Image: Universal Pictures.

Author’s Note: As mentioned in my review of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, I’ve spent the last few weeks traveling, during which time I was able to watch The Odyssey but unable to review it. In the meantime, hundreds of articles have been published, written by critics straining their vocabulary (or thesaurus.com’s) for unique ways to describe Christopher Nolan’s latest epic. Rather than add yet more descriptors, this piece offers a review of The Odyssey in the form of a structured analysis of the themes depicted within the film. This analysis contains SPOILERS, so be warned. What you see once you depart these shores will leave you forever changed, and take twenty years to finish (this is a long one).

As a filmmaker, Christopher Nolan seems to prioritize the challenge of making a film over the story, characters, or themes of that film. From his breakthrough with Memento and its parallel story structure, to the twisting architectural feats of Inception, and the world-record setting explosion of Oppenheimer, Nolan has long attempted to push the visual language of cinema. At times this focus ends up minimizing the more human elements, leaving his characters detached or even nameless, such as John David Washington’s “Protagonist” from Tenet; a pair of eyes through which the audience watches the events. For Nolan, it seems the process of making the film the best it can be, even down to how it’s viewed, is more important than any sort of lingering impression it leaves upon the viewer. For him, the journey is greater than the destination.

“The Odyssey,” at its core, is a simple story of a man trying to return home. He leaves one place and he goes to another. It’s what happens in between, the process of moving from one location to the next, which makes the story interesting. As one of the oldest recorded pieces of human writing, “The Odyssey” has become one of the most influential and important works of fiction in history, with hundreds of translations emphasizing different aspects of the narrative, thousands of scholarly papers analyzing its characters, and millions of words spent dissecting the history and narrative it presents. It is also important, however, to remember that for all the profundity we’ve attached to the “The Odyssey” in the 2800 years since Homer, or whoever and however people may have contributed to it, it is just a story.

Matt Damon looks suitably haggard after ten years of war in ‘The Odyssey’.
Image: Universal Pictures.

In the same way that cinephiles (like myself) love to wax poetic over The Dark Knight’s intellectualization of the superhero genre or The Prestige’s withholding of information, classicists divine infinite messages hidden within ancient Greek and Rome texts, hints into their societies, their cultural, and how their sensibilities shaped those we see today. Yet, for all their assigned importance, the films of Christopher Nolan and the heroic epics of Homer are, in their most basic forms, just stories. They are simple tales of people, usually men, overcoming obstacles to accomplish some goal.

Be it going from one place to another, as in “The Odyssey” or Dunkirk, or defeating an enemy, as in “The Iliad” or Oppenheimer, the ending is never as interesting as the process. What that process says about the environment in which that work was created is more often determined by cinephiles and classicists for whom the journey must always have meaning. Like Homer, Nolan presents numerous themes, it’s up the audience to determine their meaning.

More could be done with Calypso and Odysseus’s memories,
Image: Universal Pictures.

Inaccuracy of Time and Memory

Perhaps Christopher Nolan’s most enduring trait as a filmmaker is his fascination with time. This element is so prevalent that even straight-ahead narratives, such as Dunkirk and Oppenheimer, become needlessly complicated by non-linear structures. Similarly, Homer’s “Odyssey” often employs hearsay in tracking Odysseus’s movements from Troy. Thus it’s perfectly natural that Nolan would use his trademark non-linearity in telling Homer’s story.

The trouble comes, however, when these stories begin to fall into a familiar pattern. After some time, The Odyssey (Nolan’s version) feels like a series of vignettes in which Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his crew get off their boat, find something horrible, and run back to their boat. These complications are among the film’s most standout sequences: the amazing forced perspective of the armored giants battling the Ithacans (with the wonderful practical effect of using very tall and very small actors), the menacing intensity of the Cyclops, Samantha Morton’s chilling performance and the body horror of the witch encounter, and, most striking of all, the visit to Hades, yet all of these amount to get off the boat, find something horrible, run back to the boat. As with the story itself, the emphasis is in what happens between, but in a film that’s a touch under three hours, it’s difficult to keep this repetition interesting.

