It is so interesting how he blended the real world history of the Sea Peoples that marked the fall of the Bronze Age and Homer's epic.
But even beyond the history he incorporated into the narrative, I am fascinated by what those choices did to change the theme of the story. I am so totally drawn in by the criticism the movie makes about empires, wars, and the corruption of men.
This isn't Homer's poem.
Because, despite it being the idea of The Odyssey, if I graded it on it being The Odyssey, it would fail. Odysseus is not the clever but arrogant man who is forcibly humbled by the gods by watching his men pay for his transgressions. The poem has Polyphemus explicitly curse Odysseus with the death of his crew and returning home on a foreign ship.
He fails as a leader by not bringing his men back. His men die for his own pride. And isolation was once explicitly seen as a sign of humiliation in societies for the same reason as the kid who sits alone at lunch is eyed as "weird". To be ostracized was to suffer a fate worse than death in those times. Not because it was necessarily a slow death either. Many people could survive years if tenacious enough. It was worse than death to be all alone.
It is why Calypso is so possessive over Odysseus and begs him to stay with her. As the daughter of a Titan who supported her father, she is banished into exile on the island Odysseus washes up on (spoilers for a thousands years old poem). Calypso herself cannot die, and even offers Odysseus immortality to stay with her. But her rage and shame at having him leave is entirely due to the social weight of isolation.
To be alone is to be worse than dead; it is to not exist. And to not exist when you once did is to be forgotten.
That's the original poem's slant. Odysseus is not much different than Moses drawing water from the rock and being banned from entering Canaan. They even use numerology the same way. In Judaism, 40 is a number of spiritual cleansing while in ancient Greek societies, 20 embodied the idea of "two completions". The babes of the yesteryears are now men- sort of thing.
And Christian Nolan definitely brings that. He brings a lot of the ideas the original Odyssey took for granted due to its cultural assumption. No one would need to explain exile and its thematic significance in ancient Greece because their societies were organized around these religious beliefs.
But instead of preserving the original story, which relied on those beliefs to make the thematic core of the story resonate as intended, and allowing modern sensibilities to essentially colonize an empty shell, Nolan does something so much better.
He uses the same themes and then allows the characters and story to change in order to make the original themes coherent to a modern audience.
The isolation that the Ancient greeks would have seen as tragic and humiliating is more or less how most of us live now. Additionally, our world is no longer confined to a small corner of the world. Isolation is no longer about moral failure, it's about societal structures and institutions. When one's identity no longer has a home to return back to is when someone feels truly isolated in 2026.
I think the movie is worth seeing, I'll have a bit more spoilers under the cut.
Spoilers
The thing that initially threw me off was how Odysseus is not depicted as clever in the movie as I feel he is in most interpretations of the story. While the removal of "Nobody" felt like a huge divergence from the original. I know there were people, me included, side-eyeing the fact that Nolan removed the "Nobody" scene by saying it "didn't translate well".
And now I think that he meant it didn't translate thematically well.
Because the divergence in the removal is thematic, not simply a little pun. Odysseus chooses to go off course to get home faster. They pillage food and supplies from a poor farming community. They ask an elderly man why the village fled upon seeing them rather than welcoming them and offering supplies, to which the audience first hears about "The Sea People".
Odysseus and his men land on another island where they enter the home of the Cyclops as he is away. One of his men say they should leave and return to the ships as they have nothing to trade. Odysseus then assumes a right through the Hospitality of Zeus that the inhabitant would provide them provisions, which results in their capture.
They initially plan to kill the Cyclops in his sleep but Odysseus holds them back due to the fact they would not be able to move the rock and it would trap them all there in the cave. There is a partial escape in which Odysseus goes back for those left behind and, minus talking to the Cyclops, the story goes mostly the same.
After blinding Polyphemus, and to avoid the animal cruelty of tying full grown men to the undersides of sheep, they wrap hay around themselves and crawl out among the herd in the morning. But when they are leaving, Odysseus then shoots an arrow at Polyphemus. This results in a chase where his right hand, Eurylochus expresses how Odysseus should not have fired the arrow.
Which is actually a running thing with Odysseus. And I actually think it's interesting. He plucks his bow to alert his prey throughout the film, and shooting his arrow at a Cyclops fits right in with alerting his targets to his intentions prior to following through.
The habit predates his time in Troy; getting him gored by a boar in a recurring flashback. He does it constantly, to give them a fair chance.
Except one time.
