Helen of Troy

Around 1200 BC, the city of Mycenae was the most powerful in Greece. The king of Mycenae was Agamemnon, and he controlled almost all of Greece. Agamemnon's brother Menelaus was the king of Sparta and his wife was Helen of Sparta.

Across the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, which is now the Turkey, was the great city of Troy. The Princes of Troy, Hector and Paris, were visiting Sparta to make peace with Menelaus, because the two city-states, Sparta and Troy, had been fighting for many years. While Paris was in Sparta, he fell in love with Helen. When Paris and Hector left, Paris convinced Helen to run away with him. When Menelaus discovered this, he went to his brother Agememnon and together the two gathered Greece's massive army and sailed to Troy. Over ten thousand Greeks besieged Troy for a full ten years, but they couldn't enter the city. Finally, a Greek king, who is conquered by Agememnon, came up with a plan. He devised a massive statue, made from wood, in the shape of a horse. The statue was actually hollow, and inside, many Greek warriors could hide. The Greek army then pretended to sail away from Troy, but really hid behind and island off the coast. When the Trojans say that the invaders had gone, they investigated. Finding nothing but the wooden horse, they thought that the Greeks had left it as a tribute to Posideon, the Greek god of the sea, for a safe journey home. The Trojans hauled the horse into their city and celebrated until nightfall. When the city was asleep and tired from their revelry, the soldiers inside the horse crept out and opened the gates they has spent 10 years trying to breach. The Greek army, which had returned from the island, stormed in through the gates and burnt the city to the ground.

If compared with the movie Troy, this film was more faithful to the original text. It also did not fail to explain the story so they did not leave us, the viewers, thinking of the reasons why such events occurred. Because of this, I was able to sympathize with the characters in the movie. A good understanding of a character's personality enables me to put myself in the shoes of that character and thus allowing me to feel exactly how a character in the story would feel in certain events. The acting of the cast is quite convincing and worthy of Oscar nominations. They may not be instant winners for they still have to prove themselves to everyone but for the people who do not have that much name in the industry and are still able to perform well, the fruits of hard work are surely rewarding.

In my opinion, the plot is simple but the numerous characters in the story complicated it. Each of us have own opinion and so it may appear confusing for someone who would just read the story and not visualize what is really happening. The flow of events is simple. The only thing that complicates it, from what I see, is the challenge of putting all the characters' personalities together without having