Dr. Emily Hauser, a lecturer in Classics at the University of Exeter and a scholar with a career-spanning passion for Homeric epics, has an understanding when going into a movie like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: these stories about Trojans and Greeks, Odysseus and Penelope, have never been defined by an exact canon or single text. Even back in the days of Homer, interpretation and reinvention were vital to the oral tradition before a poet (or a few) wrote them down in approximately the 7th century BCE—casting onto paper a reference point that future generations would quickly make their own.
“Every single reworking of The Odyssey is going to be speaking to its particular format, its particular audience, and its particular moment,” Hauser tells us. “That is as true of Homer’s Odyssey as it is of Nolan’s Odyssey. Anybody who thinks that Homer’s Odyssey as the fixed final version hasn’t plumbed the depths of all of that orality that was going on behind that tradition of multiple different stories, the fluidity, the flexibility.” The retelling of the story about a man trying to get home to Ithaca is the lifeblood that makes it so transmutable. It’s how a poem survives millennia.
With that said, Hauser adds with a laugh, she needed to keep reminding her “Homerist heart” of this reality when she along with History Hit presenter Tristan Hughes attended The Odyssey world premiere in London earlier this month. The pair, who have collaborated on The Ancients podcast, which Hughes hosts in addition to being an author of Alexander’s Successors at War: The Perdiccas Years 323 – 320 BC, were in the room with Nolan and the cast, and experienced the film in the director’s preferred 70mm IMAX format. It was overwhelming for lifelong students of history and mythology, and also something of a relief. Whatever many changes the film made to the epic poem’s tale, our newest Odyssey revealed an artistic merit and clarity which Hauser says escaped the “full fat Hollywood” of movies like Troy.
“I was absolutely entertained,” Hughes smiles. “It just whizzed by for three hours.” More importantly though, “I’m not overly fussed with inaccuracy, as long as it’s a movie that can inspire people to want to then go and learn more about the particular area of ancient history that it’s focusing on.”
In both Hauser and Hughes’ minds, Nolan’s Odyssey is a carefully considered, even majestic work that has been folded to align with the filmmaker’s interests, perhaps most tellingly Oppenheimer. But by virtue of changing a song to fit the times, the film by definition is quite removed from Homer and plenty of the other Ancient Greek traditions that inspired it. And when it comes to evaluating Nolan’s Odyssey opposite Homer, or even the historical record of the late Bronze Age setting that Nolan plays with, there is much to be said about what gets left out…
The Use of Modern Language in the Ancient World
Perhaps one of the biggest points of topic prior to the release of Nolan’s epic was its deliberate use of a modern vernacular among characters like Odysseus’ son Telemachus (Tom Holland) and Antinous (Robert Pattinson), two Ancient Achaeans played by Brits who employ American accents while talking about “daddy.” Elsewhere in the film, Matt Damon’s Odysseus more shockingly refers to the shores of Troy as “this fucking beach” when getting ready to go home.
For some they’re jarring, but they are the type of changes that hardly trouble Hauser. They even seem trivial to someone who’s studied these stories in Ancient Greek during an academic career that includes Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale.
“It’s obviously not just a colloquialization but also an Americanization of this territory,” Hauser observes, noting it specifically draws from Dr. Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of the epic poem. “That translation has been really praised for the directness and the straightforwardness, the accessibility of its language, and if you look at older translations, they are quite flowery, they are quite archaising. And, to me, the choice to use those colloquialisms or that kind of shorthand and slang is an extension of what we see in a translation like Wilson’s. It’s trying to emphasize that Homer is a spoken language. It’s something that Greeks would have been responding to, they would have been listening to. It wouldn’t have sounded foreign or archaic.”
The scholar is also quick to point out that while Odysseus didn’t drop F-bombs in Homer’s Odyssey, the Ancient world, including this specific poem, could be bawdier than the general polish of academia sometimes suggests.
Says Hauser, “Obviously epic [literature] is engaging in what the Greeks would have called a sort of higher register, a higher genre, than something like comedy, where you get these more earthy jokes. But we get that even in Homer. A really good example of that is there’s a moment where one of the bards tells a funny, raunchy tale about an affair between the gods, and you’ve got laughter amongst the audience. So you’ve clearly got a range that this epic is going between.”
Historical Anachronisms and Real Mysteries of the Bronze Age Collapse
If the online debate over the use of modern language can come across as a tad pedantic to actual classicist, what is a point of genuine interest is how Nolan reveals a deep understanding of scholarship about the Bronze Age, particularly with regard to theories of how it ended and the rise of the mysterious “Sea Peoples,” or as they were described in Ancient Egyptian texts, “people from/of the sea.”
“For a long time, the Sea Peoples have had quite a bad reputation as being the primary causes [of collapse],” Hughes tells us. “We don’t exactly know where they came from, but there are lists of different places… they seemed to come together and venture to the eastern Mediterranean, maybe some from Sicily, maybe some from Sardinia, maybe also some from Greece as well… and then sweeping eastwards and destroying particular cities, and fighting Bronze Age kingdoms like the Kingdom of Egypt.”