Historically, as stated above, the Sea People are associated with the Bronze age collapse. Because Greece got their bronze from Egypt and the Hittite Empire in Africa.
So anyone complaining about black characters in the movie are fucking stupid, by the way. Because interracial relationships are literally nothing new.
The Sea People destroyed that trade across the Mediterranean, burned down coastal trading ports and towns, and decimated Greek civilization; ultimately casting Greek civilization backwards into a dark age.
And people don't seem to realize what a dark age is. It isn't just a "rough patch"- it is the "two steps back" from the three steps forwards human civilization has taken in any period of time. Education declines along with art. A whole alphabet was lost in the Bronze age collapse. People became unable to read their own histories. The population declined and civilizations fell until, after centuries, the democratic city-states of Greece eventually organized in the aftermath.
Alright, so beyond this point are SUPER SPOILERS. If you have not seen the film, I would not recommend reading past this point. I would prefer if you saw the film first because it is worth watching. So this is for the people who already know.
Comparing accounts of The Sea Peoples in Egypt has revealed a strong overlap with the Greeks at the time. And by taking Homer's poem and making it adhere to the historical accounts at the time, the reveal that Odysseus and his men were The Sea People all along is both more historically grounded and thematically relevant to the original poem as well.
Odysseus was the one who created the plan for the Trojan Horse. It was the one time he didn't give his opponent a chance, and it burned Troy to the ground.
And one can imagine how that story could spread; that people from the sea who have no honor in war and will slaughter all who stand in their way are out there and could come to your shore, take your food, kill your family-
How can you trust anyone?
And Nolan's film directly touches that pressure point and digs in slowly. Because once trust in society is broken, then society is broken. And once the people believe society is broken, it will break.
Odysseus is not a proud man at all in this film. He is a "good man" in every sense. He treats his wife well, she adores him implicitly. He loves his son. He loves his city. He is a fair man who treats his subjects well. When he sees Antinous trade his lot with a younger boy to avoid going to war, he swears to the boy's father to take care of him.
Odysseus is a good man who becomes disillusioned by men. He's a good man who becomes painfully aware of what being a good man means in this world. And he chooses to not only reject it, but also kill off the new growth born from those rotten roots.
Menelaus started the Trojan War by declaring his wife Helen of Troy kidnapped by the Trojans only to treat her cruelly.
Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to protect his men on their way to the Trojan war
Agamemnon returns home only to be slain by his wife in revenge for the death of her daughter.
Telemachus demands the throne from Penelope who tells him he is not ready and accuses her of being like a man desiring power for herself.
My reading on Nolan's movie is that the Bronze age collapse is a parallel to our modern societies failing.
We can't trust elections.
We can't trust media journalism.
We can't trust our institutions.
We can't trust our own eyes.
The Age of Men is collapsing.
And that is why women are so important in the film. Because women everywhere exist in societies that are hostile to them.
Women cannot trust the men who run their societies.
Women cannot trust the men who lay in their beds.
Women cannot trust the promises of men.
Women cannot trust the love of men.
And yet women carry themselves with composure, intelligence, power, and compassion.
In the film, Penelope rules Ithaca in Odysseus' stead for 20 years. She raised their son alone. When the suitors came, she used her cleverness to stave them off for 3 years by sabotaging her own work.
Before the war, Penelope asked Odysseus if they can get on a ship and flee together to avoid this insanity in Troy. "Sail into the west, chasing the setting sun". And that visual and line replays multiple times throughout the film.
Every woman in the film highlights something about what Odysseus comes to realize about men. About how terrifying men are. How dangerous they are. How their suspicion and decisiveness is threatening and inhumane.
After watching him return, we finally get the longest sequence of the decimation of Troy. Odysseus walks through the city, his men destroy homes with people sleeping inside. They drag men from their beds where they lay by their wives and then drag their wives out too and killed them all.
In the original poem, Athena is the goddess whose favor spared him. In the film, Athena is the symbol handed to him by Penelope. He tries to reject it with "it doesn't suit me", but he relents when Penelope insists that it will be her way of knowing if what someone says about him is true.
That is where the true cleverness lies: in Penelope, not Odysseus. So it is the symbol of a goddess handed to him by his wife to keep him safe and truly known. There is even a brief scene of the men in his crew giving him a bit of a hard time over it being a woman's pin.
And then we realize Athena is the image of guilt plaguing Odysseus in the form of a priestess his men slaughtered.
Calypso says, in order for him to return home, he must give up control.
Telemachus becomes suspicious of Penelope when he views her like if she was a man, instantly losing all trust in his own mother.
