Helen of Troy

I found Bettany Hughes very beautiful and couldn't take my eyes off her in this program as she explored sources of information about Helen of Troy, a reaction that seems very appropriate given Helen's reputation. Hughes has done a previous program on Sparta which rehabilitates them somewhat and is rumored as making another one on Socrates.This 2005 PBS broadcast runs for two hours and covers a lot of ground. Hughes states she is interested in exploring how a Bronze Age Queen such as Helen might have lived. Her premise is that there was really a Helen and that the story of the part she played in the Trojan War is based on fact. This approach, which ignores Helen's mythological roles, enables Hughes to restrict herself to the archaeological record, where the life of the Bronze Age elite of Greece has left some trace.The written record is not too helpful. Homer contents himself with calling Helen the most beautiful woman without giving further details, knowing his audience will fill in the blanks themselves. But, examining Homer closely, it is possible to see how many details he writes about were of an earlier time than his own and reflect the passing down of an oral tradition from as early as the 12th century BC, the time of the War. Just as Michael Wood did in In Search of the Trojan War, Hughes finds experts who can reconstruct Bronze Age weaponry from Homer's descriptions. It seems there is a lot of recoverable detail about how people lived in those times. But all this is supporting detail and doesn't help much where Helen is concerned.Hughes drives from Mycenae to Sparta, crosses the Aegean to Troy, travels up the Hellespont to Istanbul for a taste of what Troy might have seemed like in its heyday, then travels east to explore the Hittites, the dominant political power of the Bronze Age in western Asia. While filling in a lot of social and political detail, Hughes is not able to fully demonstrate one of her major points, the relative freedom and access to power accorded to women in many societies of that time. There's really not enough evidence to make more than conjectures.There is another aspect to Helen that Hughes does not really explore, as her search is for a historical figure. Helen is a daughter of Zeus, king of the Greek gods. She and her sister Clytemnestra were hatched from an egg, even though her mother, Leda, was of human form (though divine). Her brothers were the gods Castor and Pollux. Both Helen and Clytemnestra were to prove fatal to the Greek forces through their involvement with the brothers Agamemnon, leader of the Greek army and married to Clytemnestra, and Menelaus, married to Helen.The Greeks often gave divine honors to their ancestors. If the involvement of Zeus and Aphrodite in Helen's tale are seen as part of this process, then the bloody feud of the Atridae, detailed in Aeschylus' Oresteia and which was an indirect cause of the Trojan War, as well as the story of the Seven against Thebes and of Oedipus, of Perseus, of Jason and Medea and of the Trojan War itself can be read as history, with the very large qualification that the stories, based on fact but created to gain tribal and clan renown, were passed on as part of songs in honor of the ancestors and in rituals enacted at family shrines. In this process the ancestors became heroes, the heroes became gods and children of gods. Five hundred years after these Bronze Age societies had passed away a gifted poet named Homer, who definitely did not ascribe to the religious beliefs of the age he depicted, recreated one such story: so tale became legend, became ritual, became ceremonial song and then became one of the world's greatest poems. Finding the historical elements in this is not an easy job.Had Hughes wished to she could have looked at Bronze Age rituals that evidently did give status and authority to women and which can be seen on the surviving frescoes from Minoan Crete, thought to be the parent civilisation to that of Mycenean Greece. Women were bare breasted, their femininity was honored, they predominated in ceremonies below ground to invoke the snake goddess who gave wisdom and the bull god who gave life (I can't help thinking of the Canaanite Eve who might have been once such a priestess/goddess). Medea could have been another such figure, as was the Pythoness who gave way to Apollo at Delphi.The trouble with looking at the past is that other societies had vastly different ways of looking at things than we do. We notice skin color, many ancient societies didn't (which Roman Emperors were black?) We like facts, ancient societies didn't think facts were nearly as important as clan honour. We separate concepts such as patriotism and religion, the Greeks didn't. Nobody's going to find a biography of Helen or a history of the Trojan War surviving on clay tablets because nobody in the Bronze Age had thought of such things.From the remains we have: a few battered artifacts, an excavated city's outline, deductions from a few lines of poetry, historians such as Hughes try to interpret a vanished way of life. The lack of evidence means there can be more than one such interpretation, and none conclusive. This is the fascination of the past.One sad fact Hughes is able to confirm is that the scale of things was much smaller than we imagine. Smaller cities, smaller populations, fewer soldiers and ships, raids more common than battles, deaths (despite Homer's gruesome descriptions) more often among the peasantry than the nobility. "The face that launched a thousand ships" was said of Helen almost 3000 years after her time, the tale having grown with the telling.

