Homer’s epic comes to the big screen


The film Troy is inspired by Homer's Illiad and tells the story of war and heroism. A story more of people than of war, of war more than of people. An elegy to a searing conflagration, with hearts, faces and bodies. Battles without well-defined foes, where violence evolves into poetry, poetry into violence, and the flame of hate and vengeance is turned to ashes and back to flames; where honor and self-interest, blinding fury and pleas for mercy fuse into a whole: the Iliad.

A FILM WITH A UNIVERSAL EMPHASIS
The lyrical epic, created by Homer, poet of Izmir, in the 8th century B.C., has been adapted to the wide screen for people of the 21st century. Homer's story of the Trojan wars will of course be told differently on screen. According to producer and director Wolfgang Petersen, however, the unchanging universal emphasis will be felt at all times: "Although our film has been staged in a way never seen before with tens of

thousands of soldiers clashing, the focus of the story is the human aspect, independent of time, of the victories and defeats narrated by Homer." Through its heroes like Achilles (Brad Pitt), Hector (Eric Bana), Paris (Orlando Bloom), and Priam (Peter O'Toole), it is these same human aspects that Petersen has emphasized in bringing to contemporary viewers Homer's immortal epic, which has influenced people of every age since it was composed. "To my mind, no writer in the last three thousand years has succeeded in describing the horror of war in more detail than Homer. And the contemporary viewer should also be drawn into the story through the lives and passions of these men."

The principal theme of the story, which consists of a number of legends, is the prolonged conflict between the Achaians (Greeks) and the Trojans, which begins when Paris, son of the Trojan King Priam, abducts Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, and brings her to Troy. Menelaus and his brother Agamemnon, Greece's most powerful king, call upon all the kings to go to war against Troy and, with a fleet of close to
1200 ships, arrive at the shores of Troy or 'towers of sacred Ilion'. From Phrygians and Lycians to Carians and Paphlagonians (Sinop region), Anatolian kingdoms on all sides join in the war against this 'rich and fertile land'. In a fabric woven of heroes on both sides and the divided gods and goddesses who appear to be the real arbiters of the struggle, the balance between victory and defeat, life and death, shifts continually, until it finally settles in favor of the Achaians, and Troy falls.

FURY INTERMINGLED WITH PITY
The story begins with the anger of 'the greatest living warrior', Achilles of Thessaly, whose mother is a goddess, and ends with the funeral procession of Paris's elder brother, the invincible Hector. The poet does not depict the destruction of Troy but only alludes to it. What is interesting is that the Iliad is based on Achilles and his fury: "Achilles was destroying alike the Trojans themselves and their single-hoof horses; and as when smoke ascending goes up into the wide sky from a burning city...
so Achilles inflicted wretchedness and sorrow upon the Trojans." While intoning the horrors of war on the one hand, the legend on the other holds up a mirror to the multitudinous aspects of human love, friendship, passion and weakness. The heroes not only brandish swords, they also shed tears, as for example the mutual tears shed by the two adversaries, Achilles and Priam, who wants to recover the body of his son Hector whom Achilles has slain: "Tall Priam came in unseen by the other men and stood close beside him and caught the knees of Achilles in his arms, and kissed the hands that were dangerous and manslaughtering and had killed so many of his sons... and spoke to him in the words of a suppliant; 'Achilles like the gods, remember your father, one who is of years like mine, and on the door-sill of sorrowful old age... But for me my destiny was evil, I have had the noblest of sons in Troy, but I say not one of then is left to me. Fifty were my sons, when the sons of the Achaians came here.'" Homer does not use skirmishes alone to depict war's violence, terror also shows its face in other scenes, as in this dialogue between Hector and his wife Andromache "Hector, you are father to me, and
my honoured mother, you are my brother, and it is you who are my young husband. Please take pity upon me then, stay here on the rampart, that you may not leave your child an orphan, your wife a widow... Then tall Hector of the shining helm answered her: All these things are in my mind also, Lady... For I know this thing well in my heart, and my mind knows it: there will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish, and Priam, and the people of Priam... but it is not so much the pain to come that troubles me... as the thought of you when some bronze-armored Achaian leads you off, taking away your day of liberty, in tears... But may I be dead and the piled earth hide me before I hear you crying and know by this that they drag you captive."

NOT GREEKS BUT LUWIANS
So did this war actually take place? Historical and archeological studies indicate that tribes poured into Anatolia from Greece around 1200 B.C. The Iliad is also considered to be a fragment of an oral tradition whose roots go back much earlier.
Following the new discoveries, it is therefore assumed that Homer was influenced by events that began with the arrival of the Achaians some 500 years before his time and by the legends of Troy spun around them. But what about the battlefield itself, and the people, and Achilles, Hector and Priam? This has remained one of the most burning unanswered questions ever since Troy's discovery on the Çanakkale-Hisarcik Mound by Heinrich Schliemann in 1871. But one thing was always taken as certain by the Europeans, who link their cultural and intellectual history to Homer, namely that Troy was a Greek city prior to the Achaian raids. The striking discoveries made in the archeological excavations conducted since 1988 by Prof. Dr. Manfred Korfmann of Germany's Tübingen University tell a different story. According to the new data, Troy is the (W)ilios/Wilusa mentioned in Hittite tablets from 2000 B.C., and what the the Achaians encountered here was not an Aegean (Mycenaean-Greek) culture but an Anatolian culture and the Luwians.

ADDED TO THE WORLD HERITAGE LIST
Korfmann says that Troy, which was in ruins in 700 B.C. when the Iliad was composed, might have been the site that offered Homer, and other epic poets, the most impressive setting for their tale: "It is apparent from the excavations that a very impressive defensive moat surrounded Troy in 1300 B.C. and that its population was much larger, by up to 15 times, than previously thought. Not only that but another unknown has also been illuminated: Troy, which possessed an extremely powerful system of defense, was attacked and forced to defend itself numerous times. And around 1180 B.C. it came to an end when it lost one of those wars." Turning to the film Troya, Korfmann says the script will be undoubtedly laden with fantasy and based only in part on archeological facts. But he admits that more people will become interested in Troy thanks to the film. His own hope as an archeologist is that concrete initiatives will be launched to preserve Troy, which was added to the UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1998.

Text: NERMIN BAYÇIN
Photo: BORA BALAR