nolan’s odyssey is such a textbook study on the idiocy and dangers of presentism. yes of course penelope is a modern day feminist who wants to rule ithaca by herself. they make telemachus say that GREECE IS THE GREATEST CIVILIZATION IN THE WORLD as if the entire point of the massing of achaeans at troy for one unified cause isn’t spectacular precisely because THERE IS NO CONCEPT OF A UNIFIED GREECE NATIONS DO NOT EXISTTTTTT YETTTTT. literally 101 on historical writing is making sure that you’re avoiding strict periodization because the people living in a “period” will not identify themselves that way. ever. five million cheeky nods to “the sea peoples” but we’re being cute and coy and calling them “the people from the sea.” the obsession with xenia but refusal to call it xenia yes let’s say “zeus’s law” a hundred times and reduce it to the literal expectation that any stranger could be a god in disguise. how was penelope just hanging out in the main hall of the palace with her husband’s dinner guests while they were playing with weapons with her HAIR COMPLETELY DOWN no veil no nothing just chilling casually. comical. stoppppp making movies that engage in historical viewpoints if you’re going to slather a modernized coat of paint over the top. “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” or fucking whatever.
Let me preface this by saying that I was a history major and classics minor in undergrad and I currently am an archivist who works with historical materials everyday. I am very pro-history. I totally understand why people desire historical fiction to accurately reflect the historical periods they represent.
But I'm also a writer, and I think this focus on historical accuracy is often misguided and takes away from more interesting ways to engage with a story.
First, regardless of how accurate a work of historical fiction is, it will never be a perfect source for knowledge about a time and place. For instance, for all the praise a show like HBO's Rome gets for its accuracy, if someone wants to learn about the fall of the Roman Republic and that period in the city, the most accurate source of information is ultimately the primary sources we have from 1st century BC Rome. I think it is fool-hardy to fault a work of fiction for failing to be non-fiction source material. It is like blaming a cat for not being a dog.
Next, considering that, it is also worth considering that the original Homerian epics are themselves works of historical fiction. Most scholars believe the Iliad and Odyssey was originally composed in the 8th or 7th century BC. They tell a mythologized version of a Trojan War that many scholars believe is based on an actual historical conflict or conflicts around the 12th or 11th century BC. As such, the poems describe a conception of Bronze Age Greece from the perspective of the Archaic era. The Greek culture explored in the poems is thus more emblematic of the era it was composed in than the actual historical setting, not unlike how it would be safe to say that Nolan's modern retelling reflects our modern cultural sensibilities grafted onto this centuries-old story.
Finally, we also need to consider the history of the "historical epic" classic film genre. Hollywood has a long of history of making films set in the Classical world; these films often fail to be historically accurate, but they are interesting works of art nonetheless. The 1951 film Quo Vadis explores the persecution of the Christians in early imperial Rome; as a film, it perpetuates many historical inaccuracies, particularly about the emperor Nero, but it remains a fascinating work because its Christian/heathen narrative reflects the embrace of a Christian identity by America at the dawn of the Cold War in opposition to perceived Soviet atheism. Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus, a classic of the genre written by the HUAC-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, uses the historical slave uprising led by the gladiator Spartacus to tell a contemporary tale about class inequality and persecution. The point is, there is a long film tradition of this genre being used to tell stories set in historical times that reflect contemporary issues. I think it is important to consider this film as Nolan's contribution to this tradition.
I'll end with this: I won't tell you how to engage with media, but to be frank, to me, Cinema Sins-style nitpicking over historical accuracy is one of the least interesting ways to critically engage with a piece of fiction like this.