I am an educator who teaches the Trojan War as a unit of study in a Greek Literature course. This TV movie is very successful at covering the bulk of the storypoints of the Troy story whereas other movies focus on a single episode of the Troy myth or they even abridge the myth altogether. This film covers the Judgment of Paris, Theseus kidnapping Helen, The Oath of Tyndareus (sort of), The theft of Helen, The wooden horse, the murder of Agamemnon among other important events in the epic Troy myth. The whole film is executed quite well given that it was probably not a big budget production, and they manage to avoid cheesy cameos by gods and goddesses ala 1963 Jason and the Argonauts. The acts of the gods are alluded to by a mist or a turn of fate, like when Paris's helmet strap breaks in single-combat with Menelaus. Overall, the filmmakers appeared to be trying to create a historical piece to show us what the Trojan War might have looked like had it actually happened.The downside to this movie is that the roles of Hector and Achilles, two of the most important characters in the Troy myth, are downplayed substantially. Both warriors are reduced to relatively flat or static characters along with the conflict between the two. At one point, Achilles claims to "fight for High King Agamemnon" which is not accurate to the myth at all really. While the Agamemnon/Achilles conflict is downplayed, the Agamemnon and Menelaus sibling rivalry is put at the forefront resulting in an uncharacteristic-of-the-myth literal rape of Helen by Agamemnon during the siege of Troy. I am assuming that this brother versus brother storyline was developed as a way to avoid any litigation by the producers of Troy starring Brad Pitt which stays true to the Iliad's storyline of Achilles vs. Agamemnon and Hector and came out around the same time.You can tell that, at points, the writers really gloss over some aspects of the story for time's sake. As a nearly three hour television movie, I am sure they wanted to get through the whole thing in two to three nights rather than a week. The viewer also doesn't really get the feeling that nine years have passed during the course of the war. Other than a little gray in the hair of some actors and actresses, it didn't seem that long.John Rhys-Davies gives a convincing performance as King Priam while Rufus Sewell comes off a little one-dimensional as Agamemnon. It seems the director had him looking mean into the camera one too many times. Sienna Guillory expertly interprets Helen as a wispy, naive girl caught between powerful men in high positions, her father, Tyndareus, brother Pollux, husband Menelaus, creeper Agamemnon, and lover Paris. She is convincing as the "face that launched a thousand ships" with her beauty alone. Costumed in light, airy flowing clothes that make her look like she walked out of a painting, the director and cinematographer cheapen her beauty and performance by having her riding a horse bra-less in slow motion. That was unnecessary. My favorite performance, although a brief one in the film, is that of Stellan Skarsgard as King of Athens Theseus. Skarsgard inhabits the danger loving, yet wise and cautious hero quite well. His only purpose in the movie is to demonstrate how easily Helen falls in love with her captors.If you love myth and the Trojan War story, then you will enjoy this movie. I doubt you will have any cringe worthy moments. You may be disappointed at some of the parts of the story that are missing, but the great thing about myth is that we can keep going back to it for new and different stories to be told. This is a good retelling of the story. I would have given this five stars if the Hector/Achilles storyline was beefed up. Sidenote: What about Patroclus? Entirely missing. Oh well. Perhaps like winning the Trojan War, creating the perfect Troy movie will take a minute.

This movie is in some respects better than 'Troy' and in others not as good. The screenplay was not as smooth flowing but it did follow Homer's story quite well, although a lot was left out. Achilles' row with Agamemnon was omitted together with his grand sulk, also there was no mention of Patroclus and the Myrmidons did not feature at all. Odysseus was hardly involved and Hector, the great Trojan hero was not allowed to show his great prowess. The two Ajaxes were barely mentioned. The fighting skills of Paris were somewhat exaggerated. There was an over-reliance on CGI in some scenes which looked somewhat artificial. The acting was a little wooden at times, apart from Rufus Sewell who played a suitably intense Agamemnon. Sienna Guillory made a very attractive Helen and Emilia Fox as Cassandra was very committed. The scenery was nicely shot and the sets were impressive. I also thought that the wooden horse was well constructed. On balance I preferred 'Troy', which had its own issues, but it was a close run thing.

It was well acted and gave a good rendition of the classic story with one or two additions which i had not read about before. Acting, costumes,and settings were very good and the performance by Rufus Sewell as Agamemnon was excellent.

The story was adjusted for the movie, characters not the same as in the myth, I'll watch it again at a later date but not yet.

yes i really like the film and the female actress is also in one of the resident evil films ive got yes she also as a nice ass in helen of troy

exelent as usual. bettany always delivers, cool, proffisional with an oxbridge delivery that even spanish learning english follow.