Actually, I firstly knew about the well-known myth,Troy,by reading comics when I was young,and that was also the first time I read a western myth with so many heroes.I felt the cruelty of wars and the inequality between human and divinity from the pictures and brief words sideward.To be honest,at that time,it was quite difficult for me to remember those heroes’ names because their names were too long and awkward to read.After I begun to learn English, I acquired that every name of ancient Greek people is of great meaning linked to their parents’ expectation,personal characters,experience or some other things.For example,Helen,the name of the heroine,means light in Greek.Reading their name in English is more smooth.When I can read the literature work of the myth and reflect it more deeply with age.
The movie,Helen of Troy,shows us a famous Greek myth,which embraces intense desire,strong request for humanism,and deep love,apart from tragic wars.Though actors may be not able to reprise mythical figures in the movie perfectly because there are unique images of heroes and females in everyone’s heart and the movie don’t reflect the mythy in accordance with the literature completely,the movie reveals themes above excellently.
The virtual origin of the war is intense desire.Hera,Athena and Aphrodite were all eager to be judged as the most beautiful goddess,and from my standpoint, the golden apple was the symbol of their desire. To realize their desire,Hera pleased Pairs with wealth, Athena pleased him with victory and glory,while Aphrodite promised the most beautiful woman of the world,Helen,to him.As a shepherd without noble birth,I think it’s normal for Pairs to choose Helen because apart from being accompanied with a beautiful woman to live a happy and simple life,wealth,victory and glory were almost rubbish for a mortal. At that time,compared with three goddesses,Pairs was a simple guy without strong selfish desire,but never could he think of that goddesses’ desire made wreaked havoc of war and his fate and Troy’s fate would experience major turning due to his selection.At beginning,Pairs did not want to bring wars to his motherland and Greek city-states.He was so poor to be condemned as the culprit of the war and Troy’s subjugation.In the movie,the desire of Greek kings that expanded their territory was also the origin of the war--it was unreasonable to launch a war which unified all Greek city-states’ power only for retaking a woman and safeguarding the reputation of Greece.In the movie,when Menelaus was aware that he couldn’t kill his rival,Pairs,on account of the guard of god,so he stopped attack.Then the two men sat down together and had a talk about Helen and the war calmly--their final silence indicated their consensus that the war was actually meaningless and people should have not killed each other.Later Helen’s surrender could not stop the war,which also proved the main purpose of Greek armies was not Helen. As I see it,Pairs was innocent,and it was the desire of gods and kings brought people pain.
Like many other western myths,strong request for humanism is also an important topic of the myth. It’s widely believed that the origin of humanism in western world lies in Greek culture.Humanism advocates personal freedom,equality and self value that are strongly expected to get by oppressed people. The myth can be perceived as a Greek condemnation on oppression and the strong request for humanism--people ought to dominate their own fate and their lives shouldn’t be toys of power.From the beginning to the end,gods made great difference.It’s unusual that the movie shows the power of gods indirectly--no god appeared in the battlefield but their power existed.It’s easy to find that people were unable to resist the wish of god and the duels between two heroes were interfered by gods’ power,which led to numerous amazing results.Beside,in my opinion,Princess Cassandra is a crazy,cold and poor figure whose spiritual world was dominated by gods--she clung to oracle that if Paris lives,Troy will be burnt,and she attempted to prevent the oracle coming true by a negative means--kill her brother.What she wanted to do was so cruel and in the meanwhile,her life was obsessed by the oracle,which led her life unhappy and full of scare.To be honest,the act of the actress exaggerates the image of Princess Cassandra,but it can immerse ourselves in ancient Greek’s fear to the gods and their prediction,how god’s power controlled people’s life and people’s strong request for humanism.
Last but not least,the element of love will never absent in Greek myths.I find that love is the common nature of human,nymphs as well as gods in Greek myths,and love can’t be eliminated completely by no means.The first scene of the movie was the birth of Paris-- when Paris was born,his elder sister，Princess Cassandra,who had the power to see into the future told her father,the king of Troy,a dire prediction that if the baby boy lives,Troy will be burnt.Thus the king decided to abandon the little baby,at that moment,it was maternal love that prompted the queen of Troy to struggle to rise up to recapture her son,but she failed. Many years later,when the king and the queen realized that the guy on the sand of the colosseum was their abandoned son,they hugged their son and recognized him,forgetting the terrible oracle.The plot of the movie was adopted from the literature and added more details about sincere emotions of human.For example,when Paris limped after a desperate fight against Menelaus,Hector offered to take the place of his injured brother to challenge Agamemnon--this is love between brothers.No matter how cruel the war was,sincere emotions always existed.
All in all,war is not the core theme of the myth or the movie.I believe concepts that worth pondering in the myth or the movie are abundant.
BD