The actual root causes of the near total collapse of civilizations around this time is likely more complicated than just the simple consequence of these invaders, nonetheless Hughes was impressed by how Nolan folded in theories about some of the Sea Peoples and the Trojan War.
Says Hughes, “In the historical records that mention them in Egyptian texts, a couple of the people included are the Ekwesh and the Danaoí, which are likely names for the Achaeans or the Danaans, which suggests that it’s very likely that some Greeks, at least, were in this group known as the Sea Peoples that caused devastation further east, maybe at places like Troy.” Furthermore, the historical records confirm that some Mycenaean Greeks did fight in and around the area where Troy was located in the Late Bronze Age, which has raised eyebrows among historians for generations as to whether that creates a connection between the mythical Trojan War and the various Sea Peoples invasions.
Says Hauser, “There have been suggestions in scholarship where you look at what’s happening in The Odyssey, and you look at the fragmentation that happens at the end of Homer’s Odyssey where you have these suitors creating trouble on Ithaca, and then you get civil war, and this sense of bubbling turbulence, that has been suggested as a potential memory of what happened in the Late Bronze Age. But it’s the first time that I think we’ve seen this written across the big screen in that way.”
There are plenty of other historical details and anachronisms added throughout the movie, from the fact Damon’s Odysseus sails what is actually a Viking longship as opposed to a Greek galley—it was easier for the film production to get an already seaworthy Viking replica to take out on open water—to the fact the Laestrygonians wear what could be perceived as medieval armor. However, one of the biggest subjects of debate—if again only in the echo chambers of the internet—has been an intentionally diverse and international cast, including Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Travis Scott as a bard in Homer’s stylings. Yet Hughes and Hauser are keen to underline the Mycenaean world was far more diverse than armchair internet experts would have you believe.
Pointing to a recorded request for the delivery of a pair of shoes from the Greek Minoan island of Crete by the Babylonian ruler Hammurabi in the 18th century BCE, Hughes stresses, “You have this trade network. You have the Mycenaeans in Greece, you’ve got the Minoans on Crete as the western end of this kind of globalized eastern Mediterranean world [that extends] into Mesopotamia, and then you’ve got the Babylonians up the river Euphrates in Babylon, and the Egyptians down the River Nile, and the Hittites. They’re all corresponding with each other, at least on the highest levels, these kings, these pharaohs, they’re referring to each other as brothers, they’re exchanging gifts, there are also their marriage alliances, there’s warfare as well from time to time.”
Hauser similarly denotes the more recently discovered Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of modern-day Turkey. It was a 14th century BCE vessel that contained tin provisions from Uzbekistan and copper from Cyprus, and was likely headed to Greek islands before calamity struck. Says Hauser, “There is so much going on at this time, and I think this idea that Greece was just this little pocket of its own really misrepresents what was happening.”
Indeed, Nolan’s emphasis on this more interconnected Mediterranean led to Hughes’ favorite addition in the film: when Odysseus tells his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) that the supposed abduction of Helen is just a pretext to go to war for all-powerful King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie).
Enthuses Hughes, “Odysseus just says, ‘That’s an excuse. The real reason he’s doing it is for the trade routes.’ And we know that Troy was one of the main ports in that area of western Anatolia, just before the Dardanelles today. If a ship was trying to get up to the Black Sea, it would have to put in at a port like Troy before it went through the Dardanelles into the Black Sea… that is really the backdrop as to why there is a lot of fighting and probably also the inspiration for then getting the Trojan War story.”
What’s Really Missing from the Film
There is obviously much and more to praise Nolan for what’s included in The Odyssey. And yet, any lover of Homer or the other classics cannot help but feel that some things are missing while others are noticeably misrepresented. And it is on the mythological side that scholars like Hauser and Hughes get the most critical.
“If we focus on the episodes that Nolan does include but highlight the bits that are missed, I think we’ve got to talk about Polyphemus the Cyclops,” Hughes says. While the scene of the cyclops’ cave is one of the highlights of Nolan’s movie, it quite deliberately omits key elements of the same scene in Homer’s poem.
Says Hughes, “In Nolan’s Odyssey, you don’t see Odysseus actually talking with Polyphemus the Cyclops and then giving the cyclops the wine to make him drunk, and then the stake in the eye, and the rest of that story. Instead you hear this murmuring of the cyclops, who is this kind of more monstrous portrayal, in the corner, which then reveals the cyclops can actually speak.” What is missing for anyone who loves the poem is that before being blinded, the cyclops asks for Odysseus’ name and Odysseus, ever the trickster, lies and says he is “nobody” (or “no one” or “no man,” depending on the translation).
