The Song of Achilles - Book Review

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear. (Synopsis from Amazon)

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The Song of Achilles is a retelling of The Iliad for a modern audience, written in a literary style rather than a historical epic. In a lot of ways it’s similar to Mary Renault’s books, but I’m going to avoid comparing this to Mary Renault at every turn as, let’s face it, no author is really going to come out of that well.

Madeline Miller writes with a beautiful, almost lyrical style that at the same time is very easy to read, like a gentle breeze. This immediately gives the book a wistful, almost dream-like quality which I thought was surprisingly effective. It may be based on The Iliad, a very brutal and earthy book, but this novel does something completely different with the subject matter. I found that the dreaminess emphasised the idea that this is a semi-mythical story, slightly vague and ambiguous from so many retellings and so many years of history. However, despite this the characters felt very solid and alive, and their fears and longings were real. Often a dreamy book can create passive, dull characters, but this never happens here. Madeline Miller handles this difficult style perfectly, creating something both lovely and moving.

2 Weeks of Movies - Thor

Thor - 6/10

(quite a lot of spoilers!)

Appropriately enough, considering all the Avengers buzz, my next film is Thor. My response and my husband’s were divided on this one. He really didn’t like it; I thought it was fairly enjoyable, though the way the plot unravelled was a little disappointing.

The standard thing to do with superheroes is to start off with their origin story. Makes sense, especially for those with a particularly good origin story, like Spiderman. Unfortunately, the origin story can sometimes turn out to be the most interesting thing about the superhero, so that future outings with him or her fall a bit flat. Like Ironman. Like, well, everyone except the X-Men, really. Some superheroes even have a whole TV series built around their origin (Superman – Smallville, though I’ve actually never watched it). So tackling the origin story of Thor seems like a good move, and in fact, his origin story does happen to be a very good one. However, what we actually got was a bit of a muddle. The first half of the film was Norsey goodness, in Asgard (which looked FANTASTIC by the way), fighting Frost Giants, being blustery and prideful and generally like a good Viking god. Which was apparently bad... BAD Thor for wanting war. The last thing the king of the Viking gods wants is war. What are you thinking Thor? But anyway, this bit of the film was really very good.

Then Thor got cast out to Earth, and it sort of went downhill a bit from there. Which is a shame because this has the potential to be a really compelling story. Thor, aware of who he is but unable to do anything about it, powerless as a normal human, has to somehow find a place for himself in the world. Good stuff. Didn’t quite translate. What we actually got was a little too much Natalie Portman, and Thor making amusing mistakes because of not knowing how to interact socially in our world. Then a pointless bit with the hammer that felt like it was just there to shoe-horn SHIELD in. A surprisingly emotional bit where Loki visits and Thor begs to come home almost saved it, but then it meandered into more pointlessness. Thor was basically without powers for about one day (which is all it took to fall in love with Natalie Portman, despite there not being much chemistry there), and then straight back to Asgard again for the final fight. Earth was essentially meaningless except as a minor plot point. Doesn’t this miss the point a bit? It didn’t really feel like a superhero film; it felt like a fantasy/sci-fi focused on Norse-gods-as-aliens. I think I would have liked it better if it had just embraced this completely.

Apart from the slightly wonky plotting of the second half, I did enjoy the film. I thought the acting was very good, especially Thor and Loki. Costumes, effects and sets were amazing, and I loved the visualisation of Asgard. This could all have been a bit Flash-Gordon cheesy, but it actually wasn’t. The directing was good, the music was good, everything worked except the plot and the pacing. It did suffer a little, however, from the often inevitable too-much-sympathy-for-the-villain syndrome that these kinds of films produce. I liked Loki better than Thor. Sorry. Couldn’t help rooting for him. I wonder if that will be a problem for me in Avengers? I’ll have to wait and see.

So, while I wouldn’t say this was a bad film, I also wouldn’t say it’s one of the best of the superhero bunch. It would really be worth watching for the Asgard scenes alone, but thankfully there are a lot of other things that pull it up too. I do feel that it was really only the plot and pacing that let it down, mainly because of the need to cover an origin story in a couple of hours, which was perhaps better suited to serialisation. Thor’s acceptance-redemption-recovery arc needed to be slower and more believable. The director also clearly struggled with the need to include SHIELD to set up Avengers. That part really just shouldn’t have been there. If a second Thor film does get made, I’ll be interested to see what it has to offer now that his origin has been established. With the right story, I have a feeling it could be amazing.