Both Tom Holland and Telemachus are quiet limited in ‘The Odyssey.’
Image: Universal Pictures.

As a non-linear narrative in which Telemachus (Tom Holland) is desperate to learn if his father is still alive, it may be better to keep Odysseus in the past until his ultimate return. It’s established early in the film that gods take the form of mortals. This is even used in the poem to compel Telemachus’s journey. It wouldn’t have been difficult for Nolan to then structure a story in which Telemachus moves from place to place hearing of his father’s travails. This would allow Nolan to keep his non-linear structure while amplifying the tension of when or if Telemachus will find Odyssues, make us wonder how much of these tales are real, and cut down on the repetition of Ithacans running back to their boat. As is, The Odyssey uses jumbled flashbacks within flashbacks (like a parody version of Inception’s dream within a dream), ultimately making Telemachus’s entire journey pointless. He gets off his own boat, talks to someone, and gets back on the boat.

Conversely, The Odyssey could have leaned farther into the fault of memory by keeping Telemachus in Ithaca while Odysseus struggles through a fading memory with Calypso (Charlize Theron). This would again allow us to question what aspects of the narrative are real or imagined. Our memories are never as settled as we believe them to be, and while The Odyssey hints at this, it could have been better examined through Odysseus questioning himself, his experiences, and whether his memories of home are genuine.

Of course, both of these structures would have lost something, and likely caused Homeric scholars absolute hissy fits, but, in my opinion, either of these would have better depicted Nolan’s interest in the inaccuracy of time and memory. It would have left us as viewers to wonder whether the giants, Polyphemus, Circe, and Hades were real, thus amplifying the effect of Odysseus finally telling us of the one thing he knows is true: the atrocities at Troy.

Of all the creatures in ‘The Odyssey,’ Polyphemus is likely the best.
Image: Universal Pictures.

Myth as History

Prior to The Odyssey’s release more than a month ago (again, sorry for the delay), much of the discussion focused on how controversial its casting was to white men who get angry when a film features anyone who isn’t a white man or their imaginary girlfriend, Sydney Sweeney. Labeled as “historical accuracy” instead of the more historically accurate “racism,” this “argument” depended entirely on the idea that ancient Greeks were uniformly white and blond with blue eyes and absolutely no people of any color. This of course ignores the fact that early Greek and Italian immigrants to America weren’t considered white. So to now claim that all ancient Greeks were lily white, towheaded, and sporting baby blues, is not historically accurate.

The entire premise is foolish, however, in the interest of “historical accuracy:” the Greek Empire, or the Achaean Empire as it was known during Homer’s time, extended as far west as Mediterranean France, south to Egypt, and well into Turkey and Persia to the east. As a colonial power, Greece took and many times stole people from those lands. As depicted by Eumaeus (John Leguizamo, continuing his late career renaissance), people from foreign lands were often… let’s say “employed”… in various services. Thus it is completely fitting that Greek forces would include soldiers from a variety of cultures and backgrounds including African (Jovan Adepo), Persian (Benny Safdie), and Asian (Himesh Patel and Will Yun Lee), as well as native Greek (which Matt Damon definitely is not). In fact, given the diversity of cultures available within their borders, only an absolute fool would handicap their own military based on ethnicity.

Lupita Nyong’o as Helen demonstrates the toll war has even on those that don’t fight in it.
Image: Universal Pictures.

However, the majority of the ire online focused on Helen of Troy. Portrayed as the “most beautiful woman in the world” and the “face that launched a thousand ships” Helen is legendary among literary figures. While the poem describes her as “white-armed,” details about Helen are left vague beyond the facts that she was fathered by Zeus in the form of a swan and hatched from an egg. So it isn’t surprising that Nolan would cast Lupita Nyong’o, an Oscar-winning actress who has been called the “most beautiful woman in the world.” It’s unfortunate then that such a talented actress is given little to work with. Despite playing both Helen and her sister Clytemnestra, the actress is largely relegated with John Bernthal to the film’s convoluted backstory and tangential plots involving kidnappings and trade routes (more on that later). Given Nolan’s struggles with establishing emotional connections with his main characters, the supporting cast of The Odyssey are little more than pretty wallpaper. However, in the lily white world of imaginary Greece, there would be no one more striking than a woman of ebony skin and oil eyes. It’s only those already drowning in the shallow end of their own gene pool who wouldn’t go to war for Lupita Nyong’o.

