Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – a review for preachers

Let me get the most obvious thing out the way at the start – this isn’t a full and informed review of The Odyssey.  I don’t know enough about movies, and I certainly don’t know enough about Homer, to make that possible.  Loads have people have raved over it, the highly-rated translator Emily Wilson has dripped venom over it, and I’ll leave you to make your mind up.

What I want to do is start to think about how to make sense of it biblically and as a preacher. If you want the TLDR version, make all the allowances you need to for the impossible task of turning an epic poem into a magnificent film.  We need to notice that Nolan has subtly adjusted the moral frame of the movie, because true Homeric morality is ugly in a Christianised worldview, even if that ‘Christianised worldview’ has turned secular.  

The moral context

The story is unknown to most people today – I’ll admit I hadn’t read the whole poem until I joined in the ‘let’s read it before we see it’ thing.  I only knew a few famous bits. Emily Wilson’s translation became my version of choice

But the surprise to me was not how alien it felt, but how familiar.  I should have seen this coming, I suppose, but this is a Bronze Age text, and I spend a large part of my life with Bronze Age texts.

For instance on the very day I saw the movie, my daily Bible reading included the awful story of the judge Jepthah and his daughter.  When I was thinking about it in the morning I was trying to make sense of it theologically and in line with the gospel.  That is still a task. 

But when I thought about it after the movie, I realised I was making sense of the political and cultural world, of wars and armies and fire.  The world of Judges and Samuel and Kings is recognisably the same violent world as Homer, even if we are talking different languages on historicity, and poetry. 

That gives you an edge in making sense of both the movie and the poem – arguably one that even Nolan doesn’t have.  Because you are used to imagining and inhabiting that world, of the clash of ancient civilisations.  They might not even seem that ‘ancient’ to you. You might have been reading about the Sea People before they cropped up (anachronistically) in the script.

And that gives you a clue into some moral edits Nolan made.

Deceit

It is, to state the obvious, very hard to like the Odysseus of the poem.  He’s a war hero, battling his way home of course.  You root for him to make it.  But he is notoriously shape-shifting.  He is a deceiver, and while some of that is obviously for safety and camouflage, other elements seem to be to exercise a measure of cruelty.

Now, a movie can handle ambiguous main character of course, but to carry the main story arc we have to want to get Matt Damon home. And to do that Nolan has made him a much less flawed hero.

In the poem, the person I most constantly admire is faithful Penelope (Odysseus is hardly faithful!).  You root for her, I think, while desperately wanting Telemachus to grow up and do something useful for her. And Anne Hathaway makes her a deeply impressive woman.

In the movie we are directed to admire both.

The same is true in the poem – the original readers would not have seen Odysseus’ persistent deceit/cunning/trickery as problematic. It was part of the fun.  But we do – and so does Nolan.  So it has to go.

Now where did that admiration for truthfulness and faithfulness come from?

Pity

The towers of Troy burn and collapse. Polyphemus, the blinded Cyclops, reacts with fury at the escaping Greeks.

And in both cases the camera focusses on Odysseus to see an emotion that barely registers in the original: pity.  Pity at the destruction. I say ‘barely’ – there is an arguable case that Homer presents the Greeks as too bloodthirsty and atrocious in victory.

But Nolan’s Odysseus has a more contemporary feel.

It’s not just Odysseus, although he carries a weight of guilt at his atrocities that I doubt Homer would recognise.  Helen is also in tears at the cost of the war her beauty has caused.  

Flip this round the other way and you can see what Nolan has edited out, which is the joy of vengeance.  That is visible (and as I’ve said, problematic) in the faces of the Greeks as they sack Troy, but Nolan can’t allow Odysseus to take part.  But it’s clear that Homer would, to an extent, and his audience would have cheered him on.

So too at the climactic battle with the Suitors. Nolan sets it up as the Suitors resisting the rightful claims of Odysseus and Telemachus, which is fair in part.  But there is a Homeric fury in Odysseus that means the Suitors must be punished, and punished horribly.  The original story is not for the squeamish at this point because there are scenes of torture, which we are obviously meant to see in a positive light as an act of justice, not mere revenge.

Again, we Bible readers have an advantage here.  Read the David cycle and you are in very familiar and similar territory.

Except that the Biblical story has exactly the element that Nolan is reaching for but cannot find in Homer – compassion for the enemy.  Justice but without revenge.  Justice within limits, however violent the times.

The gods

It’s obvious that the gods are much less present in Nolan than in Homer.  Some are removed for sake of length and cleanness I expect: Hermes goes, and Athena has a smaller part although still critical.  Nymphs and other characters disappear, although there is still room for monsters and Circe’s magic.

But there are two which are interesting, and I think the first is a weird cut by Nolan.

The first has been discussed quite a lot, because he’s cut out one of the two main plot drivers.

Poseidon

In every good quest story there is something which propels the hero – in this case, it’s the longing to get home. Once that kicks in, Odysseus is a driven man.

