Emily Wilson has written a review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey! She’s the author of an excellent translation of Homer’s The Odyssey, one that Nolan himself mentioned as an inspiration, so she is one of the best qualified people to judge the movie.
She starts off diplomatically.
Christopher Nolan’s $250 million action movie version of Homer’s ancient Greek poem is an entertaining way to hide from the high temperatures for a few hours. Nolan’s trademark jumps and twists in the narrative structure are relatively easy to follow, and appropriate for The Odyssey, a narrative of tales nested in tales. My teenagers had a good time. Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.
Uh-oh. I think she had mixed feelings about the movie.
As in his previous films, Nolan is interested in the discontinuities of space and time, in magic, tricks, craft, technology, rivalry, substitution, masks, miscommunication, what we remember and what we choose to forget. Yet again, survival is portrayed as a kind of triumph. Yet again, there are long, claustrophobic scenes of drowning and near-drowning, and technically impressive episodes in which buildings are engulfed in flames and vehicles explode. Yet again, we watch a male character’s desperate quest to recover and/or avenge a female love object. I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters. But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality. Without a tub of wax for my ears – which Himesh Patel’s ever anxious Eurylochus, Odysseus’s doomed right-hand man, uses to sail safely past the Sirens – I was exposed to the full din of thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armour, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples. But unlike Matt Damon, the wax-free Odysseus who is tied to the mast as he is conveyed past the Sirens (naked ladies reclining on some uncomfortable-looking rocks), I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion. My eyes stayed dry, even for Argos the dog – whose adorableness as a puppy is predictably amped up to suit our animal-loving times. If only the human characters had been treated with such serious attention.
It’s been playing at the Morris Theater for going on two weeks, and one thing I’ve noticed while working concessions is how loud this movie is. Thumping, shrieking, clanging at high volume while I’m trying to take a popcorn order — it’s been an epic struggle. But yes, I agree about the flatness of the characters. One of the most notable moments of acting in the film is when Ann Hathaway’s Penelope cuts loose and expresses the complexity of her feelings — anger, resentment, confusion — to Tom Holland’s Telemachus, but mostly she’s seen as a quiet, reserved figure behind a screen.
I also expected more from Argos. In the movie, the suitors toss the old dog onto a dung pile, and when Odysseus returns, the dog notices…and simply dies. Blink and you’ll miss it. It was an opportunity to humanize Matt Damon’s Odysseus, and it was allowed to pass.
Another complaint: the Americanization of the violence.
But the representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world. We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it – a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar – but Nolan doesn’t. The Trojans are dehumanised by their masks; we know none of them by name or face. The hands of Odysseus and Telemachus are bloodied only by the most righteous, computer-game modes of killing, and we feel no pity or horror at the deaths of their victims, whether Trojans, giants, suitors or slaves. During the sack of Troy – which he supposedly organised – Odysseus gazes around in bewilderment and horror, as if he has never seen a massacre before.
I just finished reading a translation of The Odyssey last night — Emily Wilson’s, in fact — and that jumped out at me. In the bloody massacre of the suitors, as Odysseus goes on his killing spree, Homer doesn’t dwell on the gore, but instead names each man as they are murdered, and sometimes goes on to talk about their fathers, and maybe some notable feature of their character. Many of them are terrified and beg for mercy. It’s a much more impactful way of dramatizing the slaughter, rather than showing a knife going into Antinous’s throat.
The book also details many events that the movie omitted. I’d forgotten what a compulsive liar Odysseus was. Multiple times he lies to people he encounters, giving his cover story about being from Crete, with elaborate details about his background. When he finally meets Penelope again, the first thing he does is spin a long story about his alias, all of it entirely unnecessary, but “liar” is one of his epithets, so I guess he has to do it.
Also omitted from the movie is his treatment of the female slaves who slept with the suitors. He gets his head household slave to rat them out, puts them to work cleaning out all the dead bodies and gore in his palace, and then pitilessly hangs them so they die kicking and struggling. It’s not a pretty story, but fortunately, Matt Damon did not have to deal with such complications.
