Editor’s Note: Dear Wife and I saw The Odyssey at the Grand Theater’s Ultra DLX premium format screen (With Atmos sound) in Lincoln, NE over the weekend. I loved it, and DW enjoyed it despite it being way over her limit of two hours (it has a running time approaching three hours). But there is a lot to digest in this film. So this post will deal with all the talk that has surrounded the movie before it was released, and my next one will discuss what I and other critics have to say about it. In the mean time, go see The Odyssey at the best theater you can locate!
You can find all of my posts dealing with The Odyssey here.
New Yorker cartoon by Brendan Loper, click on for link to cartoon at New Yorker web site.
So by now everyone who has the slightest interest in movies knows about several “controversies” surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. There are absolutely serious and legit criticisms to make about this film and all other Nolan movies, but I think it’s generally a good idea to see it before talking about what’s wrong with it. So here is a brief discussion from the we-haven’t-seen-it-but-we-know-it’s-bad brigade:
- Members of the manosphere on social media are very angry that trans actor Elliot Page is in the movie. (Initial complaints were that Page was playing Achilles; he’s not – Achilles is not in the film, unless he has a tiny spot in the visit to Hades. Instead, Page does an excellent job of playing the solider Sinon, who enters the Greek army as a child. Sinon is not in Homer’s text, but he is in Virgil’s Aeneid, which covers much of the same material.) Conservative online star Ben Shapiro actually praised Nolan’s film after seeing it, but still can’t get over the casting of Page as a male character. Apparently he does not believe that being trans is anything other than mental illness; the link is to The Hollywood Reporter, not Shapiro’s site.)What these critics don’t notice is that in Homer’s original epic poem (at least the form we know originating around 800-700 BC) the goddess Athena is constantly switching back and forth from presenting herself as the beautiful woman Athena and the wise older man Mentor. So the sacred “original” text literally has a major gender-fluid character. In Nolan’s film, he does not make it clear whether Athena takes on the form of Mentor or just treats Mentor as an independent character. (To clarify: In the poem, there is an older male character called Mentor who is in charge of Odysseus’ household before he leaves, and a second Mentor who is an alternate identity of Athena.)
- Much the same group objects to the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy because she’s a Black woman. They say she’s not “historically accurate.” (The most notable of these is the world’s richest man, trillionaire Elon Musk.) Given Helen is a fictional character from a 3,000-year-old epic poem, it is hard to see how color-blind casting does violence to her character. It is worth noting that far more than race, the defining characteristic of Helen was that she was hatched from an egg as the offspring of a human woman’s coupling with a Greek god in the form of a swan. No one has seen fit to complain about the actress playing Helen being born in the usual way…What does matter is that Nyong’o is an amazing and beautiful actress who gives a memorable performance as the person who is unfairly blamed for causing an horrific 10-year war. The Wrap has an interesting article on how our view of what is “historically accurate” often comes from older classic films that featured all-white casts. Critic William Bibbiani points out that under the Hays production code that ruled movies from the mid-1930s until the rating system came in during the late 1960s specifically prohibited “homosexuality, non-Christian values, sex, foul language, and mixed-race romance.” We never saw these things in older movies because they were specifically forbidden.
- Finally, there have been complaints about the modern language used in both Dr. Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of The Odyssey and in Nolan’s film. (Let me note that Nolan did not base his screenplay on Wilson’s translation, but he has spoken admiringly of it.) Both Wilson and Nolan had the characters use relatively modern English in conversation rather than some form of Victorian English. For example, Tom Holland’s Telemachus (the son of Odysseus and Penelope) has been blasted for referring to the absent Odysseus as “Dad.” Given that in the early part of the film Telemachus is portrayed as being a somewhat callow youth, “Dad” seems perfectly fitting for his character. But as for the bigger issue, it should be noted that English did not exist when The Odyssey was being composed, so there can be nothing wrong with using contemporary English to make the characters more accessible to a modern audience.
Nolan says he is supremely unconcerned about the advanced criticism of The Odyssey. He is quoted in Variety as saying:
“Comes with the territory…. Remember, I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman. When I came on Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honor the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”
So far, audiences don’t really seem to care about these criticisms as The Odyssey has as of July 24th (right about a week after release) brought in more than $181 million domestically and $322 million worldwide.
Former late night talk show host Stephen Colbert had an extended interview with Nolan discussing the movie back in May. Here’s their full discussion:
Coming up next – Reviewers take on Nolan’s Odyssey.