Recently, I saw Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Interesting how some films become entitled in the public perception with the name of the author and/or filmmaker. I remember when Bram Stoker’s Dracula came out, after decades upon decades of Dracula movies that had never found it necessary to distinguish themselves in that way. In that instance, Coppola was, I think, making a claim for the film’s fidelity to the original novel, and it did rate such acknowledgement, although at the end it was not Stoker’s vampire, but, oddly, it was Goethe’s.
That is subject for a different post, though. In this instance the distinction is intended to underscore the interpretation put forward. Interpretation or liberties. Depends who you ask. The film has caused a stir. which is an achievement. Work pitched at that level should cause a stir, otherwise what would be the point? The controversy is an indication that he had done something worthy of debate.
To begin with, everyone thinks they know the story. At the end of the Trojan War, the victorious Greeks get back in their ships and go home. Odysseus gets lost, impeded by the gods, distracted, and takes ten years and the loss of his entire cadre of men to get back to Ithaca, where The Suitors have gathered over time to supplant him in his wife’s bed and on his throne. He does return though, and kills them all and takes his place again with Penelope.
So much for plot. It’s an epic cycle, with lots of incidents along the way. It has long been the template for numerous other works, including such wildly diverse takes as Gulliver’s Travels and James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Which is exactly why it keeps being revisited. Not the plot but the reason for the plot. Theme, I suppose, but that’s too simple. Everyone thinks they know what that means and then ignore it for the parts of the story that stir the imagination. Cyclops, the Sun God, Circe and Calypso, the Sirens. We engage with story to be thrilled. Sometimes it is only by chance we realize the plot only thrills us because of the costs paid by the characters. And the Odyssey is all about costs. Costs and consequence and the toll these take upon someone psyche.
I suppose you could relate that to theme. Or subtext. But it’s not subtext, it’s on the surface.
Odysseus plays a game of chicken with the gods. He assumes he can outsmart them. He too often ends up outsmarting himself. But it’s that quality of in-your-face arrogance that makes him an attractive character for film. Kirk Douglas may have best captured it in his version, with that infectious “come on, boys, we can beat this!” attitude virtually throughout.
Christopher Nolan has stated that he based his interpretation on the recent Emily Wilson translation. The opening lines tell us immediately what kind of Odysseus she sees
Tell me about a complicated man
Simple, straightforward. Another recent translation, from 2000, gives it this way:
SPEAK, MEMORY—
Of the cunning hero,
The wanderer, blown off course time and again
After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights.
(Stanley Lombardo)
The difference is profound. In classic—or, I should say, traditional—style, the latter is telling us up front how we’re supposed to see Odysseus. Cunning, a hero. Wilson strips all that out and says simply that he’s complicated. But there is a world of difference between those two approaches. For one, Wilson does not tell us how to see him. Does not say he’s a hero. The cunning part for her is too distracting. Rather, he’s complicated, and that opens the rest of the narrative for a different way of assessing what follows.
Nolan has obviously resonated with that difference. His Odysseus is unhappy, resentful (of Agamemnon, at being at Troy, at being away from Ithaca), and, yes, clever, but one gets the sense that it’s the cleverness of experience, being able to grapple with what life throws at him, but not always able to make the smartest choice. (He shoots an arrow at Polyphemus as he and his men are escaping, which serves only to anger the cyclops and make him follow as best he can. complicating their getaway. Eurylocus calls him on it (why did you do that?) and his fit of pique nearly wrecks their chance to get away clean. Odysseus came up with the horse as an attempt to end the war so he can go home, and for the rest of the film he revisits the consequences, almost obsessively, realizing what he facilitated. This is a haunted Odysseus.
It may be useful to remember that for a long time it was believed Troy was nothing but legend. That there was, perhaps, no such city, and the events related by Homer(s) did not happen, at least in one place in that way. Once the ruins of Troy were found, it became obvious that Troy was much older and more storied than previously believed. Schliemann uncovered nine cities, one atop the other, and it is still debated which one is Homer’s Troy. The focus comes down to Troy VI and Troy VII. There had been more than the one war. Homer’s epic dates from roughly three centuries after the events depicted. Modern scholars also identify within the poems several different periods present, so the best we can say is that the poem is likely an amalgam of stories. Perhaps there was a Homer who finally collated several oral versions into one major epic, but the story itself is an amalgam. Also, based on remarks made by T.E. Lawrence, who produced a prose translation of it, the Odyssey may have been produced by someone else. Or several someone elses.
Be that as it may, the Trojan War with which The Odyssey is concerned happened in the midst of a region-wide collapse of major civilizations. Egypt weathered it, but a crisis cut the foundations from beneath several other empires.
This is remarked on in the film. The Sea Peoples—whoever they were—were named as a major threat all through this period, invaders from no one knew where, causing major destruction all around the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. This is emphasized in the film and Nolan seems to tie it to the violation of the Peace of Zeus, which was a standard of hospitality. In my opinion, the destruction of Troy as shown in the film is the ultimate violation of that pact and Odysseus seems to know it as soon as it happens. That he is an instrumental part of that destruction has a deep and lasting effect on him. On top of the recognized PTSD he suffers, is added the guilt of having been the cause of the ultimate wreckage of, for want of a better way to say it, civilized behavior.
Nolan has taken material from other sources, notably the Aeneid, and added a few modern observations and created another composite work. My only comment regarding the detractors of the film is that they seem overly attached to the primary material, which itself was likely a composite, with aesthetic choices made to meet the expectations of contemporary audiences.
The scope of the film is both epic and constrained. The color palette is muted compared to other versions, and the claustrophobic desperation of all concerned parties can seem stifling at times. But all that would seem consistent with the obvious attempt to de-mythologize the narrative. The only god that makes any appearance in the film is Athena and then portrayed as much as an hallucination as anything objectively real. Consequences are attributed to the gods even when it is obvious they could be due to perfectly mundane causes. The bits of magic on hand are short term and could be nothing more than the delusions of psychically distraught people groping for sense in the aftermath of the senseless.
That it ends with the reaffirmation of the “hero’s” dilemma—the hero cannot come home, and if he does show up, he cannot stay—is neatly handled by the self-assumed exile.
While Nolan may have acknowledged his inspiration as Emily Wilson’s translation, he went on and made his own interpretation. This Odysseus is a damaged man who knows he has helped destroy the world. His choices are the not the clear-eyed results of a wise and clever man at the top of his game. He has a tenuous hold on reality and morality and as seen here quite willingly stays with Calypso in a lotus-fueled vacation rather than face the world he has helped make. But he can’t ignore it forever. There is a man committed to his principles deep down and they struggle up eventually.
This is not a simple Voyage Home story, its message aimed at a contemporary audience with issues of its own. Insofar as we are all complicated, this Odysseus attempts to speak to that in all of us.
