Controversy and mudslinging are not new features of the Homeric tradition.  We are told that, in 1715, soon after Alexander Pope published the first volume of his translation of the Iliad, the eminent poet was assailed by Britain’s most fearsomely competent Hellenist, Richard Bentley.  Bentley, with the insufferable bluntness that had made him famous (or infamous), told Pope, “It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.”  Pope revenged himself on Bentley in his satirical Dunciad by portraying the scholar as a pedantic bore who “made Horace dull, and humbled Milton’s strains.”    

The Homeric epics are so foundational, and have been so influential in Western literature and art, that they nearly approach the status of religious texts.  Any film director or translator knows what perilous waters Homer’s verses can be.  One is reminded of Mr. T’s famous declaration in the 1983 film Rocky III:  “I pity the fool.”  Consider the Odyssey.  It has been described by some as the “first novel,” or as the “greatest adventure ever told.”  The epic is so sprawling, so filled with minute detail and subplots, that any film director taking on such a project must either become a master of economy and judgment, or sink beneath the swirling waters of Charybdis.  He or she must know what scenes to include or omit, what thematic elements to emphasize, what unities of time and space to adopt, and what characters are most deserving of our attention. 

Of course no version is going satisfy everyone.  The purists will find fault with everything, as purists are wont to do; the polemicists will seek to impose their own readings and interpretations; and the axe-grinders will scream that their pet concerns have not been adequately addressed.  It is something of a thankless task.  And yet ambitious directors cannot resist the challenge of a classic.  This is one reason why there are over 50 film versions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet—and each one of them is unique in its own way. 

I saw Christopher Nolan’s rendition of the Odyssey last night, and came away very pleasantly surprised.  I did not know what to expect in advance.  I feared a disgraceful butchery of the old tale, but these anxieties melted away after the first ten minutes of screen time.  Mr. Nolan has produced a satisfying and engaging contemporary interpretation of the Odyssey that should be viewed and judged on its own considerable merits.  For three hours I was bolted to my seat, and it was the fastest three hours I’ve spent in a movie theater in a long while. 

I have many impressions that I would like to share.  I admit that I had some reservations about the casting of Matt Damon in the lead role.  For one thing, I felt Odysseus should have been someone with a more “Mediterranean” aspect.  Then there was the issue of his personal aura.  While a fine actor, Damon did not, in my opinion, convey that guile and predatory cunning which is such a central part of Odysseus’s personality.  In the ancient world, Odysseus was nearly synonymous with craftiness.  Damon is certainly capable of conveying duplicity, as his fantastic performance in The Departed proved; but Nolan’s script does not really give Damon a chance to show this central aspect of the character’s personality. 

Consider the cave scene with the cyclops Polyphemus:  this would have been the perfect opportunity to show Odysseus’s famous cunning.  In Homer, Odysseus and his band escape from the cave by getting the cyclops drunk, blinding him, tricking him with a pun-inspired name (“No Man”), and tying themselves to the bellies of Polyphemus’s giant sheep.  In other words, Odysseus uses his brains, not his brawn, to extricate himself.  In Homer there is actually dialogue between Odysseus and Polyphemus.  Nolan chooses to dispense with all of this, and makes the cave escape almost entirely a matter of blunt force.  I think this was a mistake.  Giving the scene its original flavor would have added nothing to the film’s running time, and would have showcased an essential component of Odysseus the man.      

Nolan chooses to portray Odysseus—at least during the film’s first half—as a world-weary, scrupulously honest, taciturn veteran whose range of emotion and expression is noticeably limited.  This was a directorial choice, and I can respect his interpretation, even though I might have done things differently.  Perhaps he felt that audiences in 2026 would be better able to identify with this sort of portrayal.  Nolan tends to prefer heroes burdened by dark memories and unhealed wounds; this preference served him well in the Batman films and in Inception, but arguably hampers his interpretation of the scheming, emotional, and valorous Odysseus. But these are minor criticisms.  Eventually Damon’s performance won me over, and I accepted it on its own merits.  Damon’s Odysseus is a brooding, wounded, fatalistic hero, but one still able to muster the conviction to prepare his son Telemachus for leadership, and to slay without mercy the swarm of parasitic “suitors” infesting Penelope’s residence.      

Here I think we need to say a few words about the making of movies in general.  The production of movies is a business.  A studio investing 250 million dollars in a film has every right to seek a return on its investment, and will do what it believes is necessary to fill theater seats.  Studios do not make movies to lose money.  Directors do not have complete control over every aspect of a film, no matter what they may say.  They know what is expected of them.  They understand what they need to do to be invited to the right parties, and perhaps to win the prestigious awards.  A film’s casting choices, its tone, its editing: all of these considerations are made, at least in part, with an eye to commercial viability.  We should not fault them too much for this.    

As in so many things in life, the key is striking that right tone and balance between art and commerce:  the balance between timidity and presumption, and between commercial viability and artistic fidelity.  A director should have the freedom to do what he wants to do, and to employ whomever best suits his purposes, without hordes of outraged classicists and petty-minded axe-grinders clawing at his back.  The secret is in finding that rare balance between artistic merit and commercial success.  It is an infrequent combination indeed.  Shakespeare managed it.  His plays were very popular in his day; and at the same time, his language, his plots, and his characterizations managed to convey eternal human truths.  Homer managed it too.  The Iliad and the Odyssey were extremely popular in antiquity, and for good reason:  they were able to wrap the deepest moral lessons in thrilling, swiftly-moving narratives that audiences could relate to. 

