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‘The Odyssey’: How Accurate Is Christopher Nolan’s Summer Blockbuster?
A close reader of Homer’s immortal epic breaks down what this star-studded adaptation keeps, cuts and completely reimagines
Homer's epic tale, "The Odyssey," is a treasured classic. How closely does director Christopher Nolan's new film starring Matt Damon honor the original?
Clockwise from top left: Penguin Random House; Alamy; Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures; Simon & Schuster; Alamy
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a movie event that couldn’t have generated more buzz if it were a huge wooden horse and we were the Trojans who found it outside our gate, is finally here, all 172 minutes of it. The Oscar-winning director, 55, who wrote the script based on Emily Wilson’s acclaimed translation, has called his latest film “a strong and sincere interpretation.” But Nolan is the Homer here, and he recounts the epic story — about the long, complicated homeward journey of the great warrior-adventurer Odysseus (Matt Damon, 55) — in his own bold, original way.
Not surprisingly, there are modern touches — I don’t think Odysseus ever said, “Ten years on this f---ing beach!” — but most of Nolan’s changes are subtle. Here are the big shifts to look out for.
Note: Even though The Odyssey is more than 2,500 years old, this story contains spoilers.
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Athena, Downgraded: From Divine Shape-Shifter to Silent Side-Eye
In the original, Odysseus barely makes a move without the input or aid of Zeus’ “bright-eyed” daughter, played by Zendaya. (Whom else would you cast as Athena?) The goddess has a much more discreet role in Nolan’s version — she doesn’t pull off all those instant Mission: Impossible disguises and transformations that she does in the text, and she doesn’t give Odysseus an enchanted glow-up to make him look more virile after the exhausting 20 years he’s spent slogging through a string of catastrophes. She generally just shows up wrapped in scarves and wearing an expression of disapproval, as if to remind Odysseus that, for all his cleverness, he’s just made another boo-boo. (This Athena would definitely have her own Taylor Swift playlist.) Nolan even suggests — hints — that Athena is perhaps not a goddess but a figment of Odysseus’ imagination.
No More Divine Bickering: Nolan Silences Homer’s Gossipy Gods
In fact, Nolan has eliminated just about all the magical, Olympian elements from Homer’s tale. Zeus occasionally expresses himself as a grumble of thunder, and the seas surge because Poseidon can’t let go of a grudge. But we don’t get any of the gods’ conversations, their back-and-forth sniping as they negotiate over just how much Odysseus deserves to be punished or spared. I missed the bickering.
No Wine, No Wordplay: Nolan Amps Up the Cyclops’ Monster Body But Cuts All His Lines
Nolan has a wonderful take on the one-eyed monster who traps Odysseus and his men in his cave and snacks on them whenever he’s feeling peckish. Homer simply describes the Cyclops as “a massive man,” but the film’s version (played by Bill Irwin, 76) might have pleased photographer Diane Arbus: He looks like a deformed specimen pickled in formaldehyde. Beyond that, Nolan has greatly simplified the episode: Odysseus doesn’t get the Cyclops drunk before blinding him or pretend to be someone named Noman. And this Cyclops is much less voluble; on the few occasions he does talk, he’s hard to understand. This explains why, when Odysseus is subsequently informed that the Cyclops is the son of Poseidon, he reacts by saying: “What?”
Nolan’s Calypso Twist: Less Heartbreak, More Stockholm Syndrome
Nolan has made some interesting tweaks to the episode involving the gorgeous nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron, 50), who wants to keep Odysseus all to herself on a private island forever and ever. In the original, Odysseus seems to be a perfectly obliging lover for a full seven years — but then he tires of Calypso and begins pining for his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway). The god Hermes is sent down to tell Calypso to end the arrangement, and she does. In the movie, though, Odysseus is more like James Caan in Misery, exploited by a superfan: The infatuated Calypso has been keeping him zonked out by drugging him with memory-obliterating lotus leaves. But she seems to have realized, finally, that this is no way to maintain a relationship. She weans Odysseus off the lotus leaves — it’s a very gentle rehab — and sends him homeward on a tiny skiff.
Wait! What Happened to the Lotus Eaters?
They aren’t in the movie at all. In Homer’s text, they’re the ones who offer the “sweet delicious fruit” of forgetfulness, not Calypso. And it’s not Odysseus but members of his crew who eat it.
Nolan’s Circe Isn’t Seducing Anyone This Time
A sorceress who turns Odysseus’ men into swine, Circe is played by Samantha Morton as a fierce proto-feminist: The masculine instinct, she explains, is essentially piggish, and so turning the men into oinkers is just restoring them to their true selves. (“Men with their appetites,” she mutters.) In Homer’s version, though, Circe is more of a seductress, and she and Odysseus become lovers for a year, with references to her “dazzling bed.” Here she’s sharply alert — afraid, in fact, that the Greeks have come to rape her. The film’s pig-morphing scenes are almost as scary as the parents becoming swine in Spirited Away.
The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships Isn’t What It Used to Be
Helen, the woman whose legendary beauty was said, in a simplification, to be the root cause of the Trojan War, was also the sister of Clytemnestra, who murdered Agamemnon, the Greeks’ commander. So Nolan has cleverly cast Lupita Nyong’o to play both of them as twins. This had me imagining a Greek Parent Trap, but Nolan has kept their stories separate — and depressing. Helen’s beauty is revealed to have been marred, with a disfiguring scar on the left side of her face. And Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon, Nolan implies, not only because she’d taken a lover but because Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter to the gods.
Nolan’s Giants Bring Their Own Killer Forest
Odysseus’ unhappy encounter with the Laestrygonians, a race of man-eating giants, has been reworked into one of the more visually striking episodes in the film. Depicted as enormous warriors clad in silver armor, they may remind you of the Knights Who Say “Ni!” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail — and they hunt down Odysseus and his men in a wintry forest where the trees shift, trapping the Greeks so they can be readily slaughtered.
The Trojan Horse Gets a Hollywood Makeover
There aren’t any real restrictions on how Nolan might have chosen to design the famous wooden horse by which the Greeks were smuggled into the city. Virgil describes it as “a horse of timber / tall as a hill.” Homer simply refers to it as “the wooden horse.” Still, you might be surprised by the movie’s version: It’s as sleek as an art deco sculpture, and it’s rearing up on its hind legs. (Wouldn’t that have forced all the Greeks hiding in it to bunch up in the horse’s hindquarters?)
No Tears, Out With a Bang: How Nolan Wraps It Up
The concluding minutes of this long but fascinating movie reminded me of the words of another poet: “Party over, oops, out of time.” Nolan skips Odysseus’s touching reunion with his lonely, long-suffering father, Laertes. Instead, he gives us an action scene: When Odysseus’ son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), is attacked in a temple dedicated to Athena, Dad saves him and sets fire to the joint (but wouldn’t this offend his good friend Athena)? Nolan has also dropped the famous ruse by which Penelope finally convinces herself that Odysseus is indeed her long-absent husband — it’s a complicated bit of business involving the couple’s marriage bed, which Odysseus built as a DIY project before the Trojan War. At the very end, Odysseus decides that he doesn’t want to be king of Ithaca, anyway. Telemachus gets the job. Odysseus and Penelope board a deluxe barge and sail off to the west. That might not be in the text, but who else in history or literature was ever more deserving of some R&R?
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