Odysseus listens to the Sirens' Song and it leaves him screaming in agony. When asked what it was, he described it as "Everything I could ever want, and everything I could never have."
Odysseus literally listens to women and describes the female existence.
And so that hopeful ending is Odysseus stepping down from power after killing the boys raised by their fathers so his son, raised by his mother, may rule. And he happily submits to his wife.
"nothing is real atoms never touch each other youve never touched anything in your life" ok. well when i pet my dog he is soft and when he licks my hand it is wet and that is far more real to me than whatevers going on at an atomic level
nuclei don't touch, but the nucleus is not the core of reality. reality is made of electrons dancing. reality is made of bonds.
you pet your dog and the atoms that are you brush up against the atoms that are him, and the electrons that are you press into the electrons that are him, and both of them change their movement.
electrons of course are not really particles and do not really move.
you pet your dog and the electron-orbitals of your skin overlap with the electron-orbitals of his fur, and both are changed by the contact. you are not made of little motes floating alone in a void. you are a single unfathomable chord formed of a trillion vibrations, and so is he. and the note you play is changing at every moment by what you touch and how you breathe, and so is his. and atoms do not really have edges, and to touch is to interact, and when you put your hand on your dog the universe does not know that you are separate. the song expands to hold you both.
“Holmes had been seated for some hours in silence with his long, thin back curved over a chemical vessel in which he was brewing a particularly malodorous product. His head was sunk upon his breast, and he looked from my point of view like a strange, lank bird, with dull gray plumage and a black top-knot.”
Our Little Adventures 30/60 | Tumblr | RSS | Newsletter
I just wanted to drop by and tell you that I'm also really excited for the continuation of The only Hell (Heaven) I'll be sent to is when I'm alone with you! So far I have loved that fic, it is so sweet :) so one more person is patiently waiting for the new chapter! But ofc take your time with it :3
Ah that means so much to me you have no idea!!
I've been busy visiting filming location and seeing the Pope on my trip, but I'm excited for the next chapter!
Get ready for: Finding out your opponent is a big cuddler while sharing a bed, Aldo having gay panic, getting mistaken for an old married couple, more cats around the monastery, Tedesco having gay panic, Aldo getting to know the mysterious woman on Tedesco's phone, tension and so much bickering 🙏
Will you finish "The only Hell (Heaven) I'll be sent to is when I'm alone with you" ?
It's really constantly on my mind lately I can't stop re-reading it like some sort of addict 😔😔
Please have mercy on my sanity,
An avid reader
Dear Anon,
Your ask really moved me, as I've been a bit insecure about the fic so hearing that you're liking it kinda made my day! I've got the next few chapters planned out and am going to absolutely finish the fic!
I'm just currently on vacation in Rome and try to write in between getting a lot of inspiration. I've also got a soulmate!Bellesco fic planned.
Here's two sneak peaks into the next chapter for you. Thank you so much for your ask and feel free to always reach out to me <3
As he realised that it was Tedesco who was holding on to him while laying on his chest like it was the most normal thing in the world, Aldo’s first instinct was to jump away immediately. He forced himself not to move however, as flinching might wake the Patriarch.
This is fine, he tried to tell himself. He had been a gay teenager in New York during the 70s, had devoted himself to the lord in his twenties, had served and survived under power hungry man in his thirties, had been appointed Archbishop of Milan and after that been called to the Curia with nothing but his intellect and determination shielding him.
He’d been climbing the ranks and playing the game of political chess to perfection until he had been called papabile, only to lose his father figure, his ambitions and almost everything he’d believed in in a mere month. So how bad could dealing with his opponent cuddling him really be?
~
To his biggest surprise he felt secure and comfortable underneath Tedesco’s weight.
Based on their shared history of insults and frequent fights for the direction of the church, he'd only ever expected to be pressed down by Tedesco’s body in a very different scenario...
An imaginary scene flashed in front of his eyes: Of him and Tedesco fighting during the conclave, desecrating the sacred ground by their disputes, until the fight got physical and they were both lashing out under the watchful eyes of the Michelangelo ceiling. Tedesco’s body colliding with his own like a force of nature being enough to send them both toppling to the ground, with the Patriarch on top of the Secretary of State. He could picture himself fighting against the weight holding him down. There was nothing pleasant about the idea in his head. He could very well imagine Thomas to be the one to pull Tedesco off him, to get scolded by the Dean and their colleagues for having forgotten their place on this sacred ground. He could picture himself scoffing at Tedesco, who was looking at him with a disgusted sneer on his face. That was how Bellini could picture getting trapped by Tedesco’s body weight holding him down…
Not how it was actually happening in the present: Tedesco nuzzling against his neck, as though he wanted to crawl into Bellini’s chest to see for himself if the Liberal Lion really owned a heart of gold, as his followers had used to praise him when he had still been papabile, for cheesy press had been better for the campaign than no press at all.
