i only saw two movies this month. at least on the big screen anyway. so far...

the first one was troy.

now before any of you "film elite" start grinning your sparkling pearly white teeth and begin unloading your arsenal of cinematic rhetoric, proclaiming the evils of hollywood, brad pitt and the merits of any film with the name almodovar, amenabar, etc etc... save yourself the trouble. we know. this was already a given. right from the start. this was going to be a highly commercialized, superstar laden, literary unfaithful, trashed, washed, maked-up, ready for that close-up mr pitt treatment of homer's classic. packaged in a shiny brown box, ready for mass consumption. why would you expect something else?

i mean is there any one in the right mind stupid enough to try and fit a ten year epic into a movie 163 minutes long and still can manage to sleep at night thinking he did it some justice? we'll maybe wolfgang petersen is that kind of guy. but maybe not. because he's not stupid, he just doesn't give a fuck... he's a hollywood mercenary, with the killer instinct for flashy fight sequences out to make box office sales scream and he's probably just doing his job. you can't really blame him, unlike peter jackson, he doesn't have millions of thousands of rabid homer fans to contend with (well, at least i think homer fans are not as numberous and as fanatical as tolkien's followers are). but of course, i'm not really "comparing" him with peter jackson...

anyhow, arguing about the essence of genius filmmaking is obviously not applicable if you're gonna focus on troy. this simply isn't cinema at its finest. period. the reason i watched, and as if i need an apology, was simply for that (well, aside from the fact that an office mate keep recounting plots from the Illiad and i haven't read it myself so i thought this would make a sort of "for dummies guide")... to grab whatever entertainment hollywood has packaged for me: fight scenes, lavish production design, etc, etc.

the thing that occured to me though, after reading the synopsis from the main website and even before watching the movie, is the certain "miniscule" similarities between the events that led to the seige of troy and the present day, american "takeover" of iraq. agmemnon, in a megalomanic fit, "unites" the nation-states of greece becoming king of all greece. then he set his sights on troy, only he has no reason to wage an attack and if enough number of greeks will march under his command to win a war against a city reputed to be impenetrable is still a question. when the wife of his brother meneleus(king of sparta) eloped with a prince of troy, agamemnon found the perfect opportunity to declare his war. under the pretext of "recovering meneleus' wife and honor", he was able to rally the entire greek nations to attack troy. george w. bush on the other hand and also in a megalomanic fit, has set his sight on world domination. with the united states being the remaining superpower of the world this task would appear simple, only there are "rogue" nations that don't readily submit to U.S. pressure, so he quickly grouped them under the label "axis of evil." (it is no coincidence that the lone superpower of the world is also the place where cinema's mass marketing giants are located). he began his onslaught in afghanistan, using 9/11 as the perfect rationale for waging war. he didn't stop there though. next on the list was iraq. who was easier to hate than an iraqi dictator who, as he made the rest of us believe, was accumulating "weapons of mass destruction" and was ready to go into war again. under the pretext of "liberating the iraqi people and protecting worlds democracy", bush, ignoring and making a mockery of the united nations as an institution, ordered the invasion of iraq.

agamemnon didn't really attack troy to get helen back. he couldn't care less about his brother's marital problems, all he's really concerned at is domination of the known world. there really were no "weapons of mass destruction" in iraq, as the american forces themselves shamefully discovered. and from what it seems now, the iraqi people didn't really want to be "liberated" anyway, at least not in the american government's definition of the word. all bush was after was territorial and economic expansion and influence and maybe send a message to the remaining "rogue" nations out there that the united states is the big brother now, and nobody should stand in the way of big brother.

judging from bush's low ratings lately, it seems more and more americans are lately seeing through the hoax that bush has created, and the mess he has put his country to. it's a shame even some of the non americans, filipinos for one, fell for bush's prank. it's a pity that some in this country are readily agreeable to whatever comes out of a "white man's" mouth. as if everything that comes from a western culture is dogma and doesn't need to be questioned (on this note, this is why major general taguba's, a fil-american, admission of the american army atrocities in iraq(1,2,3) is really commendable). blame it on cultural hegemony. blame it on american tinkering at our education system. blame it on hollywood marketing.

by the way, the other film i saw was dirty dancing 2.