Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

(light, dreamy music)

- [Narrator] Achilles awakes with a start.

He has had the same dream again,

a dream that haunts him,

the persistent echo of the choice

with which his mother, Thetis, confronted him

as he was leaving for Troy.

Either fight alongside the Greeks

and see his name celebrated until the end of time,

but die carrying out his exploits,

or stay at home with his family

to live a long, beautiful life,

blessed by the gods, with the woman he loves,

but to renounce the glory that crosses the centuries.

Before him stand Ajax and Ulysses.

They have come to tell him that Agamemnon, King of Kings,

humbly begged him to return to the heart of the fighting,

that he was returning Briseis and more gifts

than he could possibly hope for.

Achilles stares at his companions.

Yes, he has made his choice.

He will not remain in his tent.

But he will fight no more for Agamemnon.

He will return to Greece.

And he advises his companions to do the same.

He reminds them that he only agreed to come to this war

because it suited him,

and not to avenge the honor of a cheated husband,

even though it be Menelaus,

the brother of Agamemnon, King of Kings.

Ulysses remains speechless.

Then the Greeks have lost the Trojan War.

Achilles sinks into his rancor.

May this arrogance not draw the anger of gods.

(lightning crashing)

At the same instance, in Troy,

Priam and his generals are exultant.

The old king is now convinced that victory

is just hours away.

The Greeks have lost the favor of the gods.

Their losses mount steadily.

Tonight, the wall that the Greeks erected

to protect their ships will be destroyed.

And all the Trojans will have to do is burn them.

Hector nods.

Yes, of course, the Greeks are on their knees.

But they resist.

And all the assaults led by Hector are repulsed.

(gentle dramatic music)

Is the son of Priam the only one aware of the fragility

of the Trojan position?

He knows that Troy will not prevail

as long as Athena favors the Greeks.

She is the Goddess of War.

It is she who prevents the Trojans

from finishing off the Greeks.

(inspiring music)

Hector has an idea,

that the Trojans should henceforth honor the goddess

by worshiping her on a level

with the other protector gods of Troy,

Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite.

Priam listens to his son, then sweeps aside his proposal.

He is afraid of offending the gods who defend his people

if he offers Athena recognition

as one of the goddesses of Troy.

(crickets chirping)

No, there is not point trying to deceive

the goddess of the ruse.

You must attack without delay.

Apollo will guide Hector's arm,

and the God of Light will be stronger

than the Goddess of War.

(dramatic music)

So be it.

Hector will obey his father.

But he is gripped by a dark foreboding.

He adjusts his armor,

takes his sword and his javelin

and marches resolutely towards the gates of Troy.

Aeneas joins him.

Together, the two Trojan generals

harangue their calvary men,

then gallop their horses to the dunes

where the Greek army is camped.

(dramatic music)

Again, the impact is appalling.

Again, the Trojans rush in.

Again, the Greeks retreat.

In his tent, Achilles listens with indifference

to the clamor of battle.

A young page enters timidly.

In a toneless voice he announces

that the King of Kings, Agamemnon, has been wounded.

An arrow has pierced his shoulder.

And the fiery Diomedes, too, has been hit.

Achilles does not flinch.

(men yelling)

Nothing seems capable of stopping the Trojans.

Just as hunters will exhaust a boar

in the depths of a wood,

so Hector's men crowd around Ulysses, like hungry wolves.

A spear hits the king of Ithaca's shield.

But just when it's about the penetrate the Greek's entrails,

an invisible hand diverts it,

that of Athena.

Ulysses is saved.

(sword plunging into flesh)

But a Trojan arrow hits him in the thigh.

He must be rescued.

Ajax and Menelaus, after a fierce fight,

manage to wrench him from the battlefield.

The Trojans sow terror in the Greek ranks.

In a prodigious clash, the stockade collapses.

The ramparts are broken.

In the wall built by the Greeks to protect their ships,

a long breach appears like a gaping wound.

Everywhere are upturned chariots, disemboweled horses,

arms, heads strewn on the ground,

men piled atop each other, dying.

An immense clamor rises to the heavens,

even up to Olympus.

Far from the fury of men,

Hera helplessly observes the Greek debacle.

Zeus had banished them from the battlefield.

But he took the Trojans' side

to please a second order goddess, Thetis.

He didn't punish Ares for firing up Hector's troops,

nor his dear daughter Athena who had just saved Ulysses

from certain death.

To the gods, Hera designates the theater of operations.

Agamemnon's men will not resist for long

if the divinities meant to protect them

do not dare come to their rescue.

(lightning crashing)

Do the gods of Olympus intend to live indefinitely,

according to Zeus.

One of them cannot hide his annoyance.

Poseidon, the one they call Earth Shaker,

can no longer bear his brother Zeus dictating his behavior.

His fury is unbound.

But all the gods, including the prickly Poseidon,

refuse to act.

They swore to the master of Olympus to remain neutral

and have no desire to incur his wrath

and his punishments.

So Hera returns to her apartments.

An idea comes to her.

She takes a bath, does her hair,

places a few drops of scented oil on her neck,

wears the most alluring fabrics that exist,

and visits her great rival Aphrodite.

Since the beginning of the Trojan War,

the two goddesses have sworn a boundless hatred

for each other.

Hera did not accept Aphrodite being designated

by the young Paris as the most beautiful

of all the goddesses.

That's why she supports the Greeks,

as Aphrodite is protecting Paris and the Trojans.

The two goddesses are face-to-face.

Between sobs, Hera comes to recognize her defeat.

The fate of the war is now sealed.

Aphrodite and her proteges have won.

The Greeks are defeated.

All that remains for Hera is to try to win back

the favor of her husband Zeus.

To do so, she seeks the help of the goddess

who emerged victorious from this conflict and their quarrel.

