I didn’t think much of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it since. Some of that rethinking has been about defending my lack of enthusiasm for the film, since most people I’ve spoken to have either loved it, or at least liked it.
Buy The Odyssey: The Official Screenplay
When asked why I didn’t like the movie by a recent dinner companion, I blurted out, “It had spectacle but it didn’t have beauty. I missed the beauty.” And for those who say the story isn’t about pleasant things, then I say, beauty can make the horrors even more poignant.
As for it not being “faithful” to the story: even if there were one standard version of the Odyssey (presumably with a Caucasian Helen to satisfy you-know-who), what would be the point of doing a movie that essentially mimicked it?
Second – and I’m not a classics scholar so this is just IMHO – the “original” poem was itself a collection of orally delivered poems – essentially folk songs. Someone (or probably a bunch of people working in the Homer Syndicate) must have collected all of these and thrown them into some kind of order (it’s the original shaggy dog story, among other things).
So the “original” is an attempt to impose order on songs that had been handed down for generations, and that wasn’t the end of its metamorphoses – not by a long shot. Once it got into writing, it’s been translated, mistranslated and retranslated ever since. We’re looking at “faithfulness to the original” through the wrong end of the telescope; it’s actually kind of a miracle that the story has survived as a recognizable whole for as long as it has.
It must have something, this story, because it also continues to be riffed on, in media ranging from the musical theater (The Golden Apple) to a trilogy of books by Claire North that tell the story from Penelope’s point of view: how she had to wield power from a position of deep powerlessness simply to survive. Among other things, Penelope develops a sophisticated spy network of women to help her rule from the shadows.
Stephen Fry’s Greek mythology quartet includes another view of Odysseus – one whose self-confessed “sin” (if it is one) is being reckless in satisfying his curiosity. Fry implies strongly, for example, that the whole Cyclops episode could have been avoided by a more cautious commander, thus avoiding Poseidon’s curse, etc. But if Dorothy clicked her heels when she got the ruby slippers in Munchkinland, the movie would be 30 minutes long!
In other words, Odysseus gotta Odysseus.
Circe, Circe, Woman Without Mercy
The subhead is a line from a Golden Apple song, which casts Odysseus/Ulysses as a country boy being tempted by the vices and pleasures of the big city — sex, booze and (since this is set around 1900) ragtime, shameless music.
Even I’ve had to admit being impressed by Samantha Morton’s Circe in the Nolan Odyssey. If she is indeed magical (and not just metaphorical), it’s not wave-your-wand and twitch-your-nose magic: it’s rough magic. She forcefully reveals the men’s porcine inner selves and hoggish appetites, scraping away their veneer of humanity with her nails.
Besides Morton’s bravura turn, I think the reason so many people like this scene is because Odysseus acts like a hero in it. He doesn’t take the bait by eating the tripe soup (I know they’re supposed to be starving, but yuck); he’s able to counter her knife at his throat; and he rescues his men.
Odysseus the Reluctant Hero
So am I simple-minded for wanting a heroic Odysseus? And remember that this would not preclude his having many faults, shortcomings, etc. He is a complicated guy, after all. No, I think I like this scene because the action is clear. It’s like a well-made one-act play dropped into a wine-dark sea of landing on islands and getting chased off islands (after a while I was reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and its many cries of “Run away! Run away!”)
By the way, what was that island with the giants in armor? Not one of whom (or which) we heard anything from? That’s where Nolan lost me, having that wasted scene so soon after the Cyclops also chased them into the sea.
Also – would it have killed them to buy a few more torches for the palace banquet hall? It shouldn’t be as cleanly and evenly lit as Nottingham Castle in the big final sword fight in The Adventures of Robin Hood, but after the arrows-through-the-axe-heads (and what a visual letdown that was), I couldn’t tell who was fighting who, with what weapon, or why. I did enjoy Robert Pattinson auditioning for the part of Douglas C. Neidermeyer, ’63, Killed in Vietnam by his own troops (thank you, Animal House).
I’m being flippant, and I get it: the point is that fighting and battles are muddy and uncertain. You can’t say this is a movie that glorifies violence or even glamorizes it. And Odysseus is supposed to be all about using cunning rather than brute force, though that cunning creates the conditions for the sack of Troy, of which the gods and Nolan obviously disapprove.
Yet what really can’t be changed about this ever-changing story is that it’s about a time when men proved their honor, even their worth, through their skill with weapons. But it feels, to me at least, that this tension – between Odysseus as PTSD-scarred battle veteran versus wily old campaigner – feeds the drama only fitfully. But it’s Nolan’s riff – his contribution to the ongoing, centuries long discussion and dissection of this crazy story.