But there has to be an opposing force.  The enemy.  The obstacle.  Blofeld, or the Joker, or the ticking clock – or something.  Against what rock is the hero to be repeatedly dashed?

It’s famously clear in Homer, because he makes it the joke.  THE joke.

As Polyphemus collapses, blinded, he yells that he needs the name of the man who has done this to him.  ‘My name,’ says Odysseus, ‘is Nobody.’ (Οὔτις –  your NT Greek can get you there, can’t it?). So as he crashes round, other Cyclopes hear what is going on. ‘What’s happened?’ they ask.  ‘Has somebody hurt you?’ ‘ ’Nobody’ has hurt me’ screams Polyphemus in pain, and so the other monsters stay away.

Ho, ho, ho.  I guess it’s the way Homer told’em.

But – Odysseus can’t leave it there.  As he sails away he reveals his true name. In his pride (‘hubris’) he reveals his true name, and that gives Polyphemus what he needs.  Polyphemus calls on his father, the sea-god Poseidon, to curse Odysseus, his journey, his companions and his family.

That is the rock against which Odysseus is repeatedly dashed.

Nolan dials that right back. Poseidon is mentioned by other characters, but are the travails of the journey accidents, or just nature, or the actions of the gods?  It is much more ambiguous than the poem. And I think the price that the movie pays is quite a high one – it seems like a sequence of incidents rather than the acting out of the personal fury of the god.  There is a quest, but no chase.

Zeus

There is a lot of weather in this movie.  And Zeus rumbles his thunder.  But he has another role.

In the poem, as in wider Greek mythology, the gods are shape-shifters. Athena crops up repeatedly is the guise of others, which Nolan alludes to. Elsewhere Zeus himself can be a shower of gold, or a swan, or pretty much anything, usually in the pursuit of sex.

And so you’d better be careful.  That stranger, that beggar, might be a god in disguise.

That emerges an important theme in Homer: hospitality. It’s connected to the proper running of home and hearth, and of the honour/duty of being a good host.  Nolan catches that, and although he shortens Telemachus’ own journey, it’s clear that Menelaus is a good host with a well-run table (in contrast to the chaos in Penelope’s court back home). Polyphemus is a bad host who eats his guests.  (Ditto Circe, and maybe Calypso – if you’ve seen the movie, chew on that).

And in Homer, it is Zeus who protects hospitality.

Nolan leans into this.  Several times we are told it is a or the ‘law of Zeus’ – the defining element of the god.  Love of the stranger.  Welcome.  You can see that this is attractive to Nolan and is clearly present in trace form in the poem. 

But the presentation of it comes very close to ‘love the stranger’ and ‘love your enemy’ – which is more biblically adjacent than the original.

And then Nolan makes the biggest shift from the original – the horse.

I’m going to assume you know the story and I’m not spoiling anything.  If you don’t know it stop reading now and go to watch the film.

The horse is visually stunning, internal and externally.  You know that.  Homer celebrates it as a masterpiece of cunning in war. SAS Rogue Heroes would love it.

I can imagine King David nodding in approval.

Nolan makes it a violation of hospitality, and an offence against Zeus’s Law.

It makes an interesting moral and story arc – Troy as against Odysseus’s palace.  It sits awkwardly I think, because in neither case are either the Greeks or the Suitors really guests.  The Suitors violate any remaining hospitality in despoiling Odysseus’ kingdom, but there is no sense in which the Greeks are guests in Troy. In the movie the horse is presented as a gift to Athena, and an act of false worship, but in the poem it’s presented as a gift to Athena who is in on the trick.

For the sake of clarity, I think the more important reason why Nolan pairs them is that the movie needs an arc.  The poem doesn’t really end, and he has to make it wrap up somehow, and satisfy us.

But once again, where does Nolan get his different sensibility from?

A preacher’s quiver

So, where this all connects most obviously, on the positive line, is a sense of lostness and that longing for home and hearth.  We can connect with that subjectively, as a universal fallen human experience, and we can invite people into the relationship, the place, that the gospel provides.

Odysseus discovered that sin blinds (Polyphemus), consumes (lotus eaters) captivates and captures (Calypso) and dehumanises us (Circe).  Like Telemachus, sin robs of our birthright before our eyes. Like Penelope, we have lost our one, true love and cannot find another. Like Odysseus, we are homeless and alone. Fates and furies make our lives chaotic and meaningless, and we are surrounded by the rising graves of our friends until we meet our own.

So preach the defeat of evil by Christ’s death and resurrection, and that all those enemies we fear, the gods and monsters, have been driven out from their temporary home.  Even those closest to us, like the Suitors presenting a threat to both Penelope and Telemachus, have been defeated.

Then welcome us home, as prodigal sons who lost everything, but now find their welcome, as those who have lost the Garden, but been given an Eternal City, with hope, and love, and welcome, and rest.

And on the negative line, we can ask why this poem, and this film, don’t connect.