She begs Aphrodite to lend her her belt,

this famous embroidered belt

in which her charms are encased,

this belt that bewitches whoever wears it,

and can seduce the most insensitive beings,

the same one which was once offered to Paris.

Aphrodite is gloating.

So she had won.

And even the formidable Hera submits.

She accepts.

She will concede to her vanquished rival the love,

the desire by which mortals and immortals are slain

so that Zeus returns to her

and that unity reigns again amongst the gods of Olympus.

She undoes the embroidered belt,

puts it in the hand of Hera,

and tells her that she will not return to Olympus

without having attained what her heart desires.

Hera then goes to her divine husband.

She is humble, but also cajoling.

And she asks permission to return to his bed.

Desire immediately clouds the great Zeus's caution.

And as on the first day, one and the other come together.

(gently dramatic music)

But Hera does not stop there.

In the greatest secrecy, she instructed Hypnos,

the God of Sleep, to follow her at a distance.

She convinced him that the mighty Zeus wanted to rest,

but could not sleep.

So just after their lovemaking, at a sign from Hera,

Hypnos puts Zeus to sleep.

A soft torpor then covers the islands of the God of Gods.

Overwhelmed by love and sleep,

he sinks into a lethargy that Hypnos takes care

to make as deep as it is lasting.

Hera stands up.

A glance at her sleeping husband,

and she hurries to Olympus.

To the assembled gods, she announces that Zeus is asleep

and that they can thus take advantage of this respite

to fly to the Greeks' rescue

without risking divine lightning.

But it is Poseidon, in particular, she is addressing.

Poseidon, irritated by the wall built by the Greeks,

raised the sea against them.

But he has picked the wrong fight, Hera tells him.

To tell the truth, she has no difficulty

in convincing Poseidon, the eternal plotter,

relegated to his palace under the sea

to take sides with the Greeks

Zeus wanted to see lose the war.

(thundering music)

Poseidon returns to his palace,

then heads for the Greek camp.

(dramatic music)

Once on the shore, he takes on the appearance of Calchas.

Calchas, diviner of great powers,

the man who knows how to interpret the will of the gods.

Agamemnon and his companions

stare at the old man in astonishment.

Just two days ago, what Calchas told him

forced Agamemnon to give up his captive,

the beautiful Chryseis.

The seer assured him that it was the only way

to calm the anger of the god Apollo.

(gentle dramatic music)

What bad news will he bring this time?

But against all odds, Calchas exalts them to hold,

to regroup, to launch an assault against Hector's calvary.

He implores them not to lose hope, to return to the fight.

Addressing Agamemnon, he claims that if he rejoins battle,

he will witness the fall of Troy,

that his day of glory has never been so close.

With these words, he leaves the tent,

resumes his divine form,

and rushes onto the plain, uttering a furious cry.

On the other side of the wall, now broken,

Poseidon's intervention has a prodigious effect.

Here the battle takes a different turn.

It now turns to the advantage of the Greeks.

The Trojans are repulsed.

(men yelling) (dramatic music)

Through the melee, more and more confused,

Hector suddenly sees Ajax.

Like a river in flood, the Greek giant brandishes his hammer

mowing down warriors and horses by the dozen.

Hector throws his javelin at him.

It is stopped by the Greek's shield.

Ajax, not losing a second,

seizes ones of the enormous rocks

which serve as anchors for the ships

and catapults it with all his force at the Trojan.

Hector is hit full in the chest.

Around Hector, astonishment reigns.

The Greeks rush in to finish off the son of Priam.

The Trojans cover him with their shields.

Fending off mortal blows, they lift their general,

lay him on a chariot,

and manage to carry him off to the city.

As they arrive at the foot of the walls,

Hector regains consciousness.

He tries to get up, but collapses again.

Little by little, the dark night envelops his eyes.

(ominous music)

Sleep has just left Zeus.

With a bound, the God of Gods is on his feet.

He looks around for Hera.

Then he leans over the clouds towards the plain of Troy.

On the battlefield, he sees Trojans and Greeks,

the former shaken, the latter jostling them from behind.

He sees Athena guiding Agamemnon's archers' arrows,

Apollo guiding those of Priam's archers.

And above all, he sees his brother, Poseidon,

like a madman, encouraging the Greeks,

unleashing a storm upon Troy

and what looks like a real tidal wave.

(dramatic music)

And there, hastening towards the gates of Troy

in the pouring rain is Hector, wounded,

carried by his men.

A terrible anger seizes the God of Gods.

(lightning crashing)

In an instant, he is here on Olympus.

He grabs the insolent Hera by the neck.

He is about to crush her neck when he remembers

that she is his sister,

and his wife,

but also that he has already punished her in the past.

He remembers that he had hung her in the clouds

with two anvils on her feet and a gold chain on her arms

because she had dared to rally the other gods against him.

(gentle dramatic music)

Later, he will decide the punishment to be meted out

to she, who since the beginning,

has done everything for Troy to disappear

and the Greeks to triumph.

But first, he must halt the carnage.

He summons Athena, who doesn't dare show herself before him,

and immediately flees.

He launches a lightning bolt at his brother, Poseidon,

which he avoids by parrying with the back of his trident

before diving into the heart of the ocean

and sinking through the waves to his underwater palace.

From this palace, far from men and gods,

the Earth Shaker issues Zeus, his brother,

with what sounds like much more than a warning.

He agrees to withdraw before the God of Gods,

but he orders him to destroy Troy.

Otherwise, it would become an incurable grudge between them.

Zeus contemplates the plain of Troy.

Everywhere, hundreds lie dead.

And one man, whose life hangs by a thread,

a man who must be saved at all costs.

Hector, son of Priam, is dying.

(dramatic music)