Wilson has her gripes, especially with the screenplay, but still ends on an upbeat note.
Despite all this, the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities’, translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves. Some of those who buy the book or show up in cinemas to watch Tom Holland may go on to study ancient Greek. Perhaps the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments. Nolan, who studied English at University College London – where students still study The Odyssey as a first year ‘foundational text’ – is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.
The movie got me to re-read The Odyssey, so I’m an example of that. I’ve always championed the importance of the humanities in education, so nothing new there, and sorry, no, I’m not going to study ancient Greek, but maybe more people will.
It’s a great essay from an expert. If it’s too long for you, Wilson has also posted an abbreviated bullet-point version of her main points on BlueSky. Also do see the movie — your local theaters appreciate it — but I think it would be a good idea to bring earplugs.
I recommend Madeline Miller’s Circe and Song of Achilles. Odysseus is depicted a constant schemer who can’t handle civilian life. His son Telemachus grows to hate him over time.
I’ve read both of those, too!
Barry Unsworth’s “The Songs of the Kings” (a retelling of Iphigenia in Aulis) has a wonderful version of Odysseus. Plus Homer on the sidelines. (I really need to read more Unsworth.) (And so do you.) (Also 👍 to the Miller books.)
The thing about Odysseus’s deceptions when he gets back to Ithaca is that the poem has already provided us with an example of what happens when you come back openly and without guile – the return and subsequent death of Agamemnon. From the very beginning of Book I (it’s the first thing the gods talk about when we meet them on Olympus) we are invited to compare Odysseus’s homecoming with Agamemnon’s – the latter came back to an unfaithful wife and a suitor who murdered him in cold blood, the former has to be sneaky and sound out the situation in depth so as to avoid the same fate.
As for the scene in Book XIX where he tells Penelope the third of his Cretan tales – there is a subtlety there, and it’s not entirely unnecessary. He needs to get across something that confirms he’s a friend of the family, and thus worthy of greater hospitality than he’s received so far in the guise of a wandering beggar. Partly this is to assuage Penelope’s anguish, as much as he can, and lend credence to his claim that Odysseus is on his way back (ironically she believes every single detail without question, EXCEPT the one true bit – that Odysseus is very close at hand), partly it allows him access to the inner hall where he will be able to put his plan with the bow into action.
There is some debate among scholars of the Odyssey about whether Penelope is fooled at this point, and continues to play her part as an unknowing pawn in Odysseus’s web (the Suzanne Said position), or whether she actually twigs but pretends she hasn’t and from this point on is helping Odysseus from behind the scenes, perhaps even without him knowing she knows (the Mary Lefkowitz position). The issue is further complicated by the fact that, in all likelihood, different bardic versions of the poem have her in both positions, and what we have inherited probably mixes up sections composed with both intentions.
Odysseus was an utter bastard who brags about raiding a town on the way home from Troy.
The writers who contributed to what became The Odyssey lived in a time before some kind of objective ethics had evolved, eventually greeks would invent the concept of Tartaros, a place for punishment of the dead.
When the Odyssey was written down, ir was all “might makes right” and altruism was only for relatives and friends.
@ ^ birgerjohansson : I don’t recall that bit about him raiding a town on the way back but then it is many years since i last read the book.
.***
I remember being disturbed by this scene and thinking it was cruel and wrong of Osysseus to do that when I first read The Odyssey back in high school classics class.I ha d wondered if they included that bit in the movie. Not surprised if they didn’t.
I should really pick up her Illiad and Odyssey. If you want some speculative fiction that takes heavy inspiration from the Odyssey and Illiad, I recommend the Terra Ignota series by Dr. Ada Palmer of the University of Chicago. Odysseus being a massive liar is a central plot point. The author is a renaissance historian by trade and because of it it does a lot more with human connections, ideals, philosophies, etc than a lot of other science fiction, despite being set in the 2400s.
I do want to see the film, but not in a theatre I think, want to just watch it in my living room at some point.
