To Burn the Walls of Troy; To Break the World Entire - Christopher Nolan's Odyssey

Another take on mythology's most complicated man, and the world he lived in.

Before I get into the review, a quick PSA. After I had already been to the cinema, I was informed that there have been calls for a boycott due to Nolan's having filmed some of the movie in occupied Dakhla (Sahrawi Republic). More details on that here.

There have been, over the years, countless takes on The Odyssey, one of the Ancient Greek poetic epics historically attributed to a man called "Homer"*, and there will always be more. Indeed, we have already been promised another, as Jorge Rivera-Herrans' Epic, a musical interpretation, will be translated to the big screen in the near future, and mythical retellings are a consistent presence in the literary world. This year, though, we get Christopher Nolan's take. I say "take" deliberately, because I think the key feature of his cinematic vision for the story is that it is very explicitly making an argument, with the text and with the current world; Nolan is not deluded into thinking he's doing just a straight re-imagining of the original onto screen. This is an Odyssey with something to say, an angle that encompasses the mythological narrative, the historical context in which the original story may have occurred, and maybe some of the contemporary culture wars to boot. That's a lot to pile onto a single film, even one that's 3.5 hours long. But, spoilers, I think he mostly manages it.

Played by Matt Damon, Nolan's Odysseus is worn down by his travels, and more so by the memories of those he has lost, and what he has done to bring himself this far in his journey. This is regretful Odysseus, slowly recovering himself on Calypso's island as she weans him off the lotus flowers that have been preventing him from remembering... well, everything. The film cuts between their sparse island, his own flashbacks, and scenes back at his home island of Ithaca, where his wife and son have their own battles to face.

This non-linear approach to narrative is, of course, very Nolan, but it's also very Odyssey too. And I think this is something that really carries through on this version of the story, one that I think is important to hold onto when I start talking about history in a bit, and even more so when delving into the hot mess of the discourse about this film: whatever else he has or has not done, whatever ways he chooses to approach the text, I think it is clear that Nolan has read the text, and has a very clear idea of it, his own reading of it, that forms the bedrock of the film. It is a film aggressively in conversation with the original text. Not "faithful" to it, whatever that means. Not bound only to recreate it. Not constrained within the walls of literal interpretation. But thinking about and responding to it, and that, above all, is why I appreciate Nolan's version immensely.

It is at this point that we must handle the idea of spoilers before continuing.

I don't think it is possible to spoil The Odyssey. For one, the text is *mumble* thousand years old at this point, but more importantly for two, it is very likely that audiences in the ancient world already knew the stories therein before hearing it for the first time. It is not a story meant to surprise, as it draws upon various sources and other stories, weaving together many myths into a single poem. And, of those myths, it is often only one version among many. The story of Helen of Troy that we know, for example, has any number of variants (including my favourite, that she was never at Troy at all, but hiding in Egypt while a copy of her made of clouds went off to Priam's city in her place). But it is possible to spoil how a modern version argues with the original text, and so that's what I'm warning for here. I don't think it matters; but I also mostly don't think spoilers matter. Read on at your own choosing either way.

So how exactly is Nolan's take in conversation with the original? Well, it all starts with what the film calls "Zeus' Law" (ξενία in the Ancient Greek). This is a law of hospitality, the duties owed by hosts towards their guests, and strangers who come to their home. It is a theme present very strongly in the poem, as the suitors' years-long occupation of the palace at Ithaca strains against the obligations guests have towards their host. Matt Damon's Odysseus is keenly aware of the concept, but raises it repeatedly in terms of his own (and his crew's) actions towards various "hosts" throughout their journey, and how they have continually violated its strictures as they are pushed by necessity, survival and the desire to return home after their long years at war. This culminates in his slaughter of the suitors back at Ithaca - I'm sure it will shock no one that murdering guests is bad form - which he insists on undertaking alone as he already bears the shame of having violated ξενία over and again, while his son and wife are untainted by such crimes. Zeus' Law is mentioned over and again, by character after character, driving home throughout the narrative how fundamental it is to their society, a bedrock of civilisation in this world.

Which I really enjoyed, because it is both very comprehensible to a modern audience, and yet somewhat alien. Obviously the modern world also doesn't condone murdering one's guests, but the core idea of the rule - that any stranger in your home could be a god in disguise - is less familiar, as is the impetus to accept in any passing traveller, feed them and wash their feet. It establishes firmly that this story takes place in some other when, a time where things genuinely work differently. Very true for history in general, but also apt for Homeric epic, poetry in which it is not an uncommon theme to be reminded that people and society was different, just better in the past. Men could casually chuck boulders and everyone adhered to Zeus' Law, or paid the price as the Furies hurtled down upon them in vengeance. Good times, y'know?

Agamemnon's armour has drawn an amount of criticism

This is not to say that Nolan is deeply wedded to an authentic image of a specific time period in the ancient world, however. But nor is he only wedded to the Hollywood swords and sandals aesthetic, absent any visual cues from the past. There's a mixture of the two, evoking something again both familiar and strange, where nothing quite sits comfortably in the watcher's expectations. Agamemnon's armour - weirdly blockish and futuristic looking - has little to do with history, but the walls of Troy definitely evoke real locations and archaeological finds. The statue of Athena, which appears over and again, reminded me strongly of a real statue, but remained resolutely white, in defiance of the exuberant polychromy archaeologists know to have been the norm in ancient art.