Nolan’s narrative and scenic choices were interesting.  He chooses to omit entirely Homer’s plot mechanism whereby Odysseus tells the story of his wanderings to King Alcinous of Phaeacia.  This was probably the right decision, as it would have introduced too many distractions (e.g., Nausicaa’s infatuation with our hero) to the flow of events.  The encounter with the Laestrygonians is a weird and terrifying episode that is one of the movie’s high points.  Homer describes them as giant cannibals inhabiting a rocky land called Lamos, and who hurl huge boulders at the ships of the hapless Greeks.  Nolan imagines them as faceless, implacable enemies clad in medieval-looking armor lurking in a forested land, who wade into the surf to smash Odysseus’s ships and slaughter his crew with no explanation. The sequence is unsettling, and unforgettable.

In his portrayal of the enchantress Circe, Nolan again departs from Homer’s text, but with mixed results.  Homer envisions her as a beautiful goddess (the daughter of the sun god Helios) who treacherously turns our hero’s men into pigs for her own amusement.  Nolan, however, presents her somewhat awkwardly as a bitter hag who lectures Odysseus on man’s violent and irredeemable nature.  It is an unpleasant interlude, and in my view a misstep; but here again, these kinds of directorial decisions are within the province of legitimate creative judgment. Also ill-advised was Nolan’s depiction of the goddess Athena, played by the actress Zendaya.  Athena is a major character in Homer’s Odyssey, appearing at key moments to guide, counsel, or chide our hero.  In fact, the goddess of wisdom, strategy, and guile is Odysseus’s most important divine ally.  Nolan reduces Athena’s role to almost an afterthought, a fleeting mirage whose “advice” is neither memorable nor useful.  Zendaya, it must be said, does not have the charisma or presence to carry this role. 

Jon Bernthal’s Menelaus and Lupita Nyong’o’s Helen are eyebrow-raising portrayals.  In Homer, these two characters are presented as a harmonious, reconciled couple.  Nolan imagines them as bitterly antagonistic and nearly unhinged, squabbling openly while the rest of their court sits in uncomfortable silence.  Jon Bernthal is very effective at playing rage-afflicted characters, and he does not disappoint here.  Nolan’s Menelaus and Helen are shown as crackpots clawing at each other—and yet this actually works in some odd, surrealist way.  It suits the drama.  When Telemachus visits Menelaus’s court, the king and his wife are so dysfunctional and unstable that it actually reinforces Nolan’s point that Telemachus is on his own, and can expect no help from this quarter.  Telemachus must have come away with the conclusion, you’re on your own, kid.  These nutcases can’t do anything for you.  And this realization contributes to his growth as a man and a leader.  Success comes when you realize no one is going to help you. 

(On an unrelated note, we should perhaps mention that Helen of Troy was a mysterious figure in antiquity.  Was she a heroine or a villain?  A victim or a victimizer?  Or perhaps something in between?  Her motivations were always ambiguous.  There were shrines built to her memory, and some worshipped her as a kind of goddess.  The historian Will Durant, citing Seymour’s Life in the Homeric Age, informs us of a Greek folk tradition which held that speaking ill of Helen was an offense punishable by the gods.  Herodotus (II.113) even says Helen was never in Troy at all, but spent the war as a captive in Egypt).   

There are many other creative decisions Nolan makes that viewers will debate or agonize over.  One I found particularly well-handled was his portrayal of the encounter with the Sirens.  Nolan wisely omits any sound at all, realizing that it is far more effective to leave the perilous music to the viewer’s imagination.  Everything is done through suggestion and implication:  our deepest desires and fears are thus conjured. 

The film’s final half is strong.  The maritime scenes are so filled with salt spray and tang that the viewer nearly feels compelled to take up an oar.  All the plot elements converge nearly seamlessly.  The film’s second half is where the Odyssey‘s central relationship—the deep connection between Odysseus and his son Telemachus—is brought to full maturity.  In some ways the Odyssey can be interpreted not as a tale of exciting wanderings, but as the growth to manhood, and assumption of kingship, of Telemachus.  Here is where we see the film’s best performances:  Tom Holland as Telemachus, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, and John Leguizamo as Eumaeus.  Damon’s dialogue with Anne Hathaway (as Penelope) strikes just the right balance between hope and the sense of excruciating loss that comes with the passage of time.  The scenes of the fall of Troy, the revelation of Odysseus’s identity, and the ferocious massacre of the suitors, are handled brilliantly. 

Mr. Nolan has adroitly compressed, in three hours, all the central plot elements of Homer’s epic.  As any director must do with a classic, he has had to make difficult creative decisions.  It is hoped that these decisions will inspire viewers to further discussion and debate, and, in the end, perhaps to consult the original poem itself.  There they will discover exactly what twenty five centuries of other readers have found:  adventure, drama, profound insights on human nature, and indescribably poignant scenes of loss, longing, frailty, and hope.  Mr. Nolan’s achievement reminds us that perhaps the Odyssey is not so much a wondrous tale of wandering and return, but rather an allegory of rebirth and redemption.      

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