Nolan's Odyssey, an elegy for the West

Nolan’s Odyssey: an elegy for the West

I’m pissed. Pissed at Christopher Nolan: moody, self-serious, conceptual dickhead. How could you do the greatest epic poem, one of humanity’s most lasting and profound myths, so dirty? Now I had to write this whole essay to work through your heavy emotions you hoisted on us, the audience. Next time, just go to a therapist instead of preaching your despair to the world.

There is much to despise about Christopher Nolan’s the Odyssey, which I will. To summarize my issues with this movie, it is deconstructivist, depressing and dry. The spirit of Gravity hangs heavy over this movie. It is a view of Western culture that is incomplete and only shows the dark side and none of the good. It is not a tragedy, it is a confession of Nolan’s own guilt, depression and despair.

Deconstructivist – Nolan’s interpretation of Odysseus and men in general To really understand my point here, let me first explain the spirit of Odysseus as a character in the original texts. Because Odysseus is one of the OG anti-heroes in a sense. Next to more classical heroic traits (he’s brave, dutiful and persevering) he is also cunning and charismatic. A trickster with a silver tongue: his mind and his words are both his greatest strength and the source of his downfall.

His most famous ruse is the Trojan horse, other feats include feigning insanity to escape the draft for the Trojan war; his speech convincing the council of the Greek army to give him Achilles’ armour; the tricking of Polyphemus (the cyclops); and finally disguising himself as a beggar to infiltrate and kill Penelope’s suitors. He wields weapons and words with skill, he lies and deceives. But, and this is what is critical: he always does so to achieve a higher goal. Be it ending the Trojan war, saving his crew or returning to his wife. Homer does not condemn or exalt Odysseus, he shows him fully for the man that he is – polytropos – the man of many ways. The repercussions of his schemes are shown in the original texts, he is hated and mistrusted by many (even his name means “he who is hated by many”) but he is also celebrated.

Nolan refuses to give Odysseus a fair treatment, instead he condemns him through the script. Odysseus is depicted as incompetent. On multiple occasions, his orders get ignored, his crew soft mutinies, it’s his second-in-command that is shown to be the most capable. The most painful example of this is in the Polyphemus scene. The script robs Odysseus of his cleverness by making Polyphemus mute (although it is later revealed he just refuses to speak with the Greeks), so Odysseus does not get the opportunity to use his silver tongue. Instead, the only scheme Odysseus is allowed to devise is a botched ‘just run for the exit in groups of two’ instead of tricking the brute into a drunken sleep. This writing choice also removes Odysseus’s biggest and most charming character flaw: his hubris. A favourite of the ancient Greeks. In the original text, Odysseus lies to Polyphemus, telling him that he is named Nobody. Then, after his eye gets gouged out by Odysseus and his crew, when Polyphemus yells in anger that “nobody did this to me!” the other Cyclopes just think he’s drunk. When Odysseus and his crew have then made their daring escape, Odysseus just can’t help claiming the credit for his ruse, and taunts the cyclops: tell your mates it was Odysseus of Ithaka! Which leads to Polyphemus cursing Odysseus with the wrath of his father, Poseidon. Contrast this with Nolan’s version, where Odysseus just lamely plinks an arrow at the cyclops after he and his crew have exited. When asked by his crew why he did this afterward, he just mumbles “monster ate our men”. Same outcome, different character motivation. One is pride getting to his head; the other, a hero reduced to ineffectual payback. Another depressing example comes when they approach Scylla and Charybdis. Odysseus has essentially given up and checked out. So instead of making the hard but necessary choice of sailing past Scylla to sacrifice six lives, he just passively resigns himself to his boat’s fate – dooming them all to be sucked into the vortex of Charybdis. Again, it is only due to the interjection of his second-in-command that the boat is saved. Again, Odysseus is robbed of his agency by Nolan.

The Gods are real, but also not really. Some plot points appear to move along through divine intervention (thunder crashing to scare away the suitors, or Kalypso) but spoiler alert the big reveal is that Athena was just a manifestation of Odysseus’ trauma over Troy. Pick a side Chris, either have them exist or not. This weird in-between just makes most of the plot points that rely on divine help feel even more contrived, and makes the lack of proper divine intervention even more frustrating. The movie shows its postmodern sleight of hand in the way that it explains Zeus’ law. Why should we be hospitable to strangers? Not because it is the right thing to do and is how you would want to be treated if you were a stranger. No simply because a stranger might be a God in disguise and mistreating them might incur the wrath of the gods. It’s the postmodern maxim again: everything is interpretation, all is power.

In Nolan’s universe, Odysseus effectively causes the Bronze Age collapse by committing the original sin of violating Zeus’ law via the Trojan horse. The film frames the Greeks as the sea people who ruined their own civilization. Yes, very clever Chris “we are the sea people.” Read in isolation, this conclusion almost works. However, Homer’s original text does not run on one-sided guilt: Paris broke xenia first, he took Helen while a guest under Menelaos’ roof - the very act that started the war. Us mortals had been violating the Gods’ laws for a few generations before Troy and have always been aptly punished for it. Homer shows the guilt and nobility on both sides: Nolan assigns the guilt to one. (Not that I’m here to defend sending 1000 ships to burn a city over a cheating wife, that’s not the original’s point either.)

