22:57.

Just watched Troy with the housemates. A movie ticket cost about $11 here so I've been very disciplined. With Troy, this afternoon Germaine spotted some Vietnamese student association at her uni selling tickets for $6 each, sms-ed slaving-over-essay-me who decided very promptly with Hannah in the affirmative.

They didn't quite like the movie, I think, though they giggled away at some scene of a certain Bloom shooting arrows like a certain elf (ahem, ahem)... but me, I was actually quite taken with it. Yes, at certain points I had to consciously suspend disbelief or brush away some cynical thought at "hollywoodization" in action but on the whole, Troy was decent, even good yeah despite me finding fault almost right from the beginning with something, specifically a too-clean horse carriage. But before that particular carriage (which rightfully should be dirtier since it had carried a king and his flunky across many sands), another scene had won me over.

The opening scene, when the narrator intoned some lines about how eternity haunts men and how we thus seek our immortality while we live grabbed me and pulled me into the movie screen. Figuratively, of course.

"Throughout time, men have waged war. Some for power, some for glory, some for honor - and some for love."

That tagline might do it for some, but I didn't see Troy as a love story. At least, the way this version of the story was shot, it was not about love to me.

It was about the fear of nothingness; the fear that when you live your limited years, you leave nothing here and possibly go to nothing. And thus you seek - in desperation to find meaning and in defiance - to make some meaning, to leave an indent in the pages of history for for whatever that's worth, it would give you something to hold on to and possibly... maybe comfort you before you close your eyes for the world to come. So you seek glory. And if your fear is strong enough, you would die for this glory.

Achilles served not his king or country but his desire to be remembered. He seeked glory so his name will still be on people's tongues a thousand years later.

I know where I'm going when my time here is done but I also know how it is like to be haunted by eternity.

There was a hollowness in the movie. The heroes, Achilles and Hector, doubted the gods their kings speak of and served, and indeed in the movie, the impotence of these gods juxtaposed against the heroes' sceptism birthed a painful hollowness overall. It was a lackness not due to the lack of a soul in the movie but a lackness due to an awareness of emptiness in existence. A tragic emptiness filled out the face of the Trojan king who decided on attacking the Greeks on the beach on the advice of his Apollo high priest. Tragic emptiness filled the girl who asked, "When will it all end?" and the sobbing princess who watched her husband failing and heard him die. But you see, it all makes sense because the pursuit of glory is hollow in itself. Achilles' drive and motivation was at its core empty. "Everyone dies," he said. Everyone dies, it is true.

And if someone's going to watch Troy soon, please help me note that opening line? Somehow on the way home, its entirety escaped me.

Thanks.