Was Odysseus, the iconic Greek hero from ancient lore, perhaps not as valiant as we’ve been led to believe?
Critics have taken aim at Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, “The Odyssey,” particularly for his interpretation of the legendary protagonist.
In Homer’s timeless narrative, Odysseus is portrayed as a cunning and versatile hero, credited with devising the ingenious Trojan horse strategy. After the Greeks claim victory in their prolonged war with Troy, Odysseus embarks on a perilous and lengthy voyage back to Ithaca, where his faithful wife Penelope awaits his return.
Nolan, however, has infused Odysseus with modern sensibilities to resonate with today’s audiences, but was there any choice?
Had Nolan embraced a strictly Homeric portrayal — featuring Odysseus as a character involved in kidnapping women, killing defenseless individuals, engaging with nymphs, and commanding harsh punishments on housemaids — it’s unlikely audiences would flock to theaters for a three-hour saga of such controversial adventures.
The values of Bronze Age Greece, when Odysseus was supposedly fighting and maneuvering his way home, were emphatically not our own.
So, Nolan had to soften him.
But he went too far in this direction, giving us an Odysseus who is wracked by war guilt and suffering from PTSD.
In the Homeric version, his long stay with the beautiful nymph Calypso underlines how desperate he is to get home — she offers him a life of endless pleasure, and still he pines for Ithaca.
In the Nolan version, Calypso serves as the hero’s therapist, and it emerges that he truly doesn’t want to go home until he works through all his dark memories.
If this is a bit much, there’s no doubt that Nolan is drawing on elements of the original.
Homer has Odysseus weeping when he hears songs of the Trojan war, a wrenching depiction of his sense of grief and loss.
This isn’t all: Nolan leaves it out of the movie, but in Homer’s telling Achilles, the Greeks’ greatest warrior, meets Odysseus in Hades and tells him he regrets having chosen a short life full of glory.
After all the obsession with military fame, it would have been better to sell insurance!
There have been many different literary depictions of Odysseus over the years.
Since he wasn’t a real person, none of them should be binding.
The likes of Sophocles and Euripides gave us negative portrayals, and Dante put him in the Eighth Circle of Hell for his deceptive tactic with the Trojan Horse — a major source of his guilt in the Nolan version, as well.
Ultimately, the director renders a Christianized version of the pagan epic.
Having sinned, Odysseus needs to repent and seek forgiveness.
The movie is more evidence for the proposition that, even in our secular age, our notions of what constitute morality — and admirable conduct — rest on a Christian edifice.
I found the Nolan movie gripping, despite some of its flaws, and at the very end, even inspiring.
For the finale, Nolan seems to draw on the depiction of Odysseus in the Alfred Tennyson poem “Ulysses” (another name for Odysseus).
The British poet renders an Odysseus who feels compelled always to learn and experience more, as he sets out on another journey after his return to Ithaca.
Odysseus and Penelope in the movie almost directly quote Tennyson when Ulysses speaks of following “knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”
In this, Odysseus is the very embodiment of the questing, endlessly curious spirit of Western culture that has forged so many new discoveries and transformed the human condition.
Tennyson’s Ulysses believes, “’tis not too late to seek a newer world,” and “to sail beyond the sunset.”
He ends with a ringing commitment “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
The most fevered critics of the movie on the right suggest that Christopher Nolan seeks to subvert the Western tradition.
If so, the director — who has renewed interest in a Western classic and ends with a paean to the Western zest for exploration — has a funny way of going about it.
X: @RichLowry