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Aldo Bellini/Goffredo Tedesco
Additional Tags: written for Femclave week, Lesbian Bellesco, this is basically them making out, dry humping with your opponent in your office, normal day for Alda Bellini, Brief mention of Tedesco's misogyny, Teasing, insecure Tedesco, Fluff, can't believe I wrote this, Basically PWP, Fighting for Dominance, fem!bellini, fem!tedesco
To her, Tedesco was a vision.
She was beautiful in an ancient way, bright eyes, prominent nose, soft curls that had started to grey over the last years, big breasts and sensual curves, a sharp mouth.
To her shame, Bellini knew how many hateful words frequently fell from that mouth, but also how absolutely addictive it tasted on her own whenever Tedesco pressed her over the nearest surface to have her way with her.
I found this picture of Sergio and all I could think of is
This is Aldo's favourite picture of Goffredo:
They had spent the entire day following Pope Innocent around the small town, blessing people, listening to their worries, and making sure the tiniest parish felt important to the Vatican itself. Aldo had admired him, truly. But after planning the trip for more than a month, travelling by public transport for over 5 hours and then being a duckling for the rest of the day brought even the Secretary of State to his limits regarding patience. He just wanted to go to the house they had rented for the weekend, sit on one of the terrace chairs, and drink a nice glass of wine. Yet, there was no end in sight. Thomas was no help in shepherding the shepherd towards ending the day. Seeing his oldest and best friend looking at the leader of the Catholic church with as much devotion and love as a husband would, Aldo was torn. Torn between wanting to tell Thomas to turn it down a notch and actively rooting for him. People could excuse his behaviour as being a good Dean, a good Christian, a good friend. So Aldo let it slide. But since Thomas spent the good portion of the day encouraging Vincent to follow his whims, Aldo was left to follow them alone. Well, not truly alone. There were several members of the Curia present to complete the entourage of Pope Innocent. But he wasn't in the position to fraternize with any of them. The assistants were scared of his need to neurotically question their preparation. The nuns were off-limits to talk to. The two remaining men, Giulio and Ray, had been inseparable as well. That left only one person, Aldo could walk with. The Patriarch of Venice, whose presence was supposed to highlight the integrity and unity of the church behind the relatively new papacy and who naturally had agreed to accompany them himself to offer insights into what a rural town of poor working families could need from their church.
"If I have to walk one more step, I will commit papacide."
The voice next to him was gruff but quiet, so Aldo didn't jump out of his skin when it disturbed his thoughts.
"Papacide?"
"Sì, like homicide, but the Pope gets killed."
"Careful with your words, Goffredo, or the guards will tackle you."
"Mah. First, I know you would like to see that. Second, you didn't seem to be offended by what I was saying, so you must agree."
"Don't put words in my mouth," he smirked and saw Goffredo's features match his in his peripheric vision.
"Cazzo, we have been running around like children on a class trip for hours, and I am not even allowed to smoke."
"So, what? Any idea on how to end our Odyssey?"
"Sure. I say I push you down a flight of stairs, we blame it on your fragile health and be done with this."
"Haha. Got anything better to offer?" Aldo gave the other man a sideways glance as they continued walking and was surprised to see him actually deep in thought. Vincent was still listening to an old man, that guided them through the narrowest streets in order to make the pope trace the steps of one important ancestor or another. The worst part was that Vincent actually seemed to enjoy it and by proxy, so did Thomas. They were doomed.
"Seriously, let's get out of here. It's not like they will notice."
"Sure, we'll just ditch the fucking pope. No big deal." His voice drenched in sarcasm, Aldo didn't even try to hide how stupid he thought this plan to be. But that was apparently lost on Goffredo because he suddenly took hold of his hand and dragged him up an old and used flight of stone stairs. "What the-"
"Shh, they didn't notice," Goffredo whispered and kept on yanking on Aldo's hand. Suddenly, the dim shadows of the small streets lifted, and the world was painted in a bright orange and golden glow. They found themselves on the towns outer walls, looking into a beautiful sunset.