Yet, all of this is completely pointless because, as stated numerous times, “The Odyssey” is a work of fiction. Told by generations of oral poets before it was ever written, the story itself is a two-thousand-year-old game of Telephone. Demanding historical accuracy from a myth which includes cannibal giants, the one-eyed son of a sea god, a witch who can mould skin like clay, and a boat ride into the underworld makes as much sense as demanding all elves be pale with British accents and all dwarves be Scottish. These are made-up characters in made-up stories. You’d have to be a smooth-brained nincompoop to demand a 100-million dollar “historically accurate” version of “The Odyssey” that doesn’t even have any real people in it. This entire argument is about as credible as claiming that a Palestinian named Jesus was white.

Yup, there’s Zendaya, looking disappointed.
Image: Universal Pictures.

Defy the Gods

While the gods aren’t depicted in Nolan’s Odyssey, they are no less a factor. The Ithacans attribute their misfortunes to Poseidon’s fury. Penelope refrains from tossing out the suitors in fear of Zeus. Odysseus believes that Athena guides him to Hades before taking him home. Yet, as opposed to being the active figures of Homer, Nolan’s only on-screen interactions come through Odysseus speaking with Athena in the form of a young priestess which his men murdered in Troy (a role which takes advantage of Zendaya’s natural expressions of detachment and disappointment). In this way it’s heavily implied that rather than being a divine vision, Athena is a manifestation of Odysseus’s guilt. In this manner, we’re left to wonder whether Poseidon, or Zeus, or any other divine figure in The Odysseus exists or if they are all myths created by mortals.

For ancient people, those of good fortune – wealthy, intelligent, attractive, powerful – were favored by the gods, while those of lesser fortune – poor, slow-witted, plain, powerless – were therefore disfavored. This perceived connection to the gods made it easier to create a hierarchy among early societies. Divine right was the justification by which monarchs claimed themselves mightier than the thousands they ruled over. Lack of basic documentation and scientific knowledge allowed everything from natural phenomena to bold-faced fabrication to become religious doctrine. Thus systems of punishment and reward arose around the idea of pleasing and displeasing the gods. Over time, these rules of the gods, spread through colonization, coercion, torture, and war, eventually became the governing laws of society. What started as hospitality toward travelers from those who believed the gods may take human form became the foundation upon which entire nations governed themselves.

The single, most intense and striking scene in the entire film belongs to Hades.
Image: Universal Pictures.

I’d love to say that in our modern society, where science has advanced to the point that everything we say and do is recorded forever whether we like it or not, that we’ve moved away from the need of “gods” to decide what is good and what is bad. Instead, thousands of years after Homer, we still have a system of laws based upon what believers of specific religions decided centuries ago. We still have antiquated notions that those born into wealth are somehow greater than those who aren’t. We still think that some invisible being – whether God, or Yahweh, or Zeus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster – decides who wins the Super Bowl. Nations are still debating who can get married or decide what to do with their own body based on what they believe their god told them in an ancient story passed down by oral traditions and re-interpreted by a hundred generations. In the same way that a fantastical poem can be “historically accurate,” a set of often contradictory stories have become “literally true.” Whether accurate or not, The Bible is also, at its core, a two-thousand-year-old game of Telephone.

To be clear, The Odyssey doesn’t make a cohesive statement about any of this. Its tagline “Defy the Gods” and opening screen of “a time of apparent magic” sound like clear declarations of self-determination over destiny. Yet its events, where Odysseus spends twenty years adrift after breaking Zeus’s law and each of Penelope’s suitors are slaughtered for the same, seems to hint that divine punishment is unavoidable. If The Odyssey’s depiction of Odysseus were applied to the real world, a man who appears homeless claiming to speak to Athena would be considered crazy. Yet take that same man, clean him up with a shave and a suit and tie, put him on television claiming to speak to a different god, and you have thousands of followers donating their life savings for his blessing. Now give that man a political platform and you have millions of people believing that a convicted fraudster and adjudicated rapist is sent by God.

