A Spoiler Review…
Although, the poem is 3000 years old, so it doesn’t really matter.
Let’s not bury the lead here. Christopher Nolan’s latest–an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, one of the defining texts of the Western world–is incredible. Go see it while it’s in theaters. Maybe a few times. It will certainly be worth it.
I have two things to say about this movie, primarily. The first is regarding the overall presentation. I think that the choices that Nolan and his team made all contribute to this film feeling mythic. There’s a hypothetical version of this movie that is primarily interested in historical accuracy. Nolan could have focused on the costumes, set design, and cast all resembling our best attempt at replicating what the Odyssey might have actually looked like to the original hearers of the poem. Another possibility is that Nolan could have created a film that adhered to the typical Hollywood conventions for an adaptation of a work of epic classical literature. That version would have included actors speaking in British accents, massive spectacle, and an orchestral soundtrack.1
Nolan didn’t make either of these movies, however. The sum of the choices in presentation, instead of creating a simulation of ancient Greece, or meeting our expectations for an epic classical work, create a myth for the screen.
By myth I mean something that’s not tied down to a time or place, but at its heights, transcends its cultural context to become a story about humanity itself. The actors speak plain, contemporary English in American accents. The settings, like Odysseus’s palace on Ithaca, the city of Troy, or Athena’s palace seem old even to those living in them. The soundtrack’s instrumentation is a striking blend of ancient-sounding woodwind and string instruments, primitive percussion, occasional human voices, and modern electronic sounds. Any orchestral instruments associated with high classical art are completely absent. While there were some thrilling moments, the scale of what we saw on screen was not overwhelming spectacle at the level of a classic film epic like Ben-Hur. The world the characters inhabited was often stark, simple, and minimal. Not a real, inhabited place, but a theatrical stage. What this all produces is something that feels simultaneously old and new. It’s not just a old Greek story. It’s a timeless human myth.
Myths tell us something about humanity. So, the big question was: what did Nolan think Homer’s poem had to tell us in the twenty-first century? It was unclear from the beginning of the film where he was going with all this. It wasn’t until Odysseus finally returns home that I started to understand. As is common in Nolan’s endings,2 Odysseus tells us the significance of the battle of Troy. It undoes the fragile bonds of piece between men. As soon as the men leave the shores of Troy as victors, they are changed men. They pillage and destroy villages in the quest to return home. The invade homes, kill and steal, and take advantage of those who are hospitable to them. They also live in fear that others will take advantage of them. When Odysseus and Agamemnon finally return, they find their homes have changed in their absence. Zeus’s sacred law was profaned, and the trick played at Troy lit a fire that burned the whole world.
It’s all pretty much right there in the dialogue, but it struck such a chord with me. This world is broken. I long for a divine peace that God established but we chose to break. That peace is like how Odysseus described the Siren’s song. I think his description will be something I mull over in my head for a long time. Peace between men is the one thing I long for, but can’t have. And it is the thing I had, but lost.
There’s nothing new under the sun. This 3000 year old tale speaks a truth about humanity that hasn’t changed in all that time. Men are broken creatures. And we have no hope of restoring ourselves.
But I know who one can, and who did.
Footnotes
-
I don’t suppose many expected Nolan of all filmmakers to actually make this kind of film, but I think this hypothetical still helps my point regardless. ↩
-
As Tom Van Der Linden points out in his recent video essay. ↩