Odysseus, the Greeks, and by extension, the West, is not allowed to be heroic. Odysseus is constantly berated, criticized and made to feel guilty over his actions. Nolan is applying a (post)modern moral lens to a story that takes place in a time when such morality did not exist and does not make sense. Why does the movie make us feel conflicted over the defeat of a cyclops? The cyclops is irredeemable, even by the movie’s own warped sense of morality. He flagrantly breaks Zeus’ law. So why can we not celebrate Odysseus’ escape? The only reason this philosophy can give on why there is no glory in defeating Polyphemus, or the parasitical suitors, is because it is Odysseus – Western Man – that defeats them. And Western Man is guilty, faulty and must be taken down from his pedestal to be deconstructed.

The conclusion that remains after all this deconstructing is not subtle either: all men are evil, it’s spouted almost verbatim by Circe “Oh boohoo a group of scary men came to my hut. Did they come with bad intentions? I don’t know, all men are dumb, horny brutes. And we the women are always the victim” It’s not just Odysseus that receives no narrative sympathy. Telemachos is shown to have a good heart but to be incompetent. No sympathy or complexity gets extended to Menelaos or Agamemnon. Menelaos is just a cynical tough guy that beats his wife. Agamemnon acts more as a force of nature, an embodiment of ruthless ambition. No room for nobility or warmth from the king of Sparta, or sympathy for Agamemnon and his fate. It is telling that in one of the only inserted scenes that was not in the original text, Antinous, leader of the parasitical suitors, the least heroic character, is portrayed sympathetically and with some complexity.

Depressing – the atmosphere The soundtrack is amelodic, dissonant and ethereal. It’s more like ambient-anxiety-beats-to-have-a-panic-attack-to rather than a movie soundtrack. Great at heightening tension, but it gives no relief. Similar to the Oppenheimer soundtrack, even though that one still had one track – Can you hear the Music – that still captured some sense of wonder at discovering the hidden depths of the Universe. Odyssey’s soundtrack has nothing uplifting, it’s all heavy. There is no melody to be found anywhere. Moments of victory are not celebrated, no uplifting scores to drag us out of the musical misery, if even for a little.

The lighting is equally reflective of this depressing mood. You get two choices in the movie: dark interiors (palaces, caves or Troy at night) or washed-out grey exteriors during the day. The Mediterranean Sea, known for its vibrant colors, gets reduced to lighting that looks more like the Netherlands in winter than Greece. Even the monsters are grey and muted. Not even frightening, just grotesque and bland. Indoor scenes are shot from oppressive angles, making the roofs of the palaces loom heavy over the characters. As if the weight of Greek civilization itself were crushing the characters in it.

Dry – the performances Performances are boring. Let’s start with Matt Damon as Odysseus. The Odysseus, known mostly for his Rizz, his roguish wit and his passions. Well good news for the accountants, this Odysseus has about as much charisma as a Big Four bean counter. Where is the hero that managed to charm his way into getting Achilles’ armour, out of the Cyclops’ lair and into the hearts of many beauties?

Where is the passion? The emotional core on which the whole journey rests isn’t there. Odysseus’ whole reason for the ruse of the Trojan horse, and most of the Odyssey itself is that he wants to go home out of love for his wife, his family and his Ithaka. This Odysseus is just kind of meh and confused about everything – no great exuberance at his victories, no deep sorrows about his losses. Ultimately this is the worst sin committed by the movie: it’s boring. Compare this to the original text, where what struck me is how often Odysseus and his men weep.

No romance or sex. Circe is turned from dangerously seductive enchantress into a bitter, catty recluse. Kalypso keeps Odysseus captive out of pity and care, rather than her nympho passion for this great hero. This also undermines Odysseus’ conflict in staying with Kalypso and takes away the power of his love for Penelope. Nolan’s Odysseus does not sacrifice life on a paradisal island with an immortal and beautiful nymph so he can go home to his mortal wife. This Odysseus just passively awakes from his lotus-induced amnesia, through a love that subconsciously pushes him forward. But there is no choice that he makes. Choice is what reveals character. This makes him less heroic, again.

No victory can be celebrated. Not in defeating Polyphemus - an irredeemable monster, simple stuff from a moral point of view: man triumphing over monster – we are denied any joy and meant to feel morally conflicted. Not even in Odysseus’ homecoming and cleansing his house of the suitors, and his final reunion with Penelope. The event that is supposed to be the emotional highpoint of the original story, is instead awkward, drawn out and uncomfortable to watch.

Conclusion Modern Western culture has three major influences: antiquity, Christianity and the Germanic warrior culture. The Germanic can be skipped for this argument. Nolan’s Odyssey takes the worst aspects of antiquity and Christianity: antiquity’s unapologetic brutality, and Christianity’s overbearing guilt. He has Odysseus literally tell us, at the very end, that there is hope and civilization will rise again. But he does not show this, all he shows (and sometimes literally tells you) is how bleak his view of our culture has become. A great contrast with Nolan’s Odyssey is Goethe’s Faust, another of Western culture’s great works of art. Faust is an early-19th-century dramatic poem about a scholar who makes a deal with the devil: trading his soul in exchange for all possible earthly pleasures. Naturally, Faust makes mistakes (he even causes the death of a woman he seduces) but he never stops moving forward. In the end, he dies after completing his grand work: a new, free republic. For that, he is forgiven by God and his soul is saved. According to Goethe, the only true evil which God does not forgive, is resignation and ennui. Yes, Faust makes mistakes, just like Odysseus. No man is infallible. But that doesn’t mean that he is beyond redemption, and that he needs to constantly be berated for what he has done. Wallowing in guilt does not redeem us, action does. By pushing our limits, by our ceaseless striving, we are ennobled and redeemed. That is the true spirit of the West.