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The
beefcake warrior: Pitt in Troy.
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Myth
Remaking
By
Ann Morrow
Troy
Directed
by Wolfgang Peterson
During the excitingly vain-glorious opening of Troy, Wolfgang
Peterson’s loose adaptation of the Iliad, Achilles
(Brad Pitt) defeats a Thessalian giant with a single sword
stroke, delivered from a wing-footed running jump that implies
that the Greek champion is indeed a demigod. This is important,
since Peterson and screenwriter David Benioff have dispensed
with all of Homer’s long-winded gods and goddesses to present
a streamlined, battle-laden, sometimes hokey and undeniably
rousing epic that substitutes Hollywood glamour for mythos.
Pitt’s Achilles is as buff and golden as the statue of Apollo
that guards Troy; and though he’s amazing in action, in repose
he’s the least convincing character, despite the fact that
cinematographer Roger Pratt pays him more slavish attention
than a priest at Apollo’s altar.
Pitt’s diction instruction is evident, but not all that necessary:
This Achilles is more of an angst-ridden modern antihero than
the “savage lion” of Homer. Achilles sulks under his subordinate
status to Agamemnon (Brian Cox), the insolent, avaricious
King of the Mycenae. Agamemnon is just itching for an excuse
to invade Troy, his rival kingdom across the Aegean, and he
gets it when Helen (Diane Kruger), the wife of his brother,
King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), runs off with Paris (Orlando
Bloom), prince of Troy. That running start in Thessaly comes
in handy, hurdling the story over the dud romance. Newcomer
Kruger is merely pretty rather than irresistible, with a simpering
voice and demeanor that even Bloom in full dewy-eyed ardor
can’t ignite. Maybe it’s for the best that their legendary
seduction has already occurred; while the brutish Menelaus
celebrates his peace treaty with Troy, Helen and Paris reappraise
their weeklong affair, with Helen declaring, “Last night was
a mistake.” Even so, she sails off to Troy, knowing that Menelaus
will follow in enraged pursuit. Since Helen doesn’t seem to
be motivated by pride, or even passion, her defection and
subsequent whining remain a boring thread in the film’s densely
woven narrative.
Yet that narrative, savvily constructed with additional material
from the Odyssey and the Aenid, is exhilarating,
even lyrical, for the better part of its two hours and 40
minutes. Troy dramatizes the destruction of the noble
old city as both a morality tale and a platform for ancient
legends to strut their newly burnished stuff. Most noble is
Paris’ older brother, Hector (Eric Bana), the greatest warrior
alive save Achilles, but one who is tired of endless warfare.
Bana is the force behind the film’s most powerful confrontation,
between the two pairs of brothers: Hector and Paris and the
treacherous Menelaus and Agamemnon (Cox is so unctuously menacing,
he breathes fire into lines as lame as “Before me, Greece
was nothing”). And Bloom is appealing enough to be sympathetic
even when Paris grovels in cowardice.
What the film lacks in classical gravitas, it makes up for
in the battle scenes, which are mostly sensational. Achilles
deflects an arrow thrown with enough force to spin his shield
like a whirligig, Ajax topples a horse and rider with a shove
from his massive shoulder, and the swordplay is wincingly
convincing. The launch of a thousand ships, seen serenely
plowing across the sapphire Aegean, is more than just spectacle:
It marks the dawn of large-scale conflict. Unfortunately,
Peterson exaggerates Homer’s exaggerations with implausibly
large, CGI- bolstered armies. Yet when the Greek foot soldiers
march inexorably on the fortress city, accompanied by doom-laden
martial music, the effect is close to poetic destiny.
But this is a film at odds with itself even more so than its
morally ambivalent combatants. On the one hand, it revels
in an alluringly sunbaked, strikingly designed realism, and
then mars the effect with clanking modernist flourishes and
attitudes: Achilles’ mortal beloved, Patroclus (amateurish
Garret Hedland), whose death changes the course of the war,
is presented as his cousin to avoid any unseemly loss of machismo.
The soundtrack’s evocative, monophonic vocals alternate with
distracting, stridently heraldic bombast. Thuddingly inane
dialogue from the leads is augmented by moments of touching
grandeur from the lesser characters, most notably Peter O’Toole’s
Priam, the sage old king of Troy who, in a beautifully written
interlude, risks death to retrieve the dishonored body of
his son; Rose Byrne’s lovely, feisty Briseis, a spoil of war
who tempers Achilles’ hostility; and some vivid minor characters
(Greek advisor Nestor, Trojan general Glaucus) played by old
pros who show up the young bucks. To the detriment of the
plot, a never-better Sean Bean as cagey Odysseus is given
short shrift.
But for all its commercialized flaws and weaknesses of character,
Troy does get an admirable amount of Homer’s rueful
heroics onscreen. The combatants struggle with vanity and
pride, knowing full well that their lust for immortality comes
at a tragic cost. It’s a struggle worth attending.
Hungarian
Rhapsody
Gloomy
Sunday
Directed
by Rolf Schübel
In Budapest in the late 1930s, there is an elegant little
restaurant called Szabo, named for its dedicated owner, Laszlo
Szabo (Joachim Król). The hostess, Ilona (Erika Marozsán),
is a gorgeous charmer who is good for business. She’s also
Laszlo’s free-spirited mistress. The new pianist is András
(Stefano Dionisi), lugubrious, talented, and darkly handsome.