2 Weeks of Movies - Immortals: The Incredible Tale of Theseus' Ineptitude

Immortals - 4.5/10

(some spoilers!)

Almost as bad as Conan. The visuals and the fights saved it from that distinction. And the fact that it didn’t send me to sleep.

But the story was bad. Reeeeeally bad. Hyperion (not a Titan, despite having the same name as one of the main Titans in Greek mythology and this being a movie about Titans), is searching for the Shining Bow of Plot so that he can release the Titans. This is because he hates the gods for letting his family die. The usual, in other words. Where are all these ‘vendetta against the gods’ movies coming from? It was the same with Clash of the Titans. Apart from the fact that it’s getting old very quickly anyway, it is COMPLETELY out of place in a film about Greek myth. Go up against the gods? Get a lightning bolt in your face. It’s that simple.

There are so many real Greek myths where heroes fight monsters and each other, go on exciting quests, explore mazes and sail to strange islands, face witches and evil magic... why not do one of those stories? Of course, this all happens while the gods look on and treat them like playing pieces in an oversized game of chess. That’s what Greek gods are like. They’re bastards and they’re proud of it.

But apparently in modern films the Greek gods are kindly, righteous beings who have sworn not to interfere in the mortal world because... it would prevent humans from having free will. (sigh) I can’t think of any sentiment less likely to come out of a Greek god’s mouth. And it seems they will not even interfere when a mortal man actually has the Shining Bow of Plot that will release the Titans and risk destroying everything. So Theseus has to stop it.

Yes, Theseus. The guy who killed the minotaur. The Greek hero with arguably the most interesting and richest mythology, with many different stories attached to his name. Of course, the film does not follow any of these stories, choosing to make up its own nonsensical plot instead. To be honest, the whole film would have worked better if they’d pretended it was a fantasy instead of a retelling of Greek myth. Then they could set their own rules and I would have been happier to accept them. I don’t even care that much about accuracy in stories about the ancient world (heck, I’m a fan of Xena), as long as they keep the feel or the spirit of it. This was so far removed it seemed a bit pointless.

Henry Cavill plays Theseus – that’s the guy from the Tudors, or, as we named him when we first saw him in Tristan and Isolde: Pretty, Son of Rufus. He did the best he could with a bad script. By the end of the film it is clear that Theseus is about the worst hero ever to have graced a cinema screen. He actually managed to fail in every conceivable way. He was supposed to stop Hyperion from getting the Shining Bow of Plot at all costs. What he actually did was get beaten in a few fights, then find the bow and take it out of its very well hidden resting place, right into the jaws of Hyperion’s finder dog. He then failed to stop Hyperion using it, and didn’t even stick around to help the gods clean up the mess. He did manage to kill Hyperion in the end. When it was too late. When Hyperion actually wasn’t a threat in any way anymore. On top of this, he slept with a virgin oracle, causing her to lose her powers of prophecy and knocking her up in the process. In every way, the people in this film would have been better off without him. However, this did not stop the gods from accepting him into Mount Olympus at the end and making him a god. But then, the gods were pretty hopeless too, so perhaps ineptitude is what defines a deity in Immortals.

The story was dire, but the film had some saving graces. The visuals were good, reminiscent of 300, and the fight scenes were well thought out and executed. Parts of the film were enjoyable to watch, when I wasn’t banging my head against the wall at Theseus’ incompetence (Theseus and Peter Petrelli would make a terrifying team). The acting wasn’t bad, and I liked the visual representation of the gods (it was different, but it worked. Yes even the helmets). The bellowing bull method of execution was a nice nod to the history of Greek tyrants, if a bit misplaced in this story. Unfortunately, all the style in the world could not have saved this film. It wasn’t as awful as Conan, but that’s about all I can say for it. And, hey, at least it wasn’t ‘Monsters.’