“When Polyphemus is blinded, and then he cries out to his fellow cyclopes… they say, ‘what’s wrong?’” Hughes says. “And then he replies, ‘Nobody has blinded me,’ and so they go away.” Odysseus’ cruel jape is revealed. Furthermore, Odysseus speaks again to the cyclops during his escape when, instead of taking a pot shot with the bow like in the movie, he boasts that the cyclops was blinded by Odysseus, King of Ithaca! Nolan has since told the press he tried to get some of this “pun” in the movie, but he couldn’t make it work. However, scholars might argue it is more than a simple pun.
“It’s not just like we’ve got a checklist, and we’re like, ‘Oh, that one’s missed, that one’s missed,’” argues Hauser. “The reason that that matters is because that is one of the key episodes that demonstrates how clever Odysseus is to us. And by losing that, you lose a key element of the characterization of the hero that is supposed to be cunning and clever.” Indeed, Hauser points out in Ancient Greek the word used for “nobody” is utis. “But that word can also be metis, which also means nobody, it’s just a different variation of the word. And metis can also mean ‘cunning.’ So when he says his name is ‘nobody,’ he also knows that when the cyclops speaks back to him, he’s going to call him metis, [or] cunning. So he has become the personification of the cunning, wily hero.”
Removing this aspect, as well as Odysseus’ self-destructive need to brag about being the one who blinded Polyphemus, thus damning his crew to years of agony and death at the hands of Poseidon, flattens the character in Hauser’s mind. But then she would also suggest many of the characters, including especially the women, are flattened in Nolan’s interpretation.
Hauser explains, “One that particularly irked me, and it’s a really small one, so people won’t notice it, but perhaps I think that’s why it’s more important, is that at the very end of The Odyssey, when Odysseus and Penelope meet each other, Odysseus goes through this series of tests of Penelope’s where he is basically checking that she’s been faithful to him. She does the same to him in Homer’s Odyssey. She has her own test where she basically asks about their marriage bed and pretends the marriage bed has been moved, and Odysseus gets completely flustered, and then reveals that it is, in fact, him, because he built the marriage bed.”
Perhaps Nolan wanted to wrap up his three-hour narrative neatly after the climactic bloodlust with the suitors, but it robs Penelope of a chance to demonstrate her equal footing with Odysseus..
“There is a really important dance and dialogue that is happening there between Odysseus and Penelope, in terms of both of them being cunning and clever, both of them being wily and being in control of their own fate,” Hauser says. “To me, it was the subordination of Penelope in multiple different ways, but particularly in that way, to Odysseus where she did not get the chance to recognize him but instead simply ran to him and acknowledged him entire, that I think was a shame… It somehow feels like it had to be, perhaps, washed down or diluted by Nolan, in his idea, in his mind, because Odysseus needed to be privileged. I find that a loss.”
Hauser points similarly to Nyong’o’s Helen who, while being depicted in the movie as more complex than just the dutiful wife to Menelaus—as some interpretations of Homer would have it—is also portrayed as what Hauser characterizes as “quite defeated.” The scholar suggests that’s another loss since in the epic poem, “Helen is smart as a whip. She is absolutely giving it back to Menelaus. She’s the one who recognizes Telemachus, Odysseus and Penelope’s son, who has come there; she’s the one who reflects on her role in the war. When she gives a speech, her husband says, ‘Well done, that’s a great speech!’ and he gives her a kind of accolade that is normally given to bards. So she’s really like a poet figure, she has an important voice, and I think that was perhaps an opportunity missed to give Lupita Nyong’o that kind of voice.”
Ultimately, Hauser suggests the women of Nolan’s Odyssey suffer in comparison to Homer’s. While it is a deliberate artistic choice to not show the gods other than Athena, whose manifestation in the form of Zendaya comes into serious doubt by the movie’s end, the effects of what is (probably) Zeus or Poseidon are still felt throughout the film. Conversely, a sea nymph like Charlize Theron’s Calypso is intentionally coded as a mortal where it takes a deliberate reading (or outside knowledge) to see any divinity in the character.
“Calypso is presented as a very kind of dangerous divine figure who actually could have tempted Odysseus with immortality, that’s what we’re told in Homer’s poem,” Hauser says. “So it is a very interesting difference to turn these women into less powerful women who are either almost figments of Odysseus’ imagination. With Calypso, you get this sense that he kind of dreamt her up in dealing with his trauma and what’s happened in Troy, and Athena similarly. So I think that is not as perhaps as innocent a choice as it might seem.”
In the end, however, Nolan’s Odyssey is just one more new iteration of a tradition that goes back at least 2,800 years. Nolan has modernized the material, and certainly Odysseus who is far less boastful or lusty than the version immortalized by Homer. But by making the story his own, Nolan is keeping it alive and exciting another generation that will surely pass the epic down, presumably with Blu-ray special features one day.
“Whether it’s historical or mythological, you will always have so many different interpretations of the stories from generation to generation,” Hughes says. “So we have Nolan’s Odyssey today, and the next generation may well have another kind of epic take on the Odyssey, and it’s completely different because of how we are viewing it in today’s age. So it’ll always be changing.” It’s a tradition.
Nolan’s Odyssey is currently playing in theaters. History Hit’s The Ancients podcast is also available now on all platforms.