Anyone else remember the old 1980’s (ish?) cartoon that made an SF version of the original Odyssey with Greek myths generally? Strange SF-Fantasy mix but certainly had its moments. Oh and its powerful music too..
Ulysses 31 2 mins long heme song.
Ominous music of the gods 1 min 8 secs long.
Umm, do I really need a SPOILERS WARNING for the wikipage here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_31
I wonder if Emily Wilson know about and has reviewed that version?
Of course there’s also Clarke’s and Kubrick’s Space Odyssey version too although very different indeed from the Hellenic myths..
I might try reading The Odyssey again. Been seeing a thing on Pinterest where a woman did her own translation and found it wasn’t as hard on women as previous generations of misogynist translators made it out to be.
I’ll ready myself for some values dissonance either way: Odysseus is a Greek idea of a “hero,” not anything like the modern moral paragons I favor in modern media.
#7, yep I have fond memories of Ulysses 31.
One of the more memorable 80s cartoons, up there with Thundercats, Transformers, etc..
@6: Tried the audiobook of the first Terra Ignota book and quit halfway through. I’d probably like it better in print. Currently reading her Inventing the Renaissance, and loving it. Among other modern pop-culture references, she describes Renaissance Florence as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, but the text is also serious and academic when it needs to be. I bet she’s a great prof and her courses are loads of fun.
Lesser known fact: Palmer also writes lesbian erotica (unless there’s two of them?).
Another version I really liked: O Brother Where Art Thou.
Recursive Rabbit @9, you refer to the featured translator and critic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey_(Emily_Wilson_translation)#Reception
She got the usual haters:
A somewhat more controversial version; the seventies film about a street gang trying to make it back to their turf through a hostile New York where the other gangs think they were complicit in the murder of Cyrus, a leader.
birgerjohansson @5:
Some lecture notes from a University of Vermont Classics course.
Trojan War – Homeric Heroic Ethics
Trojan War – Homeric Ethics continued: Hospitality, aka ‘Xenia’
John Morales @ 13.
For a long time I have tried to find a true definition of ‘woke’ that is simple and straightforward enough that it can be processed by a habitual Fox News viewer, yet unambigous enough that it cannot be twisted. Long words are counter-indicated.
I will note that the Wilson translation is copyrighted.
[searching]
There are, of course, many translations in the public domain.
CompulsoryAccount7746 @ 15.
So with the possible exception of family members, people were just means to ends. Maybe this is why the muskrat pays attention to the matter, but I doubt he has analysed it to that depth.
Ada Palmer also wrote an excellent blog post about censorship and how to resist it; I wish the university administrators and others who knuckled down to this administration’s pressure to self-censor had read it and taken it to heart.
Noah, Heath and Eli are also noting the bogus controversy.
.
The Skepticrat 275 — “2026: A Race Odyssey Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QmQytH9f-n4
.
“On this week’s episode: Trump finds a new way to bomb … Americans learn they will diarrhea themselves to death with measles before they’ll vote for a black lady …
And Republicans get mad about the ethnic retcon of the epic poem they all definitely read.”
Sky Captain, #15, etc.
While it is possible to construct an outline of the morals and ethics that govern the world of Homeric heroes – and almost impossible to understand much of the poems without one – the Iliad and Odyssey are not uncritical in their engagement with the Heroic Code (as it is often called). A big part of both epics is the conflict and tensions that arise between the demands of the heroic lifestyle and the well-being of society as a whole – they are interrogating what exactly it means to live by such a code, and the problems it can lead to. The Iliad has such problems at its very core, but it is in the Odyssey that we actually see more options and different takes on the good life and the good society come to the fore. It’s a commentary on the ethics of rule but also on ideals of masculinity.
