In Search of the Trojan War
by Bill Lyons
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Actor: Colin Renfrew, Jerome Sperling, John Chadwick, Michael Wood, Peter ConnollyDirector: Bill Lyons
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: David Jackson
Cinematographer: Richard Ganniclifft
Producer: Bill Lyons
Editor: Helen Mandt
Editor: Patrick Haggerty
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 345 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-04-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Worldwide
DVD Reviews of In Search of the Trojan War
DVD Review: Myth: fact or fiction?
Summary: 5 Stars
An unlikely, exuberant blend of history, myth, literature, politics and geography, this search is one of the few and one of the best of its kind.
The series presented by Michael Wood is as relevant and as entertaining as it was when first shown in 1985. It is a quest: far from compiling all known facts about the Trojan War (there are none, as we have no direct evidence) Wood shows convincingly that archaeologists and historians have often looked for, and selected, artifacts that bolster the interpretation they have previously held. Wood engagingly confesses to this himself. By surveying earlier interpretations of what may have happened in Bronze Age Greece to inspire the poem of Homer, and interviewing contemporary historians who give their interpretations, Wood invites us to evaluate these. This is a program for people who enjoy the thinking process.
There are few shortcomings to the series: these can be summarised briefly. Wood's objective to allow landscape to interpret history sounds much better in the study. In the field it can too easily become a mix of light journalism and travelogue. Quite a few of the landscapes must have had a more obvious connection with the subject to the makers of the series. The viewer probably needs to concentrate, review and reflect upon some sequences; at first viewing the effect is somewhat diffuse. But as this is a series viewers will almost certainly watch more than once, this is not a great flaw. And the landscape does shed light on the subject in many sequences.
There is some recapitulation, and a few sequences where pacing flags as we see Wood walking down a street approaching a museum, or climbing its steps. The summaries were necessary originally for viewers who joined the series late but could have been removed for the DVD release. But these, and the slow spots, are useful for the brain to catch its breath. This series covers a lot of ground.
The key to the subject is the poem of Homer: the Iliad. Wood tells us quite a bit about Homer. His name means the hostage, which brings many possibilities to mind, one of which is that he might have been a foreigner, not Greek. There seems to have been many who had a hand in the Iliad: Bronze Age bards who sang of the greatness of their patron's families, hymns celebrating founders and demi-gods, a seventh century poet who made a definitive version, scholars in the time of Pesistratos who collated differences in order to standardise the text and began the written tradition, and the scribes who passed down copies to the Renaissance period, when the text was first printed. How text can be preserved in an oral tradition is demonstrated by Wood in visits to Ireland and Turkey, where we see traditional tales of the length of the Iliad being performed. How reliable historical references are in such a tradition can of course not be demonstrated in Homer as there are no comparative sources. But Wood explains some of the techniques bards used to remember lengthy texts, epithets always associated with particular places and people, repeated phrases to describe, for instance, the sea or the dawn. Many scholars have commented on the exactness of scenic descriptions, as though Homer (or his sources) had been there at Troy. Wood interviews soldiers who argue that the portrait of the Greek soldiers is in accordance with their own experiences of men's behavior in war. He interviews a weapons specialist who has reconstructed the weapons Homer describes. Slowly and convincingly Wood builds a case that a war did take place at the traditional date, though as the whole purpose of the narrative tradition was to glorify the past and exaggerate the exploits of heroes, it is likely to have been on a smaller scale.
Wood has impressive success following Homer's epithets about places. He demonstrates that windy Troy is still very windy, that Thisbe of the pigeons still has many pigeons, that many of the lesser contingents in the war came from sites unoccupied since Bronze Age times and which today bear traces of Mycenean architecture.
Two of the most unlikely details of Homer's war Wood is not as successful in explaining. The first, that the war lasted ten years, he does not mention. Long wars, as distinct from a state of hostility between two powers with seasonal raiding parties and occasional battles, were beyond ancient logistics and economies. The Peloponnesian War, which was a long war, destroyed the entire Greek culture. A ten year siege in territory controlled by the Hittites, far more powerful than any Greek state, would definitely not be possible. The second unlikely detail is the wooden horse, which nobody has ever believed in. Wood speculates it was a metaphor for Poseidon, lord of earthquake, who often took the form of a herd of thundering horses. There is evidence that one city at Troy could have been destroyed by an earthquake (although in a later episode Wood questions this theory).
Wood traces the rise and fall of ancient Bronze Age powers: Minoan, Mycenean, Egyptian, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylon, and tries to make a case for Greece in the period being united under a loose federation. Famously in pre-classical and classical times Greece was not united: there was no 'Greece', and Wood doesn't get very far with the idea of a united Greece led by the overlord Agamemnon.
Troy and its war are not just the province of Homer. For us they are the creation as well of visionaries, pioneers of the science of archaeology, who dug on or near the site which today is recognised as the site of Troy: men such as Heinrich Schliemann, spade in one hand and a copy of Homer in the other. Wood surveys these archaeologists and their theories and discoveries. Wood also looks at the career of Sir Arthur Evans, though refraining from any examination of Minoan civilisation, merely commenting on later Mycenean occupation of Minoan sites.
Helen? Was she the lovliest woman who ever lived? The cause of the Trojan War? Love, Wood admits, leaves no trace in the archaeological record.
Wood's other series are well worth investigating. Almost as good as the Trojan War series is the one on Legacy, a survey of key civilisations east and west (though at six times the market price of Wood's other programs it is unlikely to find many buyers). In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great is a stunning journey through several war zones which gives a vivid impression of Alexander's great achievement. In search of Shakespeare is just about the best discussion available on Shakespeare in this form.
Description of In Search of the Trojan War
The tale of the Trojan War has fascinated and intrigued people for thousands of years. But is there any truth in Homer's epic poem? Charismatic historian Michael Wood brings to life the heroes and the romance of the Bronze Age in this award-winning archaeological detective story filmed in Greece, Turkey, Ireland and Berlin.Bestsellers in DVD
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