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Spoilers for The Odyssey follow.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe end is the beginning in The Odyssey<\/u>, Christopher Nolan\u2019s powerful, claustrophobic take on Homer\u2019s epic, which harkens back to ideas woven throughout his career. It opens with the kind of voiceover-laden montage we\u2019ve come to expect from his conclusions \u2014 dating back to The Dark Knight<\/u> in 2008, and continuing through Interstellar<\/u>, Dunkirk<\/u>, Tenet<\/u>, and Oppenheimer<\/u> \u2014 where images skip through time, and themes about half-truths, self-deceptions, and the world at large are stated plainly against musical crescendos. Here, it takes the form of Travis Scott\u2019s nameless bard banging his staff against a tabletop while recounting the tale we\u2019re about to see, as spliced scenes of a lonely Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his deception via the Trojan Horse come to the fore.<\/p>\n
The Odyssey\u2019s 172-minute runtime feels cut from this cloth as a cinematic epic made largely of impressions and clashing points of view en route to its own nestled climax. It\u2019s both unlike anything Nolan has ever made, and yet the exact film he seemed destined to direct after decades of telling stories in its vein. Homer\u2019s Odyssey is nearly 3,000 years old, and has had considerable influence on western canon, so it\u2019s no surprise to look back and notice how many of Nolan\u2019s stories are about men making their way home. However, this adaptation is just as much about Nolan imposing his artistic viewpoint on the text; whether or not it\u2019s the best Nolan movie ever made, it\u2019s arguably the most <\/em>Nolan movie imaginable.<\/p>\n\n\nMore From Ithaca<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/section>\nWho Killed the World?<\/strong><\/h2>\nNolan isn\u2019t a political filmmaker in the bipartisan sense, but his biggest, most visible works are injected with political anxieties. Where The Dark Knight wrestled with the modern U.S. surveillance state, its sloppier sequel, The Dark Knight Rises<\/u>, housed some ultimately self-defeating economic themes within its grandiose opera. However, his space-faring follow-up, Interstellar, marked a considerable shift in how he expressed his worldview with more abstract and egalitarian concerns about the general state of things (rather than, well, the state).<\/p>\n
The tale of one man\u2019s journey home to his daughter, Interstellar\u2019s backdrop is a world ravaged by scarcity and climate catastrophe. The same throughline can be found in Tenet, as both films feature a tension between present and future generations over what becomes of Mother Earth. Nolan isn\u2019t quite the flower child that James Cameron would become with The Abyss and his Avatar trilogy \u2014 his form is ultimately one of rickety masculine restraint, as is his dramatic focus \u2014 but of late, his subdued sentimentality has been leaking out with more pressure and urgency.<\/p>\n
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The Odyssey Images<\/h3>\n<\/span><\/output><\/p>\n
Just as Interstellar and Tenet are twin sci-fi vehicles steeped in fears of being judged by the future, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer are more concrete historical versions of those concerns, as World War II movies struggling with the perception of heroic figures and events. On the one hand, you have Churchill\u2019s famous \u201cWe Shall Fight on the Beaches\u201d speech \u2014 rousing words which Nolan contrasts with death, lost innocence, and looming uncertainty. On the other hand, you have the original sin of the modern world: the atomic bomb, whose maker becomes a haunting canvas for questions of what it means to live with the weight of one\u2019s own actions.<\/p>\n
This is the same world, cinematically speaking, into which The Odyssey is birthed. The bomb this time, however, is the hull of a wooden horse, shot with the same curiosity and gradual caution as the Trinity device in Nolan\u2019s biopic. The nuclear chain reaction is the ethical fracture caused by corrupting \u201cZeus\u2019 law\u201d \u2014 smuggling war within a peace offering. It\u2019s a broken contract that forces Odysseus to consider what his actions have wrought for the rest of the world and for generations to come.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The Odyssey may be set three millennia in the past, but it\u2019s among Nolan\u2019s most contemporary works as a tale whose focus may as well be the destruction by, and blowback towards, modern imperialism (that his actors all speak with American accents is a pretty pointed clue). Zeus\u2019 law is charitable kindness, but it\u2019s also divine permission to ransack villages and extract spoils, not unlike the Evangelical fanaticism that has come to define modern U.S. politics and foreign policy.<\/p>\n
This particular interpretation results in a magical, mythical film with distinctly human grounding.