Hundreds of years after Homer, the philosopher Voltaire is purported to have written, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.”

Did the gods create humankind? Or did humankind create the gods?
Image: Universal Pictures.

In this sense, Nolan’s version of The Odyssey can serve as an opportunity to examine how one interprets the role of the gods – however one interprets that word – in every day human life. If the god of the sea can cause a storm to send a ship off course because the sailors displeased him, then the god of everything can cause a hurricane to hit Florida because of same-sex marriage and/or making plea deals with a known pedophile. Believing that Helios loves his cattle so much he’ll drown those who eat them is no sillier than thinking Jesus loves guns so much he’ll smite those who ban them. Requiring that every person in every home everywhere follow the Rule of Zeus is the same thing as requiring that every classroom post the Ten Commandments.

If anything, an it’s indictment upon humanity that thousands of years after “The Odyssey,” we are still using “the gods” as justification to punish each other.

Nolan has seldom been anything less than visionary.
Image: Universal Pictures.

The Illusion of a Good War

Perhaps the most prevalent theme in Nolan’s Odyssey, along with his previous films Dunkirk and Oppenheimer, is the effect that war has on both the individual and the whole of society. As a sequel to “The Iliad,” Homer’s novel picks up ten years after the completion of the Trojan War, with very little carried from one story to the next. In contrast, Nolan’s version places the events of the war at the very front of the narrative, both thematically and structurally. By opening on the beach outside Troy, with Sinon (Eliot Page) guarding a wooden horse statue partially buried in the sand, Nolan establishes the same bookend structure as employed in his aforementioned war films, as well as Memento and Tenet. Returning to this event later in the film both changes our understanding of the character and furthers the idea that Odysseus is suffering from PTSD, likely causing his guilt to manifest illusions of Athena.

As an aside: the character of Sinon presents another intriguing wrinkle in The Odyssesy’s narrative. Coming from a poor family, Sinon is set up to take the place of Antinous (Raimy Lang in flashback, Robert Pattinson in the present). Be it through payment (as depicted in Gangs of New York) or through five questionable medical deferments, children of privilege have always found a way to refuse what they refer as a “sacred duty” once they are no longer called for it. However, this takes on a secondary meaning with the casting of a trans-man. Sinon’s treatment at the hands of both Antinous and Odysseus demonstrates how marginalized people are always the first sacrificed by those in power. In the same way that Sinon is used a decoy in front of the Trojan Horse, transgendered people (and other marginalized groups) are often attacked as a decoy whenever political policies fail. Economy going down? Talk about trans men in women’s sports. Groceries too expensive? Ban trans people from public bathrooms. Funneling billions through a crypto scheme? Schools are turning boys into girls during recess! Of course, there’s no on-screen evidence of Nolan intending such a meaning, and one hopes that Page received the role based on his talent and previous experience with Nolan, but at this point in time the mere existence of transgendered people is a political statement. So casting one, and having him used as a human shield and labeling his character “the bravest man I’ve ever known,” seems pretty loaded.

And in the Hades sequence, the most powerful performance belongs to Eliot Page.
Image: Universal Pictures.

Although only a small part of the film, Nolan’s portrayal of the Trojan Horse is truly outstanding. While never mentioned in “The Iliad” and only briefly in “The Odyssey,” the hallow horse statue is seldom presented with any sort of believability. Under Nolan, we see the reality of a group of men stuffed into narrow confines and left abandoned on a beach where, hopefully, the enemy brings them into their city. We see the panic as a row of men drown in the tide while those who survive starve only to then be tossed around among dead bodies and days’ worth of human waste. It’s a terrifying sequence kept mercifully short. In this sense, the Trojan Horse itself could be a stand-in for the greater sacrifices of war. Far from the glorious battle against evil that propaganda wants us to believe, the reality of war is often ugly, wasteful, and arbitrary. As in the opening of Saving Private Ryan, another famous beach scene, survival in the Trojan War was more often a matter of happenstance than of merit. Kind of like being born rich.

