I’ve seen Nolan’s Odyssey three times now for various reasons (I said, “yes I will see it with you!” to a few different people). I enjoyed it! This is not going to be a thorough review. There are writers far more prepared and adept at critiquing it as an adaptation than I am. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I tried to finish the book before the film came out. However, my reading time has been suffocated recently by the busyness of life. Alas!
I decided I did want to write a piece about The Odyssey though, if only to have something to discuss with friends. I think Nolan’s film has interesting things to say, particularly about how we interact with the divine.
Before I go on, I want to mention that perhaps one of the greatest parts about The Odyssey being adapted, regardless of your thoughts on the film, is how everyone is pulling its themes and messages apart. We are all in love with Greek mythology. I love that, honestly! If anyone knows me I tend to approach film like a piece of literature. Give me something to analyze—not to dissect for its own sake; to squeeze every ounce of joy from the room. I analyze to love, to think more deeply, to be encouraged, and to wrestle with the truth. You should watch Nolan’s film if only to grapple with something. Then you can talk about it with me.
One of my favorite reviews of The Odyssey was written by Annie Crawford. It’s hot off the press, so you probably haven’t read it yet, but Crawford makes a compelling parallel between Odysseus in Nolan’s film and C.S Lewis’ Orual from Till We Have Faces.
One of the twists of Nolan’s adaptation (which has been discussed ad nauseum at this point) is how Odysseus’ actions in the Trojan war are actually a breaking of xenia, the Greek law of hospitality, “Zeus’ Law”. Odysseus sets himself in defiance of the gods by breaking the sacred norms given to men. He realizes his guilt. This becomes one of the primary lenses for how Nolan reinterprets the Trojan war and also the conduct of the suitors, Odysseus, and his men. In Lewis’ adaptation of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, Orual (Psyche’s sister) is the daughter of a king in a world immersed with the presence of the gods. She despises them because she recognizes they matter, and she resents them for it. They feel so distant and cold and illusive. At the end of the book she stands on trial before them, full of accusations.
Nolan is on record for saying he tried to depict the Greek gods in “the way these characters would have seen them.” This is nowhere more apparent than in one scene where Odysseus asks Athena, “Why can’t gods speak in ways we understand?” To which she responds, “Who doesn’t understand thunder? Fire? A child’s smile? A good harvest?” In many ways this illustrates one of the key ways the Greeks related to the gods. You make sacrifices to appease them and hopefully will receive something in return—or at the least not be struck down.
Many people have criticized the film for flattening the divine. Some even think Nolan psychologized the gods so much as to render their presence imaginary. Ancient peoples saw gods in everything. Right? Part of this interpretation is for certain fueled by Athena being portrayed to Odysseus as the temple priestess he saw murdered, as well as the opening title card: “in a world of apparent magic.”
But part of me questions this conclusion. I think Nolan is sincerely depicting a world haunted by the gods. A monstrous Cyclops. Circe’s sorcery. The trip to Hades’ shores. The weeping dead emerging from the ground. The winds suddenly dying to lull Odysseus’ men to sea. A thunderbolt to condemn them. The gods certainly exist, but they cannot be understood. As Crawford notes, “we see the gods working through the veil of nature - through wind and waves, through thunder and light, through dreams and conscience, through the wonder of thought and the face of the stranger.” The gods are always present, but impenetrable. Though subtle in its portrayal, a wrestling with divine hiddenness is woven throughout Nolan’s adaptation.
In Lewis’ depiction, “Holy places are dark places.” Orual’s heart grows cold to the gods. She can only see them as capricious. Among her accusations:
“There is no escape from them into sleep or madness, for they can pursue you into them with dreams. Indeed you are then most at their mercy. The nearest thing we have to a defence against them (but there is no real defence) is to be very wide awake and sober and hard at work, to hear no music, never to look at earth or sky, and (above all) to love no one.”
“…the strongest reason for distrust. The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us up big before they prick us.”
Orual treats divine hiddenness as a justification to not only defy the gods, but also hold loosely onto the goods of the world. Her love grows cold and distorted. I won’t spoil the book in this piece, but one of my favorite things Lewis does is turn her resentment into clarity. Orual recognizes her own guilt and realizes how little she truly knows when faced with Divine insight. She humbly accepts her fate.
Like Orual, Nolan’s Odysseus must accept his own fate, largely by recognizing his culpability in breaking divine norms. Part of his defiance against the gods included thinking he could control the fate of his own men. When Athena asks him “When you see your men die, do you see chance or consequence?” She is questioning his belief that he can save them from their own guilt. But Odysseus must face what he has done, and surrender to the judgment of the gods. This part of Nolan’s reinterpretation of The Odyssey changes the homecoming. Instead of killing the suitors as an act of reestablishing lost honor, Odysseus must make atonement for the very sin he committed himself. Xenia needs to be restored.
Nolan’s gods, whether intended or not, I believe are more Christianized than Greek. They care about human laws and norms, not for the sake of their own petty whims and ambitions, but because the sacred deeply matters to the moral fabric of civilization. The Trojan horse was a symbolic abandonment of divine order. In this sense, the guilt Odysseus experienced was more Nietzschean than anything: we have killed God! What happens to the world when we abandon the very thing that holds it together? We live haunted.
I doubt whether Nolan intended for us to ask these sorts of questions, especially considering his agnosticism. But that is part of the genius of his interpretation. Good art invites this kind of analysis. If you haven’t seen The Odyssey yet, I highly encourage you to do so (sorry for the spoilers!). And when you do, let me know your thoughts.