In the Iliad it is Achilles’ insistence on proper heroic honours (time) and refusal to adopt a more conciliatory position with regard to his fellow Greek nobles’ ambitions that sets him up to endanger the war effort as a whole and soon to lose his best friend and kinsman Patroclus. The inciting incident – Agamemnon’s confiscation of Achilles prisoner Briseis (also a kind of time) – is itself an example of how Heroic norms can lead to conflict. Achilles is explicitly contrasted with the much more civic-minded Hector on the opposite side of the battlefield who, while buying into the Heroic Code himself, is also embedded in his own city and fighting for its survival and that of his old father, wife and son. We have the “hollow, dark and mighty” version of heroic manhood in Achilles (who has no wife, abandoned his son, and knows he is destined to die at Troy but would rather do so than live without glory), coming into contact with a version that has to juggle the heroic virtues of honours (time), excellence (arete), reputation (kleos) and drive (pothos) with the exigencies of family, society and state.
The Odyssey, on the other hand, shows that it is precisely Odysseus’s pursuit of the heroic staples that gets him into so much trouble, causing all his men to die and his return to be delayed for a decade. The cyclops episode is key here, because he only gets into this mess by ignoring the advice of his men and pressing on anyway into the beast’s lair (pothos – a fiery, masculine drive to achieve things) because he wants to meet it and see if it will give him gifts (a form of time – the exchange of presents in a xenia situation is itself a key form of respect and enrichment, which is what time means in this world). At the cusp of his escape he shouts his real name to Polyphemus because he simply cannot let a heroic triumph go by without people knowing that it was him – this is kleos, heroic legend or reputation, which requires you to build up glorious deeds to your name. Letting your triumphs go unknown and unremembered is utterly contrary to the heroic mindset, and it gains Odysseus a divine curse that very nearly loses him everything. It has been suggested that his treatment of Melanthius and the slave women at the end is a kind of expiatory act in which he punishes people who have done the same sort of bad things he did with Polyphemus (abuse of hospitality and arrogation of punishing wrongdoing by claiming credit rightly belonging to the gods). Odysseus’s ultimate end is thus not a glorious death on the battlefield, as the standard heroic model would approve (and Achilles got), but a prosperous old age surrounded by family in a secure kingdom.
cartomancer @21: Well put.
birgerjohansson @18:
MLK Jr – ‘New phase’ of civil rights struggle interview (26:50)
At 13:46, he talks of bootstraps—and coincidentally, of thingifying people as means to ends. Woke would then be awareness of bootlessness, the cruelty of the remark, and a desire to change that. But habitual Fox News viewers are not merely ignorant. They’re invested, in endlessly reinforced disinformation.
This is the only bit I think was unfair. The bit about Argos in the original poem literally brought tears to my eyes. It’s a minor incident, but Argos waited 20 years into advanced old age for Odysseus, being literally treated like shit, and when his master returned wagged his tail and peacefully died.
It’s very obvious from the original that whatever else might be true of Homer’s age, they were “animal-loving times”, at least as far as dogs went. There’s no reason for Argos to be in the story except to break your heart.
Also can confirm it’s LOUD.
Not just the action the soundtrack is relentless. I didn’t see 4DX just a regular screening but your seat was literally vibrating most of the movie from the sheer decibels. X-D
Silentbob, #23,
One thing the encounter with Argus the dog does in the narrative of the Odyssey is to show Odysseus’s ability to remain calm and collected in his disguise as a hard-up stranger in the face of considerable emotional strain. He is just about to go into his home, meet the suitors and Penelope, and has his swineherd Eumaeus with him who is currently fooled by the disguise – he can’t afford to do anything that might give the game away now, like showing the kind of strong emotions that would be expected in such an encounter. A similar test occurs in Book XIX when he has to talk to Penelope alone, face to face, for the first time, and control his emotions in a similar way (and several times during his early encounter with the suitors, particularly when he is insulted and pelted with bones, the kind of unforgivable insult that a heroic warrior absolutely would not let stand).
As we have seen earlier, emotional control was not always Odysseus’s strong suit. His ability to maintain it now is character growth of a sort.
And here’s a bit on the historical accuracy of the Minions movie:
https://theonion.com/translator-of-original-minions-epic-poem-slams-sexless-bloodless-film-adaptation/
birgerjohansson @#16, you might define “woke” as “not an a..hole”.