As does just about every man in the place, András falls in
love with Ilona. She fancies him, too, leading to a ménage
à trois that strains, but doesn’t embitter, the three-way
partnership. András composes a song for Ilona that enchants
the patrons with its incomparable sadness. On the evening
of its debut, one of the diners is a German traveler, Hans
(Ben Becker), an ambitious boor who tries to drown himself
in the Danube after failing to impress Ilona.
The restaurant is fictional, but the song, “Gloomy Sunday,”
is real, and notorious for being the background music of choice
for a rash of suicides. In the German film of the same name,
the song, along with a photograph and Laszlo’s signature Magyar
roulade, are talismans in a period melodrama of friendship,
love, and betrayal. Director Rolf Schübel uses the song’s
ability to summon painful emotions as a metaphor for the legacy
of Nazism in Hungary. The metaphor is murky at best, yet Schübel’s
beautifully evoked construct is moving in the same way as
a great torch song.
Gloomy
Sunday opens in the present time with an odd prelude:
A married couple and their children arrive at Szabo’s for
the husband’s 80th birthday. He requests the restaurant’s
infamous song, stares at a photo of a beautiful young woman
on the piano, and keels over dead. The film then flashes back
to the past: Hans takes a picture of Ilona before returning
to Germany, Ilona and András become lovers, Laszlo selflessly
accommodates them, and András’ composition is recorded and
becomes a hit. Three years later, Hans returns. He’s now a
bullying Nazi colonel, but even though he knows Laszlo is
Jewish, he continues to patronize the restaurant, drawn by
Laszlo’s bonhomie, Ilona’s allure, and the “best beef rolls
anywhere.” Atrocities are being committed in the street, but
inside the restaurant, goodness prevails, served up by the
owner’s unflagging refinement.
As the Nazi stranglehold on Hungary tightens, Gloomy Sunday
becomes increasingly, well, gloomy. But the lead characters—much
like the main ingredients of Laszlo’s beef rolls—complement
each other so piquantly that following them to their fates
is revealingly sad rather than depressing. Concluding with
a dollop of Hitchcock, this bittersweet experience is one
to be savored.
—Ann
Morrow
In
Search of the Lost Father
My
Architect
Directed
by Nathaniel Kahn
The irony is so meticulous and ghastly, it’s almost proof
of divine design—if God has a really mean sense of humor,
that is. One of the greatest architects of the 20th century
dies in the men’s room of one of the worst buildings of the
postwar era, New York’s Pennsylvania Station. Then, because
the dead man, Louis I. Kahn, scratched out the address on
his passport, his body lies unclaimed in the morgue for a
few days. Oh, and, though he may have been a genius, the elderly
gent dies with his firm on the verge of bankruptcy.
Filmmaker Nathaniel Khan didn’t know his father, Louis, very
well because he was, as they used to say, illegitimate. Louis
Kahn’s relationship with Nathaniel’s mom, Harriet Pattison,
was carried on, as they also used to say, without benefit
of clergy. And in the office, too: Pattison worked at Kahn’s
Philadelphia-based architectural firm. Kahn remained married
to his first wife, Esther, and had only brief visits with
his latest unofficial family. “Latest,” because we also learn
that Kahn fathered another out-of-wedlock kid in the early
1950s, a daughter, with another colleague, architect Anne
Tyng.
He was a complicated man.
The younger Kahn was only a kid when his father met that ignominious
end in 1974. His documentary My Architect is a way
of trying to connect with a man he barely knew.
First, he tries Kahn’s colleagues, world-famous fellows like
Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei. The cagey old lions aren’t very
illuminating. One, because Kahn was hard to know. Two, because
they were successful and he was not. Both praise Kahn to they
skies as an artist and lament their own compromises, but neither
is totally convincing; after all, they’re both rich and lived
to ripe old ages, and Kahn didn’t.
Next, he tries Kahn’s family. Some members of the older branches
don’t believe he’s really Louis’ son—and don’t think much
of Louis’ alleged greatness, either. (There’s nothing like
a gruff, hearing-impaired old goat to deflate your hopes;
this scene is plenty funny.) He meets with his half-sisters;
they have a friendly chat, but don’t bring him any closer
to really knowing his father.
The filmmaking is typical post-Ken Burns style, with only
minimal camera tricks, portentously titled “chapters” and
straightforward narration. It’s unobtrusive, but only occasionally
inspiring—with one exception. The film does succeed admirably
in its exploration of Kahn’s work.
Not coincidentally, Nathaniel begins to understand Louis through
his buildings, too. Sure, there are a few bad structures,
but the use of light and space at California’s Salk Institute
and the Kimball Art Museum in Texas are truly inspired, and
well-presented in the film. The journey ends, appropriately,
with Kahn’s greatest achievement, the Capital Complex at Dhaka,
Bangladesh. Timeless, monumental but not overpowering, Kahn’s
magnum opus captures the spirit of democracy in a way our
Greek and Roman temples do not. This deeply personal, even
spiritual work brings the director, and audience, closer to
Louis Kahn than anything else in the film.
—Shawn
Stone
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