“The Odyssey” came out on July 17, and it might be the hallmark of director Christopher Nolan’s career. Pulling from the multi-millennial-old tale, Nolan takes 35 gongs, a bunch of A-list actors and creates a blockbuster film that is unlike anything Hollywood has seen when it comes to action films.
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Seeing “The Odyssey” in theatres, which was written, produced and directed by Academy Award-winning Christopher Nolan of “Oppenheimer,” was nothing short of breathtaking. Starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, amid a cinema industry overrun with sequels, live-action remakes and even more sequels, Nolan tells his own transcendent and original version of Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” in a way that is so uniquely…Christopher Nolan.
Sitting down in that crowded theatre, I knew that it had been a long while since I had familiarized myself with the ancient Greek story. I mean, I knew that before Nolan could even bring his vision of the epic to the big screen, “The Odyssey” had already endured for nearly three millennia as one of the foundational stories of Western literature. The story was first passed down orally before becoming a written work that illustrated a hero’s journey. The epic follows Odysseus, the king of Ithaca and the clever tactician who devised the Trojan Horse, and his arduous ten-year journey home to Ithaca following the Trojan War. He fights legendary monsters and faces the wrath of the gods, such as Poseidon and Zeus, along the way. After returning home, he overcomes a barrage of haughty suitors that seek to claim his kingdom and queen, ultimately defeating the suitors and reuniting with his devoted wife, Penelope. This story is often attributed to be one of the oldest and most influential texts in the world, dating back to 725 B.C.E. In other words, Nolan had to take a lengthy, 2,800-year-old story that has been told and retold countless times and make it feel new again. And I feel like, after seeing the film, he somehow succeeds.
My greatest concern with Nolan’s film, which hit theatres July 17, was not how he would fit all the events of the original epic into the film, nor was it whether the wardrobe or set pieces would be historically accurate. No, my greatest concern was whether you could put some of the greatest actors of our generation in a film without it becoming a regurgitation of all the movies they had done before. Was I going to look at Telemachus (Tom Holland) and see Spider-Man? Was I going to look at Antinous (Robert Pattinson) and wonder when Twilight’s Edward Cullen had learned to wield a sword? Was I going to see Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and wait for Miranda Priestly to emerge and start barking orders at the Queen of Ithaca? Thankfully, the answer to all three questions is no. Nolan’s casting is undoubtedly one of the film’s greatest strengths. Rather than allowing the actors’ previous roles to overshadow their characters, he gives each of them the space to disappear in the world of “The Odyssey.” Damon is not simply Matt Damon playing Odysseus, nor is Hathaway merely Anne Hathaway in ancient Ithaca. They are, first and foremost, the characters Homer created, and Nolan’s vision enables them to become something entirely new.
Penelope, for example, was a feminist icon who independently held the throne for 20 years. She did not remarry, and while she could not get rid of the suitors invading her home, they listened to her when she commanded them. While her character arc revolved around her husband, there was something about the way that Hathaway played Penelope that made her feel like more than simply the woman waiting for Odysseus to return, even if she appears that way in the original text. Additionally, I felt that both Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra (both played by Lupita Nyong’o) were interesting foils to Penelope, as Clytemnestra was not loyal to her husband, Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) and murders him when he gets home from Troy. I still felt that both Helen and Clytemnestra had full character arcs. Clytemnestra does not simply murder Agamemnon because she is an unfaithful wife or because she has fallen in love with another man. Her actions are rooted in years of pain and resentment created by her husband’s decisions, particularly his sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, before the Trojan War. Her murder of Agamemnon is, yes, a betrayal of her husband, but also the culmination of a history of betrayal that had been building long before he ever returned home.
Furthermore, the music, composed by Ludwig Göransson, is also what really sold the movie for me. Göransson was forbidden by Nolan to use an orchestra in the score, and this allowed the film to develop a visceral, haunting Bronze Age sound that is unique to “The Odyssey” because it wholly lacks the usual Hollywood dramatics. To achieve this, the score is composed of custom bronze instruments, 35 bronze gongs, the aulos (an ancient double-pipe reed instrument) the lyre (a harp-like instrument designed to mimic Odysseus’ bow pluck), background vocals, and, lastly, a feature on the song “Circe” by Samantha Morton, who plays the goddess Circe. In fact, it is the beautiful music that makes my favorite scene, the moment Odysseus encounters the sirens, so heartbreaking.
For those of us less well-versed in Grecian mythology, the sirens are terrifying, birdlike women who entice sailors to their deaths with an alluring, enchanted song. After Damon’s Odysseus survives the bird women by having his crew tie him to a post, his crew asks him, “What was the siren song?” The traumatized hero replies, “All the things you wanted to be and all the things you wish you never wished for. It told you what you most want is all the things you can’t have, and what you most can’t have is what you already had and lost. It was the song of all the promises I failed to keep.”
The line is devastating on its own, but Göransson’s score makes it almost unbearable. The scene does not feel like Odysseus has simply escaped a monster, but more like he has been forced to confront every version of himself he has failed to become and every promise he has broken along the way. The music gives shape to that grief, turning the sirens’ song into the sound of regret itself.
I’ve found that one particularly interesting regret that Odysseus seems to carry throughout the film, especially during the siren scene, is the desecration of the sacred. In the film adaptation, he misleads his own soldier, Sinon (Elliot Page), into believing that the Trojan Horse is a gift intended for the people of Troy, an offering to the goddess Athena (Zendaya) meant to atone for the Greeks’ earlier desecration of her temple. Believing that the Greeks have abandoned the horse and fled, Sinon, wounded by the Trojans, tells them of the offering. Sinon’s genuine belief in Odysseus’ claim convinces the Trojans to bring the horse into Troy, unknowingly carrying Odysseus and his soldiers inside the city walls, leading to the destruction of Troy. What makes the scene especially compelling is, yes, that Sinon, one of Odysseus’ own soldiers, has been deceived himself. He becomes another unwitting instrument in the destruction of Troy, just as Odysseus’ actions turn the sacred act of atonement into yet another act of violence.
Additionally, another regret Odysseus consistently thinks about is that his warriors break a fundamental rule of war, Zeus’ law, that any stranger could be a god in disguise, by killing and maiming innocent people throughout the film. In fact, it is not until after they have blinded Polyphemus (Bill Irwin), the cyclops demigod son of Poseidon, that they realize that he can speak and understand, that they could’ve reasoned with him. It is because of this hubris that Poseidon cursed the warrior’s journey home and of course, Odysseus doesn’t realise this at the time, just chalking up Polyphemus’ silence to “would you speak to ants?” I think that match-cut with the destruction of Athena’s statue alongside the beheading of a young girl in Athena’s temple, the film illustrates how the Greek soldiers destroyed the very deities they revere by killing and hurting innocent people, and how the gods reacted in turn.
Overall, I don’t think that the film is interested in presenting Odysseus as an uncomplicated hero returning home after a great adventure. Instead, I think that it asks what happens when a man finally makes it home and has to live with everything it took for him to get there. It was a great movie, and while I don’t like how Nolan didn’t hit every plot point of the original, I appreciate how much he fit into the three-hour-long film.
So, if you need me, I’ll be making my own lyre, custom gongs, and scrolling Anne Hathaway fan edits, at least, until the sequel comes out.
Contact CU Independent Managing Editor Alexia Bailey at Alexia.Bailey@colorado.edu
