I walked into an early morning showing of Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey convinced that it is an impossible task to successfully adapt Homer’s poem into a coherent film. Ulysses, James Joyce’s modernist novel, compresses the travels of Odysseus into one day in Dublin, June 16, 1904, and it works wonderfully. When it comes to film, the epic poem morphs beautifully to adaptation. Apocalypse, Now and O Brother Where Art Thou? are successful transfers to another time and space. For me, these transformations feel more akin to the Homeric spirit than an attempt at transferring to the screen the actual poem. Certainly, the Italian film Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas and Silvana Mangano doesn’t do it for me. Try compressing a heroic poem of more than twelve thousand lines into a two-hour movie and see what you get. You get the prototype of a 1950’s “sword and sandal” movie. At least Nolan gives himself more time, almost three hours. Even though this gigantic length is not enough to pack in everything the original has to offer, it is an exciting three hours. Still, I maintain that for The Odyssey to truly work it has to be read. It’s the only way it is going to come to life. And if you want a reading for our times, pick up the Emily Wilson translation, and I can assure you Homer will live once more.
There are many other literary works that resist being adapted, much less being turned into a film. Don Quixote is a perfect example. There have been so many attempts to liberate Miguel de Cervantes’ words from the page. The 1957 film by Grigori Kozintsev faithfully captures a chunk of the narrative, while on Broadway Man of La Mancha makes parallels between Cervantes’ life and thew novel to the tune of a magnificent musical score. There have been film versions made in Spain as well as in Mexico. That country’s legendary comedian Mario “Cantinflas” Moreno played Sancho Panza in a minor comic version. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, perhaps the most interesting of all, is Terry Gilliam’s meta approach to the novel. Back in America, while Orson Welles was desperately trying to fund his version, which remained unfinished at his death, Mr. Magoo (voiced by Jim Backus), triumphed playing the title role in a cute animated short.
Our modern conception of Homer is of a blind itinerant poet who recited the events of the Trojan War and its aftermath, events that happened in the Bronze Age. The Iliad and the Odyssey are catalogued as primitive heroic poetry. Primitive in the sense that they are part of an ancient oral tradition. According to legend, they were first improvised and recited following oral formulas and written down much later in the 7th or 8th century BCE. We don’t really know if a wandering bard named Homer really existed.
The original poem exists in two realms: the gods on Mount Olympus and the world of mortal men. Nolan has decided that his adaptation will concentrate largely on the mortals. Unfortunately, this leaves out a lot of the conflict that is essential towards a full understanding of the narrative. The gods are major players here. After all, let’s face it, it was a divine beauty contest that triggers the Trojan War in the first place, and Odysseus’ return home to Ithaca is largely guided by the whims of the gods. Major deity like Zeus and Poseidon, however, are absent, although they are mentioned. The 1981 film Clash of the Titans, on the other hand, a fantasy based on the myth of Perseus, made it a point to present both worlds. Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom and Ursula Andress, among others, populated a star-studded Mount Olympus.
A major directorial decision when tackling the works of antiquity is how do we know what these people looked like, what they sounded like, what they wore and the nature of the space through which they roamed. Nolan is after the big budget epic vision – shot and edited in IMAX -- a process that often neglects historical accuracy and is often influenced by the look and feel of previous epics. What about the language? It feels strange to hear one of the suitors drop the F-bomb at one of the banquets. What about Telemachus (Tom Holland) referring to Odysseus (Matt Damon) as dad? Does that break the Homeric spirit of antiquity for you? On the opposite side of the spectrum, Pier Paolo Pasolini, himself a poet, shooting with a poverty-row budget and a cast made up largely of non-professional actors achieves wonders in his Oedipus Rex and Medea. These films are raw and brutal, but their language is elevated and true to their classic nature. They don’t try to dream up distant worlds that we know very little about, instead they create their own. When it comes to presenting ancient Greece, Pasolini’s film achieves a memorable reality rather than a fleeting artifice.
Episodic by its nature, Nolan’s film has some unforgettable set pieces that will stay with you for a long time. Chief among them is Odysseus’ encounter with Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops. Played by Bill Erwin, Polyphemus is more to be pitied than censured, even when he is munching away at some of Odysseus’ men. We feel sorry for him – a deformed, lonely creature living alone with sheep in a cave. Where did he get his taste for men? Their encounter with the Laestrygonians ends up being less successful, Nolan choses to portray them as gigantic men in shiny armor. That’s way too medieval-looking for my taste. And what happened to the lotus-eaters chapter? Perhaps Nolan decided that a section about beings who consume a flower and go on a drugged-out trip was way too boring (too bad, it worked so successfully in Apocalypse, Now when Major Willard (Martin Sheen) ends up meeting some GI’s, stoned out of their minds, who are obsessed with blowing up a bridge). Instead, Nolan incorporates the lotus eating to Calypso (Charlize Theron) on the island of Ogygia. She keeps feeding our hero the drug so that he can forget all about his wife and returning home to Ithaca. The sections that take place aboard a ship are incredible, especially the sailing of the straits of Messina when, thanks to the wrath of Poseidon (Polyphemus is his son, you see and he’s mad about Odysseus putting out junior’s only eye), the men encounter the whirlpool Charybdis and the serpent-like Scylla.
The three most memorable set pieces in the film are Odysseus’ visit to the underworld, the flashbacks to the sack of the city of Troy (beware Greeks bearing gifts!), and the concluding slaughter of the suitors. I don’t want to discuss these at any length at the risk of spoiling what ends up being amazing examples of brilliant filmmaking. Let’s just say that each is an amalgamation of great acting, amazing editing and evocative IMAX cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema), and ambitious music (Ludwig Göransson) by two Nolan regulars both of whom won Academy Awards for Oppenheimer.
And of course, there is Odysseus and Penelope (Anne Hathaway), as well as the goddess Athena (Zendaya), Lupita Nyong’o (in a dual role of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra), Robert Pattinson as Antinous, John Leguizamo memorable as Eumaeus, and Elliot Page in a standout performance as Sinon (a character borrowed from Virgil's Aeneid). Unfortunately, Benny Safdie in the role of Agamemnon is weighted down by a costume and a helmet / mask (that looks way too similar to Batman’s) and makes him look like some kind of Homeric superhero from the pages of Marvel comics.
It is Matt Damon that carries this film, and his performance is wonderful. Perhaps, this is his best role in his career, and without a doubt the most arduous. It must have been a ball-breaker of a shoot, and Damon rises to the occasion in every scene. Frankly, I didn’t think he had the gravitas to pull it off, but his earnest approach to the role won me over in a big way. Anne Hathaway’s Penelope is a study in resignation which she manages to portray in all her scenes.
So, yes, Christopher Nolan’s film is a hit. He has been able to follow a huge film about the creation of the atomic bomb with an even bigger explosion of a film, and he has succeeded. I recommend the film highly, and, quite frankly, despite its length, I’m looking forward to a second viewing soon. The big question is – how do you top this? Will they all be giants from now on, or does he still possess the ability to come up with a Memento or a The Prestige?
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