“I want someone who has regrets. I want someone who’s learned the hard way. I want someone who understands that life is made of those messy compromises.” — Joel Christensen on the Odysseus he hopes to see in Matt Damon

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is out — the controversial movie of the year, much of the controversy raging before anyone had seen a frame. So, before either of us had seen the epic, I talked to the CUNY classicist Joel Christensen, author of the timely Why Odysseus? Survivor, Scoundrel, (Anti)hero.

What, I asked Christensen, did he most dread about Hollywood’s treatment of his beloved Odyssey? His answer: a hero too noble to be interesting. The Odysseus of the epic is a survivor, a scoundrel, an antihero — the master sergeant who does what needs to be done, from engineering the Trojan Horse to making sure Hector’s infant son doesn’t survive it. Christensen’s worry about Matt Damon came down to one word: too likeable. What he wanted instead was a man with regrets — De Niro in Raging Bull rather than anybody noble.

So did Christensen get the Odysseus he wanted? Below is his review, written after seeing the film when it came out.

Postscript: Joel Christensen’s Verdict on the Film

Nolan’s Odyssey is not Homer’s Odyssey. This should be clear to anyone. Nolan faced an almost impossible task well: ancient audiences knew the story already. Modern audiences do not, so he created a ring structure with the beginning union of Penelope and Odysseus anticipating the reunion at the end, also introducing plot elements like the dog Argos and the pin by which Penelope will recognize Odysseus.

The film is not Homer. Homer’s power is poetry; the film’s is image. Some of the images are striking: the scene when Circe turns his men into animals is the most arresting in the whole movie, showing everything that can be done with visceral imagery and a slight adaptation (Circe here is a survivor of sexual assault).

The changes made to the plot such as omitting the Phaeacians, Nestor, Laertes, the bed and more are not as jarring as some of the general decisions. Calling “Zeus’ Law” “do unto others…” makes an understandable translation to a Christian context, but it is somewhat nonsensical for Homer. Depicting a mutilated Helen is a strange decision that I am struggling with.

What the movie gets right is making humans responsible for their own suffering. In a novel take on Odysseus as a traumatized warrior, the hero spends seven years with Calypso eating Lotus to forget the loss of his men. Damon, too likeable, regrets the trick of the Trojan Horse after witnessing the slaughter during the sack of Troy. We find out as well that the “sea people” from history, bringing an end to the “civilization” are actually the Greeks returning from the Trojan War and suffering for the transgressions they committed there.

Is this ending an echo of Zeus’ plan to end the race of heroes in the Trojan War? Is it an allegory for our civilizational collapse in the future thanks to technology, environmental catastrophe, and fascism? Any potential social critique dissipates with the movie’s end. The traumatized veteran turns out to be merciful and kills only some of the suitors, showing many mercy. Then, guilty of violating “Zeus’ Law”, Odysseus happily goes into exile with Penelope, leaving Telemachus to be king.

There’s no way to make Homer’s Odyssey into a film and convey all its ambiguity and depth. That would be an unfair expectation. Nolan’s film is a compelling spectacle and it makes me wonder more about how it reflects who we are as an audience. Do we need the hero to be ultimately good, even if he messed up? Are we so simple that we need to hear about Zeus’ Law and the Sea People so repetitively? I fear that in this age where fiction and fact are so hard to disentangle, that we long for narratives that are just simpler.

We don’t get the Odyssey we want; we get the one we deserve.

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: an expert witness
00:01:54 Excited? Crossing eight into nine
00:02:15 What if Nolan gets it wrong?
00:03:35 The cast
00:05:50 From rural Maine to reading Greek
00:08:37 Should kids learn Latin and Greek?
00:09:39 Emily Wilson and translation
00:10:30 Polytropos: a complicated man
00:12:56 Foreign world, or familiar humanity?
00:16:13 Homer, Gilgamesh, and why we tell tales
00:18:40 Scylla and Charybdis
00:19:47 Lupita Nyong'o as Helen
00:22:44 When Tom Holland says dad
00:23:50 The dialect nobody spoke
00:26:23 The valence of violence
00:27:20 Tarantino in Ithaca
00:30:52 Will Penelope steal the film?
00:33:46 Atwood's Penelopiad
00:34:17 Keep her ambiguous
00:35:38 What the Odyssey misses
00:37:47 Socrates and Odysseus
00:39:37 Survivor, scoundrel, antihero
00:40:58 The master sergeant
00:43:51 De Niro in Raging Bull
00:44:33 Joel's verdict in these notes