Lost: Film Review of The Odyssey
★★★★
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Film versions of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, and most other Greek and Roman myths, are often framed as epic tales of mortal men struggling to control their own lives. In movies like Jason and the Argonauts or Clash of the Titans, the gods are portrayed as magical beings living in marbled halls high above the clouds in Mt. Olympus, typically bickering over the fate of their favorite mortals. Some heroes, like Jason or Perseus, recognize the power of the gods—fate—and try to curry favor with them. Some try to defy the gods and control their fates themselves, but as in the case of Oedipus, who tried to escape the prophecy he would kill his father and marry his mother, these attempts to usurp fate never work.
Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic adaptation of The Odyssey, while preserving the cultural foundations of Greek mythology from the original poem, has tailored the tale to modern sensibilities, particularly in the characterization of its hero. Odysseus (Matt Damon) is not only the war hero single-mindedly striving to get back home, but is a man wracked by guilt over what might be termed—in our vernacular—war crimes and the consequences of his own hubris. This Odysseus is less of a mythological hero and more of a man.
The film opens in Ithaca in Odysseus’ palace. A storyteller begins the tale of the hero Odysseus and the conquest of Troy with a wooden horse filled with soldiers. It is revealed that it is nearly twenty years since Odysseus has been there and his home is overrun with suitors vying for the hand of his wife Penelope (Ann Hathaway) and the throne, but she is convinced her husband is alive and will return. Odysseus’ grown son Telemachus (Tom Holland) is unsuccessfully trying to fend off the suitor who are gutting the palace’s larders. Odysseus’s loyal swineherd Eumaeus (John Leguizamo) is also confident he will return to wreak vengeance on the suitors.
The film then cuts to Odysseus who is living on the island of Ogygia with the sea nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron). She has entranced him with lotus, causing him to lose his memory. Taking pity on him, she stops feeding him the lotus, causing his memory to return.
Using a series of flashbacks, Nolan details the trials of Odysseus and his men as they encounter the one-eyed giant Polyphemus (Bill Irwin), the giant Laestrygonians, and Circe (Emily Watson) the witch, who turns the crew into swine. Odysseus persuades her to turn them back, and she tells him he must go to Hades and speak to the shade of the blind prophet Tiresias (James Remar) who tells him by divine will only he will return home. He then warns him of the Sirens, the whirlpool Charbydis and the monster Scylla.
Odysseus also encounters Sinon (Elliot Page), one of his dead soldiers, who reproaches his king for lying to him and not properly burying his dead. He and his crew are chased back to their boats by their fallen comrades.
Almost seamlessly intercut with Odysseus’ misadventures are Telemachus’ struggles to preserve the kingdom and appease his mother, who, in her frustration, lashes out at Telemachus’ suggestions that he assume the throne. In desperation, Telemachus travels to Sparta to see Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and his wife Helen (Lupita Nyong’o) to see if he can find out more of his father’s fate.
As his memories continue to return, Odysseus starts remembering the episode of the Trojan Horse and the war, specifically the ravages inflicted upon innocent women and children and the execution of the priestess in the temple of Athena (Zendaya as both the priestess and the goddess). He finally remembers his home and his family, and Calypso, taking pity on him, allows him to leave if he begs Poseidon’s forgiveness. He wakes to find himself on Ithaca’s shore and disguised, makes his way into the dining hall where he reveals himself and confronts the suitors.
Homer’s Odyssey is an oft-told tale, but Christopher Nolan has put an entirely new spin on it. Instead of an affirmation of social norms and cultural values (as most mythic tale and religious allegories do), Nolan’s version is a hybrid of those norms as well as a highly intimate look at Odysseus’ psychology. He is still the trickster, the strategist, the smartest guy on the room (or on the ship), but this Odysseus carries the burden of guilt not only for the men he left behind (a guilt which confronts him viscerally on the plains of Hades), but for his responsibility in violating a sacred social norm, the rule of Zeus, that a host must welcome a guest into his home with food, drink, and hospitality, and that a guest must treat the host with respect in return. Odysseus feels his trick with the Trojan Horse, along with other misadventures, as with Polyphemus, violated this rule and led to—as he puts it “the unravelling of civilization”.
It might be argued that his time with Calypso was an unconscious effort to erase not only the guilt over Troy, but for the deaths of his men as well. In this context, his return home can be interpreted as Odysseus’ confrontation with his past and the path to self-forgiveness. This sort of thematic is not new to Nolan. Oppenheimer explored the psychological price paid by the titular character for bringing the ultimate means of mass destruction to mankind. When Athena appears to him, she takes of the form of the priestess assassinated in Athena’s temple in Troy, as if the goddess is reprimanding him for breaking the rule of Zeus.
The intercutting between Odysseus’s past misadventures and Ithaca’s present might have seemed clunky in lesser hands, but Nolan weaves together the narrative timelines seamlessly. Using Calypso as the device to open the narrative of his past, instead of following the poem’s original involvement with Princess Nausicaa of the Phaeacians allowed Nolan to incorporate Odysseus’ guilt and despondency into the story, making him much more of a modern sort of hero.
Not enough can be said about the absolute brilliance of Nolan’s filmmaking. The epic staging of the battle scenes and the raw authenticity of the seafaring scenes are beautifully choreographed and perfectly captured. The scenes with Polyphemus, shot almost entirely in his darkened cave, are terrifying. The creature himself, who unlike the Homeric Polyphemus, barely speaks. He is instead more an animal than a man, and ultimately a reflection of the animalism evident in Odysseus’s crew. The scene when the crew goes by the island of the Sirens runs contrary to the usual depiction of these women. Instead of showing the Sirens to the viewer, Nolan keeps a long-shot perspective from the ship, giving us only hints of who is there, making the audience do the work of imagining their forms as well as their song.
While the settings of the film are absolutely stunning, the colors seem washed out, perhaps reflecting Odysseus’ depression. Much of the film takes place in darkened settings. The dining hall in Ithaca, the interior of the Trojan horse, and the pillaging of Troy are filmed in darkened settings.
Matt Damon is the perfect Odysseus. Thoughtful, quiet, and shrewd, he is hardly your typical action hero, yet Damon, with his air of quiet intelligence, pulls it off. Anne Hathaway is the perfect embodiment of frustrated loyalty and determination but who is not above ruthlessly berating her own son.
Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Elliott Page, Emily Watson, and the rest of the cast are magnificent. Watson in particular turns in a harrowing performance of almost tender fury as Circe transforms the men into swine and then becomes the embodiment of strength as she counsels Odysseus.
The Odyssey is breathtaking, beautiful, intimate, and wonderful. It feels as if it is not just Odysseus who finally arrives home after years of wandering the world and fleeing his own demons, but that he has succeeded in healing himself and is on the road to restoring the rule of Zeus and bringing back the world he compromised and reconstructing civilization.
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