"Wow...," was all Aldo could say, as the golden rays seemed to find their way into the darkest places of his mind, pushing away the dark clouds of stress, anxiety, and fatigue. This view made it worth it.
"Ah, fresh air."
Aldo's brain caught up to him again, and he looked at his partner in crime as he took a deep hit of his vape.
"Oh, come on. Seriously?"
"What? I had to breathe in the dust of this shithole for a day without any relief. Let me have this."
"You're incorrigible."
"You love it."
Aldo smiled and laboriously took out his phone with his right hand from his left pocket, not contemplating why he didn't let go of Goffredo's hand instead.
"Maybe I do," he whispered as he opened the camera. This sunset was worth having a tacky picture taken of. Suddenly, a voice cut through the air.
"Cardinale Bellini? Cardinale Tedesco? Dove siete voi due?"
"Cazzo, we've been caught!"
Aldo took a picture at the exact moment when Goffredo moved into his frame and started to yell at the guards to mind their own business. The photography wasn't ruined, though. It became one of his favourite ones.
While everyone’s eyes were focused on the Ineffable Con and the Good Omens Graphic Novel over these past few weeks, our favourite Good Omens concept artist, Louis Ralph, has updated his portfolio with some yet unseen S2 photobashing work.
This piece, called ‘Burning’, depicts the surroundings of St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh skillfully transformed into Renaissance Vatican. The crowd gathered around the stake — including a very interesting instance of the long-haired bishop Crowley, in full black regalia with a mitra negra and a crosier, swapping sides with an earlier, slightly subdued version of the Globe Aziraphale — consists almost exclusively of members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard and the clergy, with the Pope himself overseeing the scene from a balcony in his traditional ermine-trimmed winter cape and camauro. All of them are witnessing a small miracle of unknown provenance: the blessing of rain falling exactly on the supposed witch and effectively stopping her trial by fire.
For those of you who have overlooked or forgotten the topic of the Good Omens minisodes cut out from S2 due to Covid restrictions, here’s the relevant quote from an official source pinpointing in time the full context of this particular artwork:
“Ones that we had planned as possible for Season 2 (that either didn't get written or didn't get filmed) included a Wild West one, a 15th century Papal one, an Arabian Nights one, and a 1960s American one with Crowley and Aziraphale female presenting. And we have the whole of human history as a canvas. But for now the ones you've got are all.”
For what it’s worth, the second half of the fifteenth century indeed saw a significant increase in the number of individuals, mostly poor and older women, who were hunted, charged, tried, and often executed as witches. The rise in condemnations was propelled by a series of papal bulls on the matter, the first from 1473, which attacked and condemned sorcery, thought to be practiced by witches. Popes of the first half of the fifteenth century issued bulls condemning witchcraft and magic as well, but not quite in the sense we think of today. And there’s one person we might consider as the source of the problem.
In 1484, a Dominican clergyman Heinrich Krämer (wider known under his Latin pen name Institoris) made one of the first attempts at prosecuting alleged witches in the Austrian Tyrol region. It was not a success: a professional barrister got involved, and Krämer expelled from the city of Innsbruck and dismissed by the local bishop as “senile and crazy”. So he did what senile and crazy men do best, even nowadays — he sat down and wrote a book in a desperate act of self-justification and revenge.
Not wanting to repeat the painful history from Tyrol, Krämer requested explicit authorisation from the Pope to prosecute witchcraft, together with another Dominican Friar Jacob Sprenger (believed by researchers to have had a personal feud with Krämer and trying to thwart his attempts locally). A papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus was issued in 1484 in response to Krämer’s request, and two years later, his magnum opus was published.
Malleus Maleficarum (1486) made use of both falsified academic credentials and a new technology in the form of Gutenberg’s printing press to become an instant bestseller, second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years. It appeared in 28 editions between 1486 and 1600 and was accepted by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike as an authoritative — albeit highly controversial among theologians — source of information concerning Satanism, and the preferable Christian response to this threat. The publication did much to spur on and sustain some two centuries of witch-hunting hysteria in Europe, promoting the implementation of Exodus 22:18: “You shall not permit a sorceress to live.”
Through the spread of Krämer’s depiction of a witch, the public outlook of witchcraft soon transformed from evil to properly demonic. Judging by Crowley’s presence at the scene, some demons were definitely involved, but not responsible for the human actions. If anything, a certain angel cheerleading an elderly friar wanting to publish a book seems like a likely explanation of this kerfuffle.
