Reader. My dear, dear reader. The impossible has happened.
Many of you will remember my viral rant about a certain Chris called “Man Strives for Greatness, but there are Consequences ™“, a screed against filmmakers who attempt to critique the hubris of man, only to end up glorifying them, and apologising for them.
There’s another, more recent viral screed of mine tied directly to the concept of American accents employed in the trailer of this film — an interesting choice to be sure, and not necessarily an unwelcome one - just conspicuous.
Finally, I asked the question why now — aside from the fact almost every English Degree holder at some point wants to prove their mettle with Ancient something, this is a very risky time to pick up ancient texts often used to bolster white supremacy.
So my reservations about the film were entirely tied to these elements. I was concerned Nolan would fall into the same traps he always does — relegating women to being exposition machines, overly apologising to the hubris of man, and making an Americanised Odyssey for shits and gigs, where no further meaning could be implied, and all the wrong lessons would be learned by those who didn’t want to understand any deeper.
Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ does more in blockbuster form to further the discussion of our political time than any film from either Nolan or any auteur of the past decade.
Landing on the theme “war is bad” is too easy a hoop to make — instead, Zeus’ Law holds the entire thesis together, and it’s motif lands all the more for the absolute HORROR he employs.
This is a creature feature, a war epic, something dastardly and scary that completely rocks your seat underneath you. This is why the film actually lands — no punches are pulled, and there is nothing romantic about this story.
So. I’ve finally found a Nolan film I can tolerate (this is not true, same with The Dark Knight). Nolan thrives on stories and characters written by others — and this is no different The Emily Wilson Translation is clearly the superior and most accessible text, and so too this adaptation makes this entire Odyssey parsable.
Many adaptations become boring, bogged down by the classics of it all. This is not that at all — and thank god. Nolan’s spectacle finally finds its actual, grounded, structured place here.