\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nNolan seems to view America now<\/em> much like Ithaca then<\/em> \u2014 as an empire in decline \u2014 so his version of Homer\u2019s epic leans into the real historical context of its 12th century BCE setting: the Bronze Age Collapse and the alleged \u201cSea People\u201d who some speculate may have caused it through their conquests. As a moral darkness spreads through the Mediterranean, characters like Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and Telemachus (Tom Holland) speculate about these seafaring plunderers only to later learn that these legends may have been told about their beloved Odysseus and his men.<\/p>\nAlthough the classic hero has a more upstanding stature in the poem (not to mention the favor of Zeus), Nolan\u2019s more conflicted version is born of a more trepidatious reading that hesitates to glorify a man of twists and turns and military conquests. In fact, this particular interpretation of Odysseus subsequently defines the film\u2019s approach to Greek gods and the supernatural at large, resulting in a magical, mythical film with distinctly human grounding.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nA Guilty Homecoming<\/strong><\/h2>\nIn Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey, the siege of Troy takes thundering, harrowing form, but its moral underpinnings are distilled to a single admission: \u201cWhat if he knew exactly what he had done?\u201d Odysseus, in disguise as a beggar, admits this to his wife Penelope upon his return, in a speech whose corresponding flashbacks reveal a surprising layer to Nolan\u2019s adaptation, even though it ought to be the most predictable outcome as yet another movie driven by remorse.<\/p>\n
From regret urging Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) to rewrite his own history in Memento<\/u>, to the slow unraveling of accidental killer Will Dormer (Al Pacino) in Insomnia<\/u>, to the survivor\u2019s remorse driving Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in Batman Begins<\/u>, guilt has been a central undercurrent in most of Nolan\u2019s work. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Inception<\/u>, where the dead wife of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) forms an unscratchable itch in his subconscious and manifests as a destructive femme fatale while constructs like freight trains pummel through his subconscious, preventing him from getting home.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nDom, in this sense, forms a prototype for Nolan\u2019s incarnation of Odysseus. Where the poem frames the Greek hero as a man lashed between the whims of several gods \u2014 chief among them Athena, who sets both his and Telemachus\u2019 journeys into motion \u2014 the movie hints at a wrinkle early on, when Athena (Zendaya) appears as a vision only Odysseus can see. Like Dom\u2019s wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), she\u2019s a specter \u2014 a splinter in his mind driving his actions and inactions alike.<\/p>\n
Athena\u2019s true nature eventually comes to light, but first, a divine song from the mythical Sirens forces Odysseus to finally put words to this version of his journey: the idea that, deep down, he may not actually want to go home. As departures from the source material go, this one is particularly fundamental, but the pieces all fall into place. Where Homer tied his hero\u2019s fate to the clashing desires of Zeus and Poseidon, Nolan backgrounds these primary deities in favor of psychological impetus. The gods of Olympus, whether or not they exist here, have their will transposed onto Odysseus\u2019s psyche \u2014 one defined not by a single regret, but a multitude of them accumulated across decades.<\/p>\n
Nolan backgrounds these primary deities in favor of psychological impetus.
\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\nZeus is the ego rationalizing his journey and driving him homeward out of a guilt of leaving his family behind. Returning to them is his duty as a father, husband, and king. Poseidon, god of the sprawling ocean, is his cavernous id \u2014 his deep-seated fears forcing him to turn elsewhere, if only to avoid losing (or betraying) even more men. He has enough blood on his hands, and enough spirits who bear witness to his journey<\/u>. And Athena, goddess of wisdom, is the superego, ever negotiating between the two, as Odysseus battles both external and internal forces. Like Mal, Athena is a manifestation of Odysseus\u2019 remorse; she takes her specific form, as it\u2019s revealed, because of an innocent Trojan woman (also Zendaya) who fell victim to Ithacan blades. Her face is practically burned into his mind (alongside the tumbling head of Athena\u2019s defaced statue) as a pair of eyes bearing witness to his worst possible self.<\/p>\n
Tying all this guilt together is the movie\u2019s inevitable final image of the Trojan horse keeling over in flame like a once-grand symbol of trust now corrupted and brought to its knees. However, all these ideas wouldn\u2019t be half as impactful if they weren\u2019t also wrapped in some of the most chilling and debonair filmmaking of Nolan\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
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