The prime driver for Odysseus is the longing to go back home, nostos.  It’s obviously related to our word ‘nostalgia’, and carries the inevitable sense of a longing backwards.  But the Christian hope is never nostalgic, and there is a profound sense of confident hope that we need to insert here.  

Where the film doesn’t connect with Homer it’s because those who inherit a trace of Christian morality find it repellant.  We are in the other Tom Holland territory here: our culture has been deeply affected by gospel shaped values (forgiveness, compassion) and Nolan has had to retune Homer to match some of those.  It’s worth pointing out to folk what Nolan has done, and why, to show the difference the gospel has brought. Because that’s why we won’t connect with Homer either.

Why Christians won’t connect with the film (but might have more in common with Homer) is the way Nolan has diluted down the deities.  We believe not only in the Triune God, but in angels and principalities, thrones and powers.  The supernatural world, hidden from Nolan, is a world we are aware of, however dimly.  I don’t remember anyone in the film praying, but they do in the poem, and we get that.

But the deepest reason Christians won’t connect with Homer is his worldview is one that the biblical writers consistently encounter and reject.  Other lords and deities claiming our worship? Gods whose words cannot be trusted, whose power is limited, who are petulant, fickle, selfish, squabbling? 

Rather than a god who thunders ominously, we have a God who speaks.

Rather than a god who appears as a human for a time, and as an illusion, we have a God who became flesh and will remake our lowly bodies like his body.

The movie bit

OK, I do have to give you a bit of response to it as a movie.  It is spectacular, as they all say.  Scene after scene after scene works, with scarcely a dead beat.  It starts slow, because the first half hour has to do a lot of narrative and character work, but once it picks up the pace you aren’t let go at all.  Nolan is the master of complex plots, and he navigates Homer’s swoop round and back to Calypso’s island really well.  

I’m really not fussed about how he removes or incudes things that much: it works in the story that Calypso is compressed into the lotus eaters, or  that he imported the minor character of Sinon.  I’m happy that Argos got more than a bit part at the end.

My one (ignorant) observation is that this is so obviously a ‘Nolan’ movie.  By which I mean, that there are some film makers whose authorial presence almost becomes bigger than the movie.  Hitchcock is the most obvious example, but there are others.  Spielberg is superb, but there is always an expectation of ‘that’ moment of wonder. Wes Anderson.

Nolan makes a justifiable, extraordinary and wonderful case for the physical craft of film making.  His love of ‘practical’ effects (i.e., not using CGI) pushed the actors and technology to their limits, and it shows.  This real sea, real rocks, real wind (although what happened to the bag of winds? They’re fun). Track down some interviews with Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway or Nolan himself, about the physical achievement behind this work. Just the battle scenes with the Laestrygonians are a remarkable piece of work in themselves.

Let’s add to that – if you do a deep dive into interviews with Damon, Holland, Hathaway and Nolan (and others), you will be in awe of the achievement of this film. The physical effort it took to make it is deeply impressive, and it’s clear that Nolan showed an exemplary courage and personal leadership for the cast and crew. Together, they believe that they have achieved something remarkable, and it’s probably for their fellow professionals to assess that. There’s an element of this being a film-maker’s movie, because only someone on the inside will appreciate what it took to get the pictures up on the screen

But I wonder if that’s one reason I felt less emotional engaged with the movie than I expected.  I was looking at it, rather than being immersed in it.  But that might be because I was so ready to be overwhelmed by its magnificence that I’d drawn the sting of it. I was looking at Christopher Nolan’s work, rather than the work itself

And I’ll be honest, a couple of moments broke the fourth wall. Charlize Theron as Calypso is stunning, but I kept seeing Ursula Andress and Sean Connery. And Odysseus being chased across a beach? Johnny Depp…

That sounds mean. This movie is a thing of wonder, and if you’re a movie fan you’ll know that the remarkable moment we are in means that this one won’t automatically sweep all the awards into a well-plumed helmet.

Oh, and Translations

Once you decide the read the thing, you’ll discover there’s a whole other world out there, discussing the merits of different translations and interpretations.  And when you discover it as a pastor it is eerily familiar, because it runs in such a close parallel with the Bible translation debates we are so engaged with.  Do you want one which is easy to read in English, or which tries to echo the formality of the Greek? Do you want one with the metre of Homer, or is that too alienating?  Are repetitions stylistically necessary, or redundant?

We look at those issues and we think – I get it.  Translation inevitably loses some elements – it’s which you lose that is the translator’s choice, and what are the gains behind it.  That is such a well-worn question for us that we might be surprised that other people are new to it, or find it bewildering that different editions can make such widely different decisions.

Here’s the thing – you get to choose and there is absolutely nothing at stake. Outside the world of professional classicists and their pet projects, frankly, who cares? Just choose the one you enjoy.

Oh – and if you kept up your NT Greek, you could splurge on a second hand copy of the Loeb parallel edition and have a dip into the original.  Heck, even reading the Greek out loud without necessarily understanding it puts you in the very top tier.

Have you seen it?  What did you think?  Pile in!