At the heart of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic masterpiece, The Odyssey, there comes a moment so transcendent that it feels as if we’re journeying alongside the gods themselves. Ludwig Göransson’s minimal yet impactful score suddenly bursts into a vibrant electronic beat. Onscreen, Matt Damon’s portrayal of Odysseus guides his weary and defiant crew across a desolate landscape cloaked in black sand. In a bid to appease the deities, two rams’ blood is sacrificed, and the eerie phenomenon of long-lost souls rising from the earth to torment the living occurs.
The Odyssey takes us straight into hell.
In Greek mythology, Hades serves both as the underworld and its mysterious overlord, capturing imaginations in myriad cinematic depictions. Yet, Nolan’s rendition brings forth an unexpected intensity. Rather than plunging Odysseus and his followers into a fiery abyss, it is the spirits themselves who rise to the surface, bearing whispers of the inferno below.
Mirroring Homer’s timeless narrative, this excursion into the underworld is vital for Odysseus to consult the blind prophet Tiresias, played artfully by James Remar, on his route back home. Here, much like in the ancient text, he is provided a poignant glimpse into the afterlives of his Trojan War comrades. However, Nolan introduces a fresh twist: instead of encountering Achilles, Odysseus is faced with the wrathful spirit of Sinon, portrayed by Elliot Page. While Sinon is absent in Homer’s original, his tale is well-documented in Virgil’s The Aeneid, offering a compelling Trojan perspective. Yet one scene remains faithful to Homer, enriched by Nolan’s touch, as Odysseus engages in a thought-provoking dialogue with Agamemnon, brought to life by Benny Safdie.
For centuries, the tales of Greek heroes and their epic ventures have been immortalized through poetry, legends, drama, and song. Homer’s Odyssey alone sees Agamemnon lamenting his demise to Odysseus. Nolan, however, deftly weaves elements from additional classical sources, notably Aeschylus’s The Oresteia, lending further emotional gravitas to these powerful exchanges that delve into the brutal retaliation of Clytemnestra, played with chilling precision by Lupita Nyong’o, against her husband.
Who is Clytemnestra in The Odyssey? Why Did She Kill Her Husband, Agamemnon?
In case, you didn’t quite catch it, we learn that one reason why Odysseus is loathe to resist Agamemnon’s call to war is that the Mycenaean king already went so far as to sacrifice his own daughter Iphigenia to the gods to ensure the army got the fair winds it needed to sail to Troy. In most retellings of this story, Agamemnon tricks Clytemnestra into this scheme by suggesting she and the girl have to meet the army so the princess can marry Achilles, the greatest warrior alive. Only when she arrives for her wedding, it’s actually a ritualistic killing. In Odysseus’s retelling, we see Nyong’o’s Clytemnestra cry out in horror.
According to Agamemnon, he arrived home shortly after the war ended and Clytemnestra gave him a happy, hero’s welcome. She got him out of his exoskeleton-like armor and bathed him herself, anointing him with oil, getting him “soft” and exposed. Then, immediately after getting him into bed, she murdered him.
Agamemnon tells Odysseus all this as a warning to not return to Ithaca assuming a warm welcome home. Later, Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) catches Telemachus (Tom Holland) up on the story, offering yet another point of contrast between the royal families of Mycenae and Ithaca: Clytemnestra was then also murdered by her and Agamemnon’s son, Orestes*.
That Christopher Nolan manages to convey the tragic horror of this complex legend in just a handful of minutes — if that! — speaks to his genius as a storytelling. That he does all this while also juggling the eerie horror of his truly inventive take on Hades is a miracle. As both a classics nerd and cinephile, the Hades section of The Odyssey is peak art: simultaneously epic and intimate, and completely timeless.
*The Oresteia actually ends with the goddess Athena breaking this cycle of vigilante justice by creating legal trials, thereby appeasing the Furies, but those plays would be written approximately 700 years after Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting the values of Ancient Athens vs. the Bronze Age’s cry for incessant vengeance.