his life.  And it kills him.

The dialogue in the scene where Basil is explaining his feelings for Dorian to Henry is so powerful that I thought it would translate beautifully into film, and it’s really unfortunate that the writers didn’t make more of what was in the book.  It was poor editing on their part.  I also feel that they’ve dumbed the movie down for modern-day audiences who just want to see pretty people having sex, being evil, and getting their comeuppance.  End of story.  I guess people don’t want to have to think after leaving the movie theatre anymore.

Oscar Wilde for the Twilight Set

Okay, so it’s not actually as bad as all that.

Apparently another film version of Oscar Wilde’s book “The Picture of Dorian Gray” came out last year.  Ben Barnes, of Prince Caspian fame, played Dorian, and Colin Firth also starred as Lord Henry Wotton.  I found the whole thing on Youtube and watched it last night.

I’ve officially decided that I do not wish to see any more film adaptations of this book.

I don’t think that every film adaptation of a book is trash.  A lot of them are really good.  But I think that when you have a story that purposefully leaves important parts of the story to the reader’s imagination, it doesn’t help when the director decides to show it to you.  It’d be like someone telling you what aweful, terrible thing is in that pit Edgar Allen Poe was talking about.  The whole point of the story is that it’s left to your imagination.

What did Dorian Gray do to ruin the reputations of fine, victorian ladies and gentlemen?  Well, according to the film he was into some really freeeeeaky stuff.  Like, some seriously fucked up shit.  There are orgy scenes and weird S&M stuff going on and it’s kind of disturbing.  And I get that that’s the point - Dorian gives in to his excesses and this jeapordizes his immortal soul and everything – but I still think it’s best if you don’t show us everything. 

When books are turned into film I get pretty bummed out when they omit things.  But I actually get angry when they add things in that weren’t there.  The scene between Dorian and artist Basil Hallward for instance is one of those times.  Now, there’s a lot of gay subtext in this book.  So much so, in fact, that exerpts from “Dorian Gray” were used at Oscar Wilde’s trial to have him sentenced to two years hard labor for indecency.  It’s not hard to see that Basil - and even Henry – is in love with Dorian.  But I don’t think as a director you have to show Dorian reciprocating this affection with implied sex.  That’s just making subtext into actual text.

But, if you still wanted to elaborate on Basil and Dorian’s relationship - and it is an interesting and complex one – they could have done it much better than they did.  In the book it’s made pretty clear that Basil is in love with Dorian.  In the original unedited version he even states it outright to Henry.  Over the course of the story we see Basil, sick with unrequited love, having to witness his object of affection undergo a hideous transformation.  Dorian remains beautiful on the outside, but Basil must watch his soul diminish under the ‘tutelage’ of Lord Wotton, who’s hell-bent on turning Dorian into an uninhibited cynic.  I feel that the whole complex relationship between these three characters is glossed over in the film. 

Ben Barnes as Dorian Gray

The movie is pretty, I’ll give it that.  Colin Firth always does well whatever material he’s given, though for the most part his character seems like your run-of-the-mill period piece character: rather one-dimensional.  Ben Barnes is a pretty decent Dorian.  It must be difficult to cast someone whose beauty is supposed to be so stunning that everyone falls in love with him and, while Barnes isn’t really my type, he does have a very appealing charm.  I think that Basil was cast well, but written poorly.  Ben Chaplin does an excellent job of playing the poor rejected friend.  Basil was always my favorite character – he’s just so sympathetic.

All-in-all I might actually still recommend this movie to those who have already read the book, but only as a subject to be discussed rather than a film to be enjoyed.  It has its moments, but I found it to be too graphic and in-your-face for an adaptation of a book that was almost too subtle.  I assume those who haven’t read the book would like it, but they should really just read the book.  It’s a beautiful, tragic story.