USMA IN THE NEWS
"Did you ever read Homer?" Nick Nolte's harsh lieutenant colonel rasps at Elias Koteas' captain in the World War II drama "The Thin Red Line." "We read Homer at the Point."
They still do. Timothy M. Crook, a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, encountered "The Iliad" - Homer's epic poem of the climactic days in the Trojan War - in a freshman English class. "I was very fond of it," he recalls. So much so that he wrote his senior thesis this year in part about Achilles, the ferociously individualistic Greek warrior at the heart of Homer's story.
But while he admires Achilles for his military skill and pursuit of justice, he doesn't think his single-mindedness would pass muster in today's Army. "The warrior role has been so redefined in Iraq," says Crook, who graduates this month as a second lieutenant. "They're handing out food and rebuilding schools, and, in the next moment, they're in a firefight."
Naturally, he's eager to see what Brad Pitt does with Achilles in "Troy," Wolfgang Petersen's $200 million film that hits theaters today. It's a colorful, drumbeating movie that condenses and alters the Trojan War narrative without sacrificing its human essence. "Troy" is one of the blockbusters on which Hollywood is pinning its summer offensive. But it is also part of a long tradition of capturing that elusive war in art - an event that historians now believe occurred around 1250 B.C. on a smaller scale that the one Homer sang about 400 years later.
"The whole Trojan War is the nucleus of a whole system of stories that tell all the things that led up to it, on both sides, and all the things that followed it, again on both sides," says Wil Crutchfield, who will stage the Gluck opera "Paride ed Elena" ("Paris and Helen"), about the illicit affair that ignites the war, at the Caramoor International Music Festival in Katonah this summer. "At the center is 'The Iliad,' but it doesn't tell the whole story."
Nevertheless, Crutchfield, Caramoor's director of opera, considers "The Iliad " to be "the birthplace ... of organized storytelling. It's imprinted on our cultural DNA to be explored by every new artistic era."
"It's a story that you can layer on any time," says "Troy" co-star Eric Bana, who plays the Trojan prince Hector - the noble soul of Homer's tale - as the archetypal patriotic soldier and family man. "It's this entertaining story of love, revenge, love for country, ego. There are just so many elements."
Those elements - passion, honor, injustice, rage, death - leave "The Iliad" open to interpretation. But the one thing scholars, students and artists agree upon is that the work's greatness, and real resonance for us today, lies in the searing humanity of its themes and characters, Greek and Trojan alike.
Love ...
"It's not the epic battle of good versus evil. It's the struggle of human versus human," says "Troy" screenwriter David Benioff, who avoided the gods who drive the action in Homer's work so he could concentrate on psychological motivation.
Few struggles are greater than the one we wage over love. Passion - the kind that fuels the abduction (or seduction) of the married Greek queen Helen by Troy 's Paris - sets the war, and movie, in motion. But even though the lovers are no longer the main event by the time "The Iliad" opens - "their moment is accomplished, and everyone is paying the price," Crutchfield says - love is still an intregal part of Homer's work. ("Troy" underscores this not only in its portrayal of Paris and Helen but by turning the affection Achilles feels for his Trojan captive, Briseis, into a real relationship.)
In "The Iliad," there's the now-conflicted love of Paris and Helen, who can't live without each other even though their ardor has led only to anguish. The love of country that spurs Hector to defend Troy against Menelaus, Helen's husband, and the avenging Greeks, even though he knows it is doomed. The love of family that allows Priam, Troy's king, to embrace sons Hector and Paris equally. The love of comrades expressed by Achilles and Patroclus.
And war
If sexual heat ignites the Trojan War, passion of a different kind inflames "The Iliad" - rage, the word that begins the book.
"('The Iliad') is about rage, and the way we get into war through rage," says Peter Meineck, artistic director of the Aquila Theatre Company, whose brilliantly spare adaptation of "The Iliad" has been presented at Purchase College.
The wrath belongs to Achilles, who suffers the indignity of having Agamemnon take away his war prize, Briseis. This leads Achilles to withdraw from the war.
Though Achilles would appear to be childish and insubordinate, we shouldn't see his quarrel with Agamemnon through the scrim of the 21st century. This is no mere fight over a girl: Briseis symbolizes Achilles' valor and excellence. And while Agamemnon may be the Greek king of kings, Achilles is a king with his own forces.
"What Agamemnon does is equivalent to a colonel saying to a soldier who has won the Medal of Honor, 'I don't have a medal, so I'll take yours,'" says Dr. Jonathan Shay, whose "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character" explores "The Iliad" as a metaphor for the experiences of Vietnam vets suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Achilles' rage, Shay says, is the wrath of the soldier who feels betrayed by manipulative commanders who, like Agamemnon, lead from the rear. It's the wrath of the individual who takes on a corrupt system and pays the price.
Rage, rage
But can he afford to act on his anger? Can we?
"All of this resentment of not being appreciated for your true worth backfires," says Mary Lefkowitz, author of "Greek Gods, Human Lives." "Achilles lets his anger drive him to the point where it leads to many deaths."
While he sits in his tent sulking and strumming his lyre - in the movie, Pitt sulks but doesn't strum - Patroclus dons Achilles' armor to rally the Greeks, only to be killed by Hector. Up until then, Crook says, "Achilles is focused on glory ... When Patroclus is killed, his rage shifts from Agamemnon to Hector, and his motivation shifts. He still wants glory. But he's more inclined to act out of justice for his friend."
Even when he avenges Patroclus by slaying Hector, Achilles' anger is not abated. In one of the most horrific scenes in Homer's story, and the movie, Achilles ties Hector's corpse to his chariot and drags it back to the Greek camp.
In an essay written at the dawn of World War II, French philosopher Simone Weil wrote that might, the true subject of "The Iliad," turns men into objects. But it is really rage that does this. Both Benioff and Crook say that when they heard about the American contractors being dismembered and hanged in Fallujah, they immediately flashed on the moment when Achilles desecrates Hector's body. To this, we must now add the American and British soldiers who humiliated Iraqi detainees. They, too, are Achilles.
Says Crook: "You have to have the rage of Achilles and then be able to turn it off."
The embattled heart
The need to transcend anger is never more movingly expressed than in the climactic scene in which Priam humbles himself before Achilles to gain the release of his son Hector's remains.
"It's one of the most heartbreaking scenes in literature," Benioff says, and a cast favorite as well. Perhaps that's because of the unbearable truth of the moment. A sonless father and a fatherless son. An old king facing death with dignity and a young warrior who chose death and eternal renown long before he left for Troy and who must now confront the full weight of that commitment.
"If I do this one thing, you're still my enemy in the morning," Pitt's Achilles says.
"You're still my enemy tonight," Priam (Peter O'Toole) counters. "But even enemies can show respect." And Achilles acquiesces.
"Achilles' heel is ... his heart," says Pitt. "It isn't until Priam knocks some sense into him that he is able to come to some understanding of his humanity."