Thoughts on Nolan's Odyssey

I recently saw Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

Ignoring the advice I often dispense in situations like these, I decided to read the poem beforehand. I originally bought a cheap, used, prose translation by W. H. D. Rouse that I found difficult to get through, so I pivoted early on to Emily Wilson's version and found it much more accessible. I'll likely have much more to say about the experience of reading the Odyssey, particularly since I was in the unusual position, for an amateur, of having two translations at my fingertips at the same time, but that is a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say that I read the poem before seeing the movie and it unsurprisingly coloured my experience of the whole thing.

The Short of It

Let's get this out of the way first. I liked the movie, but I didn't love it. I thought it looked amazing and found myself genuinely on the edge of my seat during certain sequences (the scenes with Circe come to mind). The Sirens were handled (almost) perfectly. I loved how Agamemnon was portrayed as a sort of towering, larger than life, yet mysterious figure who casts a long shadow over the whole movie (Nolan's decision to show only glimpses of his face was a good one. He's like the ancient Greek version of Darth Vader). And the Trojan Horse itself felt - I never thought I would say this - fresh.

The Long of It

With all that said, I did have some problems with the movie, most of them sourced, as you might expect, in differences from the poem. This is why I usually advise people to watch a movie before reading the source material on which it's based - you won't have any preconceived notions muddying your experience.

The first problem is that book Odysseus is supposed to be clever and wily. Film Odysseus is neither; he's basically a tortured soldier with PTSD. In the Emily Wilson translation, Odysseus is famously described as "complicated"; in the film, he is very much not.

This mostly works, but not always. Nolan restructures enough of the plot so that Odysseus' cleverness isn't actually required, in most cases, to move it forward. The movie barely mentions that he's the one that came up with the idea for the Trojan Horse. It omits the memorable scene with Odysseus and his men clinging to the undersides of the Cyclops' sheep. It omits the famous "Nobody" ruse. Your mileage may vary, but I found it genuinely disappointing.

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't think that faithfulness to source material is the metric by which we should judge an adaptation - particularly not the adaptation of a 3000 year poem, itself likely an amalgamation of different versions of the mythology. It's kind of crazy to talk about narrative purity in this context. Book Odysseus and film Odysseus are two different characters and that is not, in itself, a bad thing.

Except, of course, that certain story beats only make sense when we're talking about one version of the character over the other. Film Odysseus is apparently the kind of guy who plucks his bow to give the animal he's hunting a fighting chance. It seems strange that a guy like that would fire a random arrow at a retreating Cyclops, just to be mean. This happens in the poem, but it tracks because poem Odysseus can be kind of a dick. It felt out of character for film Odysseus and I'm not sure why Nolan bothered to keep it in at all.

Even the Sirens felt a little out of place. I loved the sequence itself, but the logic behind it didn't make much sense. Odysseus avoids putting wax in his ears because he wants to be the first one to hear the Siren song and live? That's something poem Odysseus would want. I saw literally nothing to make me believe that film Odysseus would want the same thing.

Omitting Phaeacia

All in all, Nolan seemed to be aiming for a more grounded approach to the source material. The Greek pantheon forms a major part of the poem - Athena, Zeus, Hermes and Poseidon all figure quite heavily in the plot. Nolan more or less leaches them all out of the film, except for Athena - and even she was a bit of a psych (if you know, you know). Zeus and Poseidon have cameos as bad weather.

Which makes it all the more odd that Nolan decided to omit the whole Phaeacia episode of the story. In the book, after leaving Calypso but before returning to Ithaca, Odysseus crash lands on an island of seafarers (the aforementioned Phaeacia), where he's forced to be their guest while waiting for a chance to leave. Some of the most famous elements of the story, like the Cyclops and Circe and the Sirens, essentially unfold as a flashback at this point - a tale spun by Odysseus to entertain his hosts. It's ambiguous as to how much of it is real.

Nolan got rid of this section entirely, and instead folded it into Odysseus' time with Calypso, now retooled so that Odysseus suffers from lotus flower induced amnesia. The flashback, where we meet the Cyclops and the rest, is reimagined as Odysseus regaining his lost memories.

This undermines the whole idea of "grounding" the narrative. The fantastical elements of the story are effectively portrayed as real memories in the film. It's frustrating because if you were looking for a way to ground the story, the poem's "story within a story" mechanism, with its inherent ambiguity, already seemed like a perfectly good way to do it. It was frankly baffling that Nolan would choose to turn the gods and goddesses of the poem into psychological trauma and thunderstorms - but then choose to keep the Cyclops, Sirens, and witches as something tangible in a way that the source material does not.

Unimportant Details

Much has been made of Nolan's other choices for the film, like casting a black actress as Helen of Troy, and his use of modern language. I debated even mentioning them, for fear of giving undeserved oxygen to assholes who think that "historical accuracy" applies to a fucking myth, but I finally concluded that either a) no one is going is to read this anyway or b) people will read it and it's an oppourtunity to call these people out.

With respect to the use of modern words like "dad", you get used to it really quickly. I always marvel at people who complain about this. Anything other than ancient Greek is going to be "wrong" so if you're doing the film in English anyway, you might as well use words that seem appropriate and modern to your ears.

And once you accept that the Nolan is going for a more modern take on this story, the diversity of the cast doesn't feel out of place in the slightest. I would take it even further: the scenes with Helen and Clytemnestra are just really good - probably some of the best scenes of the entire film. I'll credit those scenes with making me actually want to read the Oresteia.

And that's all I'm going to say on this subject.

Bottom Line

If you want my unvarnished advice, it's this: watch the movie and then read the poem. The film is genuinely entertaining, and as far as spectacles go, it's masterful. But knowing anything more than the basic outlines of the myths won't increase your enjoyment of it.

After you watch the movie, you should read the poem! The film leaves a lot out, despite the three hour length. There are lots of versions to choose from. I choose Emily Wilson's, and I liked it, but I hear good things about Robert Fagles' translation as well.

Maybe the whole experience will make you want to explore this corner of the literary world. These things are classics for a reason, right?

When I finally get around to reading the Iliad, I'll let you know what I think!