THE ODYSSEY (dir. Christopher Nolan, starring, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway)

 THE ODYSSEY (dir. Christopher Nolan, starring, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson)

 

Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey is a preposterous sword and sandal depiction of Homer’s epic which rejects a historical approach.  So, Matt Damon’s Odysseus wears an absurd pair of leather arm guards, omnipresent in such mish mash puddings that seem to incorporate old style Hollywood blockbusters with genuine renditions of the Homeric epos.

The film is set in the classical Greek era, circa 5^th century BC, about 700 years after the period the epic alludes to which was the 11^th-12^th centuries BC, in the heart of the bronze age.  Nevertheless, historic changes are alluded to such as the arrival of the sea peoples and the bronze age collapse which prefigured the beginning of the iron age and the arrival of new peoples who began to dominate the Mediterranean world.

The gods are alluded to but are never visualised.  We learn that the Cyclops Polyphemus is the son of Poseidon, God of the sea, storms, earthquakes, and horses.  Odysseus blinds the Cyclops and delivers his riddle, telling the monster that he is ‘no man’, a scene deleted from the film, and the final moment also when the Cyclops community laugh at Polyphemus who is being attacked by ‘no man’.  It is as if Homer sent a postcard to Freud which Nolan has somehow contrived to absent mindedly lose.  Homer’s epic implies a greater coherence, this has somehow been lost in Nolan’s rendition. 

Although the goddess Pallas Athena appears to Odysseus in Homer’s work, when he arrives in disguise on the island of Ithaca, she is never visualised.  She isn’t even a voice in Odysseus’s head.  We are left to wonder at the end whether the gods exist or function as narrative devices driving the story on. 

The best scene in the film is at the very beginning, when the Trojan horse appears half-buried in the sand rather than a ridiculous wooden horse on a set of wheels, ready-made to be obligingly wheeled into Troy to begin the destruction of the city.  Nolan cleverly abandons the approach of films like Clash of the Titans, where the gods appear in some rendition of a Roman sauna, replete with togas, as if they are on the way to a toga party.

When Odysseus and his crewmates land on Circe's island, Circe (a witch or sorcerer, played in the film by Samantha Morton) administers a potion to Odysseus's crew and transforms them into swine, thus revealing their true nature.  Odysseus takes a potion which renders him immune to Circe's potion.  Odysseus then directs Circe to reverse the transformation and questions her about how he might return to Ithaca.   She directs him to journey to the very edge of the world and there to summon the ghosts of the dead from Hades.  Using a typical ritual, known to the Greeks as Nekuia, the dead will speak to Odysseus and from them he will learn how to reach his home.

The overall sense of Homer’s epic is maintained and its logic and story telling power are retained.  Another key scene in the Nostos (a word meaning ‘journey home’ and the root of our word ‘nostalgia’) is the Nekuia which was an ancient ritual devised to summon the ghosts of the dead and question them about the future.  The book is better known to us as Hades. The prophet Tiresias directs Odysseus to dig a shallow pit, administer various libations and kill a black ram and a black ewe.  Once the dead have drunk the blood, they can speak to the living.   Odysseus encounters the shade of Sinon, the dupe he left with the Trojan horse to deliver his message.  Sinon was killed by the Trojans and alleges that he was deceived and depicts Odysseus as a sly trickster.  Sinon is a character omitted from Homer’s epic but the attribution of deception to Odysseus was a common notion in antiquity.  Odysseus then greets Agammemnon and catches up on the bad news of the King’s homecoming.  Agammemnon was betrayed by his wife Clytemnestra but avenged by his son Orestes.  Agammemnon warns him not to return to his home ostentatiously but meekly, in disguise.  Tiresias prophesies that Odysseus will lose all his companions when they slaughter and consume the Kine of the sun god Helios on his island Thrinacia and that he must strive to prevent this.

The Telemachy, the first four books of The Odyssey, which depict Odysseus's son Telemachus journeying to Pylos and Sparta to gain news of the whereabouts of his father, is underscored and Telemachus is, at best, a spear carrier.  When Odysseus and his companions are stranded on Thrinicia, they encounter a herd of cattle.  Desperation leads to them slaughtering and consuming the cattle.  This book is known as Oxen of the Sun.  Eventually they are able to leave the island when a prevailing wind sends them out to sea, but a terrible storm destroys their craft and only Odysseus is left alive.  He's subsequently rescued by the nymph Calypso.  Anne Hathaway is clearly mis-cast as Penelope, a roll better suited to Charlize Theron who appears as the nymph Calypso, robbing Odysseus of his memories with the lotus flower.  In The Odyssey, Calypso merely delays Odysseus, promising him immortality if he will stay with her, but ultimately and reluctantly allowing him to leave.

The fight with the suitors at the end of the film is clearly absurd but somehow, we come to believe that Odysseus pulls it off.  A literal rendition of the poem with all the correct arms and armour and characters mouthing Homeric Greek would clearly be wrong and what Nolan has done is to make an Odyssey for mature people in the 21^st century.  The film is very good, but I preferred The Vikings, O well…

Paul Murphy, Leicester Square, London, August 2026