‘The Odyssey’ is a colossal triumph
Christopher Nolan’s film is as ambitious as they come, but it does justice to Homer’s legend as both an epic adventure and a meditation on guilt, fate and duty
By Cayle Reid
HOW DO YOU bring something fresh to a story that has already been told and retold a thousand times before? Homer’s Odyssey is one of humanity’s oldest tales. It was written down not long after the Greeks developed the technology to do so, around the 8th century BCE, predating democracy itself. It has both influenced and intrigued the world for three thousand years.
Suffice it to say that Christopher Nolan had a tall task on his hands when he decided to adapt The Odyssey for the big screen. His film opens with the words “It is a time of apparent magic.” But his world is curiously lacking in magic. Barring Athena, we do not see any of the Olympian Gods. And while the world does hold some magic, it is also tactile, haptic and real.
Nolan reinvents The Odyssey as an almost entirely human drama. It is simultaneously an epic homecoming, an epilogue to a devastating conflict and a prelude to civilisational collapse. With divine intervention kept to a minimum, Nolan’s odyssey becomes an ordeal of human passion and anguish amongst the backdrop of postwar disillusionment.
For those familiar with Nolan, it should come as no surprise that his film is an epic by every definition. It is rather long, but it feels shorter than its 172-minute runtime. That can be put down to some astute editing and the way the film treats time like an evidence board, with pins and red lines connecting suspects with newspaper clippings and clues. Non-linear doesn’t quite cover it. The present, future and different phases of the distant and near past are repeatedly shuffled. Moments are revisited, with their significance changing each time. For the characters, everything is experienced, remembered or envisioned in present tense, but for the audience the narrative is fluid.
On a technical level The Odyssey is again impressive. You might expect a film that was shot on IMAX cameras, features Gods and monsters and uses CGI (albeit with restraint) might risk looking like a superhero film, but there is a tangible realism to it. The big Trojan horse is clearly heavy. The Trojans don’t simply wheel it behind their city walls like they do in 2004’s Troy, they strain against its mighty bulk as hundreds of them heave it from the sea and along the beach. You can almost feel the salty ocean breeze flapping by your face. You shudder at the crunch of human bones within the jaw of Polyphemus the cyclops. You cringe at the splintering of wood as the Laestrygonians rend the Ithacans’ ships to pieces. This realism has its roots in Ancient Greek oral storytelling through what was called enargeia – the use of richly detailed language to make listeners feel as though a scene is unfolding right in front of them.
The Odyssey’s dialogue is modern, concise and frequently American accented. In contrast to the antiquated, literary and often British speech of previous adaptations of Greek myths. Nolan’s flexibility here allows most of his distinguished cast to stay in their comfort zones while making some of the text’s complexities easier for a modern audience to take in.
Jon Bernthal is Menelaus, king of Sparta. His thick New Yorker accent sounds strangely apt in the role. Benny Safdie is an almost always helmeted and surprisingly imposing Agamemnon. Lupita Nyong’o, whose casting was the cause of some ridiculous controversy, brings a quiet fierceness to the dual roles of Menelaus’ wife Helen and Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra. She laments her role in bringing war to Troy, though whether she originally left Menelaus willingly or not is, tactfully, left ambiguous. John Leguizamo brings some wizened toughness and veiled nobility to swineherd Eumaeus, with another New York accent entering the fray – I couldn’t help but pick up the occasional trace of Sid the Sloth, but that’s my own problem. Tom Holland’s Telemachus hits all the right notes as a boy whose fire and ambition outweigh his age, but I do find it amusing that he was once again forced to adopt an American accent.
Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, however, finds her agency considerably reduced. While Emily Wilson’s reinterpretation revolutionised the depiction of women in the text, and recent literature such as Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Penelopiad’, Natalie Haynes’ ‘A Thousand Ships’ provide the story’s women with the layers needed to become more than passive archetypes, Nolan’s Penelope has no desires other than to see the return of her husband. She advises against her son’s schemes to outsmart the suitors. And when she considers finally taking another husband, it is not for personal fulfillment, but because “Ithaca has spent too long without a king”. Even her most overt act of resistance, the undoing of Odysseus’ funeral shroud to delay choosing a suitor, is reduced to a minor ruse that is quickly uncovered. “I don’t want another husband, I want Odysseus,” she wails at the beginning of the third act. Nolan imbues most of the characters with relatable motivations and emotions, but Penelope’s blind devotion and surety that her husband lives remains curiously unrealistic.
If there is one word that has traditionally been used to describe Odysseus, it’s ‘wily’. But under Nolan’s treatment, history’s most notorious schemer is more of a direct, practical and occasionally gruff tactician rather than an inventive mastermind. Matt Damon brings depth to the role, and that’s because Nolan’s version of Odysseus is more burdened by his past than other interpretations.
Nolan’s Odysseus is riddled with guilt. He feels responsible for the deaths of his men, but also for the way in which the complete and total destruction of Troy was achieved. By creating the Trojan horse and presenting it as a gift and religious offering, Odysseus has violated Zeus’ law of hospitality. His deception of his young comrade Sinon (Elliot Page) also leaves a mark.
Throughout The Odyssey, we hear multiple characters lament the impending death of “our age of bronze”. They refer to the real bronze age collapse, which occurred around 1200 BCE and resulted in civilisational decay across the Mediterranean. The implication is that, with the destruction of Troy, the Greeks – and by extension Odysseus – have brought about irreversible change to their world. Even once Odysseus returns, reclaims his throne and repels the suitors – apologies if we’ve spoiled it for you, but you have had 3,000 years – he feels he cannot remain on Ithaca and return to his life as it was.
This is where Nolan’s film diverts from its source. Odysseus and Penelope leave their throne to Telemachus and embark on a voyage to chase the setting sun across the sea. Narratively it is no worse an ending, but thematically it aligns more closely with Nolan’s vision. After three hours of non-linear adventure, battle, survival and revenge, we get a decidedly sombre resolution. Odysseus has laid down his sword. He relinquishes his crown and sets out to make the most of what remains of his life in a world left ruined by war.
The Odyssey endures because it yields something new each time it is revisited. The light it refracts always catches the eye at a different angle. It asks moral questions: do we control our own fate? What are the limits of revenge? How should you treat strangers? How much can a marriage take? How can a soldier return to civilian life? The story has been moulded, reshaped and riffed on by the bards in those ancient halls, reinterpreted by every translator who carried it forward into modern language, and now adapted through Nolan’s distinct style. His Odyssey is not the definitive version, nor does it try to be.
Like many bards before him, Nolan has his version of The Odyssey. And it is one for our times.
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