Historically accurate or not, that helmet is awesome.
Image: Universal Pictures.

The war itself is extraordinary, alternating between exciting and horrifying. Despite knowing what will happen, there’s still a nice tension in watching the Greeks struggle to open the gates of Troy. And, despite the brutality which follows, there’s still a sense of glory in seeing Agamemnon and his amazing armor burst onto screen and ten years of frustrating rush through the city gates. Of course, what does follow is atrocious. It’s cruel. It’s disturbing. It’s unnecessarily violent. And it’s probably more “historically accurate” than any previous depiction of the Trojan War. For all our idolizing of ancient Greece, their refinement and their wisdom, this was an empire which colonized its neighbors, waged war against nations which presented it no harm, exploited foreign lands, and took people as slaves. The model of modern civilization.

Through these scenes, Nolan makes us question the nobility of war. The Greeks of The Odyssey aren’t heroic fighters of legend, they’re undisciplined, feral, and barbarous. The Fall of Troy reminds us that war makes beasts of us all, encouraging otherwise civilized people toward their basest forms, where bloodlust, or just lust, take over. Further, where wars are often sold as righteous struggles, The Odyssey theorizes that the gods do not approve of war, with the Ithacans being essentially damned the moment they break the accepted rules of society. Similarly, there is something eerily familiar in The Odyssey portraying a war that one national leader starts for a personal reason, lingers on much longer than expected, and is later revealed to be mostly about trade routes. Maybe they too could use the excuse of “spreading freedom” or “stopping terrorism” to destroy schools and murder civilians.

For his part, Odysseus nicely captures the way that human beings tend ignore grander implications in favor of more immediate concerns, only to then become regretful when faced with consequences. Be it developing technology that destroys the environment or electing officials who lower food safety, many people only feel remorse when the suffering is personal. Odysseus feels nothing for the people of Troy, until one of them haunts his mind. In this sense, Odysseus aligns himself with Nolan’s previous protagonist of J. Robert Oppenheimer: celebrated for creating a new method of warfare, then damned for the atrocities which follow.

The fall of Troy is swift, brutal, and disturbing. Just like war.
Image: Universal Pictures.

The Law of Zeus

While war is the most prevalent of The Odyssey’s themes, in my opinion the most relevant, and troublesome, is how it handles what a host owes to their visitor, and vice verse. As likely the film’s most repeated phrase, “Zeus’s Law” plays a part in every other aspect of the film. It shows how a myth becomes fact. It demonstrates the reach of the gods. It’s what causes the war which separates Odysseus from his home. And it creates a parallel structure between the suitors in Ithaca and invaders of Troy. However, while the theme is all-encompassing, its intention is less tangible.

On one hand, The Odyssey makes the argument that it’s incumbent upon civilized people to welcome those who visit their home. Zeus’s Law (or Xenia, the reciprocal hospitality between hosts and guests) states that hosts must be hospitable, offering food, lodging, and safe passage, while guests must not become threatening or burdensome. This, the film seems to argue, is the fundamental pact upon of human society. Further since Zeus himself would take on different forms, including that of Xenios, the patron of foreigners and hospitality, a host never knows when their guest might be a god in disguise, such as the stranger in the beginning of the film, and so must be welcoming to all such visitors lest they displease the gods.

On the other hand, the film repeatedly demonstrates instances in which one or both parties violate Zeus’s Law. In Ithaca, the suitors long overstay their welcome, overcrowding Odysseus’s home, gorging themselves on food and drink, and attempting to steal his wife (who, to be fair, he does abandon for twenty years. I mean, by the time he returned his son was already big enough to be Spider-Man). In Troy, the Greeks abuse Zeus’s Law by leaving a fake offering to the city, only to then slaughter its people. Even during their travels, both parties repeatedly violate the hospitality between visitor and guests, be it through misunderstanding (like seeming to threaten the giant baby), ignorance (Polyphemus eating his guests, and Odysseus staying to attack him), or hostility (Circe offering food which turns her guests into pigs). In this sense the film seems to imply that any guest which doesn’t follow the rules of their host deserves punishment, be it decades of suffering or brutal death.

