I feel as though I should preface this by saying that I am not, in any sense, a classicist—I went through a “Greek myths” phase like any self-respecting grade-schooler with access to Dorling-Kindersley and the D’Aulaires, and I did take two years of Latin in high school, but that was… er… rather a long time ago at this point. As someone with a keen interest in the construction of stories, however, The Odyssey has lingered in the background for me, being, as it is, the template for so much of the so-called Western canon. I’m not up to date on the absolute latest scholarship, but it seems most likely that, rather than being the cohesive work of one single person, the text of the poem was derived from multiple sources, and then at some point set down much like the various renditions of the Arthurian mythos*. Thus, Nolan’s version is not an “adaptation” in the strictest sense; it’s another retelling, alongside the Coens’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Joyce’s Ulysses.
Indeed, at its boldest, Nolan’s film is almost a deconstruction of the myth. From the inherent skepticism of the title card, “A time of apparent magic”, to its largely human and tangible scale, it’s clear that this is not a high-fantasy venture like the Harryhausen films. This is a film of sweat and salt and a decorous amount of blood (it’s R-rated, but honestly it’s nothing I wouldn’t have been able to handle at the age of eleven or twelve), and it is primarily about men and the consequences of their actions. (For those complaining about the paucity of female roles here, I would suggest watching a different film.) In this way, it’s an interesting follow-up to Nolan’s Oppenheimer: J. Robert Oppenheimer was a real man who nonetheless took on a burden of, essentially, cosmic guilt; Odysseus (Matt Damon) is a fictional king from a mythical war, for whom, in Nolan’s telling, the cosmic interventions in his fate only underlined the human cost of his decisions.
This comes through most poignantly in the character of Sinon (Elliot Page), an invention for the film. Sinon joins the expedition to Troy as a young child, taking the place of the cowardly Antinous (who, later played by Robert Pattinson, becomes the chief of Penelope’s suitors). As a young man on the beach at Troy, he plays a pivotal role in luring the Trojans to the infamous horse that will seal their fate, and pays with his life. Later in the film, his ‘shade’ confronts Odysseus on the shores of the isle of the dead, and the grief and shame Odysseus feels over his death are given a physical talisman in the token that set Sinon on the journey in the first place. The tragedy here is a foundational one: it didn’t have to turn out this way.
Speaking of Antinous, I was, in some ways, reminded of the character that Robert Pattinson played in Good Time. It’s quite a specific niche: young men who are clever, but not smart—or to put another way, men who come up with schemes, but not plans. Antinous is a step ahead of most of the other “suitors” that have filled up Penelope’s palace in Odysseus’s absence: he’s handsome, capable of charm, and able to see openings to work his own advantage. He knows it would be very bad form to kill Telemachus (Tom Holland) over a drunken argument concerning Odysseus’s aged dog Argus, so he intervenes, clearly ‘playing to the house’ as he does so. Acting on intelligence from a servant girl, he worms his way into Penelope’s confidence, seducing her by seizing on her doubt. But it’s quite plain that he doesn’t have the first idea what he’ll do once he does, in fact, sit on the throne; he seems to think that’ll be the job done. In this way, he shows himself unworthy of the kingship. In the end, though, he seems to know this: rather than subject himself to the trial by bow, which he knows he will not win, he attempts to stop the competition entirely. In the ensuing melee, he is finally faced with the token of his long-ago treachery toward Sinon, forced on him by the disguised Odysseus.
Odysseus, of course, is no stranger to treachery. The film somewhat unsuccessfully attempts to burnish his reputation; he is not quite as sly here as he is in some versions. Instead, Damon portrays him mostly as a straightforwardly good guy who makes some bad choices; it’s a little bit difficult to believe that this dude would have devised the elaborate skullduggery of the horse. If anything, Jon Bernthal’s lightly menacing Menelaus seems the more likely candidate to have dreamed that up. (As I was thinking about the film on the way home, I found myself wondering what DiCaprio might have done with the role; he has a much more mercurial vibe than Damon.) His putative defiance of the gods reads more as a practical fellow who doesn’t have time for hocus-pocus, even when it’s staring him in the face, as it does during the encounter with Circe (Samantha Morton) and her ‘menagerie’. (One unintentionally funny note in this scene: the hog that follows Odysseus inside is very clearly a sow.) But Damon does manage to show Odysseus’s sense of moral injury, which is Nolan’s primary concern. He sells the weight of culpability for the massacre at Troy and for the loss of his crew, alongside the fear that his beloved Ithaca will also succumb to the spreading catastrophe.
Because of course, as the old chestnut goes, you can never really ‘go home’. Sons grow into young men who must forge their own path, beloved dogs no longer give chase (though their tails wag until the very end), and cities crumble. The arid, scrubby landscapes of the film and its sun-bleached palette give the impression of something fading away, as the sun fades over the sea**. The story of the Odyssey is the story of life—it is the story of Beowulf, of Benjamin Willard, of Frodo Baggins, but also of any traveler. I went into Nolan’s film with modest expectations, and these were largely met; I think we should consider ourselves lucky that our mega-budget blockbusters are in the hands of thoughtful storytellers.
*The Arthurian comparison here is a useful one—in both the case of King Arthur and the Trojan war, essentially, the consensus is that there is a loose historical basis for some of it, but most of the stories as we know them are likely just that.
**Just to get this out of the way: I always found the debate around “the wine-dark sea” rather silly—to me, it’s not saying that the sea was the literal color of wine, just that it was dark, in the same way that wine is dark.