Robert Pattinson seems to have settled nicely into the role of weird creeps,
Image: Universal Pictures.

These opposing viewpoints are best captured in the juxtapositions of the film’s various travelers. In Ithaca, Anne Hathaway’s Penelope and Robert Pattinson’s Antinous are set in opposition even down to their performances. Hathaway offers a subtle, nuanced approach – with her veneer of patience straining against a core of both fear and furiosity. Meanwhile, Pattinson is entirely surface – his smug, creepy appearance matching his smug, creepy personality. Their interaction, and the entire Ithaca section of the film seems to enforce the argument that guests need to follow the rules of their host, and that when there are too many of them or they stay too long they need to be cast out or, worse yet, killed. In a time when ICE raids are rounding up anyone who doesn’t look like a citizen, it’s hard not to find a parallel between the way Odyssey depicts these foreigners and the “immigrant caravans” that pop up before every election.

However, it’s not as though the Ithacans have a history of being hospitable toward their hosts. Through Odysseus’s interactions with Athena it’s implied that the Greeks were the first to violate Zeus’s law, both during the war and after. In their travels home, the Greek army raids numerous towns, burns villages, destroys crops, and takes slaves. It’s reasonable then that, in one instance, a small village would choose to run from these “people from the sea” rather than stay and be hospitable to people who are more inclined to murder their host than thank them. Having left nothing to their neighbors, is it any wonder that those neighbors would then show up at the Greek border, begging for just a little bit of what the Greeks have in abundance? When a culture exploits dozens of others into desperation, that culture has no one else to blame when the desperate arrive at their door.

Sometimes you host provides a meal and a bath. Sometimes they turn you into a pig.
Image: Universal Pictures.

In the end, Nolan offers no definitive stance on this issue. Similar to his handling of post-9/11 surveillance in The Dark Knight, Nolan’s characters tend to favor the more heavy-handed approach, while the story hints at later consequences for their actions. In The Odyssey, the Ithacans both punish those who violate Zeus’s Law and are punished for violating Zeus’s Law.

Perhaps the best approach then, is to be like Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), a welcoming, hospitable host, offering guests the same respect and treatment that he would demand for yourself; or like Telemachus, a helpful, unburdening guest, offering your hosts the same respect and treatment you would demand from them. Perhaps the answer is to treat all people well. You never know when one of them may be a god in disguise.

The ending is never in question, the greatness is in the journey,
Image: Universal Pictures.

The Destination

For all its grandeur, technical wizardry, and stabs at profundity, The Odyssey is quite a simple story. It’s about one man trying to return home. In that return he questions why he took certain actions, he examines his decisions, he loses his way, he wonders how much of what he’s experienced is real and how much he’s made up, and, in the end, learns that it was the journey, the process of returning home and not the home itself, which was important. It’s fitting that even after the years he spent away, Odysseus’s story ends with another trip, once again seeking meaning in the space between here and there.

Christopher Nolan is not a filmmaker interested in presenting answers. Instead, he wants to give us an experience. An experience that seems unlimited in its scope and awe, pushing the visual language of cinema and challenging what the audience believes a movie can be, and yet, an experience that is too often limited in depth and emotion. His protagonists are most often men like him, driven toward overcoming a challenge and more interested in the journey than in contemplating the ultimate meaning of that journey. As evidenced by his frequent use of non-linearity, Nolan isn’t focused on beginning and end. He cares about what happens between.

Like Homer, Nolan presents us with a story. His are the eyes through which the audience watches the events. It’s up to the audience to determine their meaning.

Author’s Note: Okay, that was long. This took me off-and-on five days to write, partly because it took a while to actually think of how to analyze the film at all and partly because I ended up with a lot more to say than I initially thought. Mostly though, I had a lot of fun delving into these different sections. If anyone is actually reading this, and didn’t skip to the end, thanks! Hopefully this was an enjoyable journey. If you’ve made it this far then maybe do me a favor and let me know by writing “pau” (just like that, p-a-u) on whatever platform you used to find this “review.” (Let’s be honest, these stopped being reviews years ago.) And if nobody makes it far then you all suck and Hades has a place for you.

Rating: 3.5 / 5