The statue on the left sprang to mind when I saw the Trojan statue of Athena on screen

A lot of the commentary I've seen online in the run-up and immediate aftermath of the film's release focuses on these inaccuracies. And I won't deny them; a lot of the visual choices do run counter to our understanding of the fashion, armour, architecture and art of the ancient world. But I have two counterpoints to this. The first is that this is a myth. While Troy itself was a real place, really destroyed (a number of times, in fact), the specific historical reality of the Trojan War as depicted in the Homeric epics is... uncertain at best, and this is a story populated by gods and monsters, heroes larger than life: it's not real, and not really pinpointing a real time and place that we know for a surety. Once you start playing with fantastical elements, I think some of the historicity necessarily goes out of the window anyway, and doubly so when it's myths composed we-don't-know-when and about we-don't-know-when**. What, exactly, are we being historically accurate to? The second, which is a more general point, is simply that I'm not certain why that accuracy is owed in this context, and to what extent. It's an adaptation, a new version of a story, for a modern audience, and is being made to appeal to a modern audience. Balancing what of the past and what of the present to incorporate is always going to be a conversation in play, and I don't think a blind dedication to recreation is always the highest ideal to be aiming for. There's the art to consider too, the message, and the choices made to support that are the interesting ones. I will always prefer something ahistorical whose choices are purposeful, interesting or fun - there's a reason everyone loves A Knight's Tale - to something more interested in not getting yelled at by the internet than in making good art.

And this comes up in some interesting ways in the film. I've seen some criticism, for instance, of the choice to have all the actors speaking in US accents (even when some of them aren't American) and in modern dialogue. I, too, did a bit of a double take to hear Tom Holland call Anne Hathaway "mom". But then, what would be more "authentic"? The obvious answer is Homeric Greek, but I'm not sure that would be a crowd-pleaser. What do the critics want? British accents? Archaic British accents? Is that more authentic to the material (spoilers: no). Nolan has chosen consistency, which I think is perfectly defensible - they are all from the same region, so have them all speak in the same accent - and well, why would characters in a story be speaking "archaically" by their own measures? People (with a few exceptions) speak in their own now, so by representing these characters in our now, Nolan gives them their own contemporaneity.

Which isn't to say his choices are entirely above criticism. Much was made right from the first casting announcements about exactly who was playing these figures from Greek myth, and that none of them were, themselves, Greek. While I do think most of the cast did well in their roles, I think this point still holds up, having watched the film. There is a long history of Greek (and Roman) myths being recentered into British (and sometimes American) visuals, written only by Anglophone creatives and denuded of their location, just as the statues are stripped of their colours. There's a false idea of US/UK as an anglophone cultural "neutral", I think, without acknowledgment of the specificity of the mythology. To uncritically recreate that in a retelling is worth critiquing, not so much as a single choice (because, see above, adaptations) but as part of a wider pattern of who gets to retell these myths, and how, and to what end. 

But, on the flip side, some of the casting choices are clearly thoughtful in their own ways. Lupita Nyong'o as both Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra has been the focal point of (racist) outrage dressed up as "historical accuracy", but that has no equivalent qualms about just-as-not-Greek Matt Damon. But the world of the Greek myths is the Mediterranean, with its trade routes and its interconnections between peoples. A black character here is perfectly legitimate, even before you introduce the "child of a deity born from an egg" option that throws most arguments out of the window anyway. Also, let's be real, if you're picking someone who is meant to be so beautiful they could start a war... Nyong'o is a very good choice. She plays her position - post war, trapped with an angry Menelaus whose brother has been killed by his wife - well, with a strained poise that comes through even in her relatively brief scenes.

I can't find a good image of Nyong'o from the film, so have instead this photo of her from one of the premieres in which a) she is stunning and b) her outfit to my mind is evoking the Egyptian Helen of Troy myth variant

I think the theme I'm trying to make clear here is - whatever choices Nolan has made, whether you like them or not, there is a sense of deliberation to them, an artistic vision to which they are all turning, and a message about the story they are all supporting.

He has made his Odysseus an unreliable narrator - all of the parts of the film which contain fantastical elements are narrated by or, in one specific case, only seen by Odysseus. The title card at the beginning calls this a time of "apparent" magic, opening up the possibility of disbelief in what follows. And, as Odysseus' story unfolds, it becomes clear that his time at Troy has changed him deeply, and his travels likewise. Tom Holland's Telemachus may look for Athena' in the eyes of those around him, but there's no evidence to suggest he is ever right, that she is ever present in his world. This ambiguity is incredibly interesting when held alongside the centrality of "Zeus' Law" to the story - you must treat strangers as if they are gods in disguise; are the gods even possible?

Or were they possible in a time that was better, before things become ruined, before civilisation crumbled? And this is the crux of Nolan's story. As the flashbacks progress, as Odysseus makes his way home to Ithaca, there are rumours of a mysterious "People from the Sea" who are ravaging across the world, looting and destroying on their way. They are an existential threat whose existence is being used to drive Penelope toward the thought of picking a suitor to marry, to drive Telemachus toward claiming his absent father's throne. Ithaca needs a king because it needs a central figure to unite them against a looming external threat, and armed resistance requires strong leadership to call up and maintain. A mundane motivation, but a very real one, and in keeping with others in this version of the story: it is made clear early on that the war on Troy was not for honour but for trade, Helen's recapture only the pretext Agamemnon needed for his overweening ambition. And then, when Odysseus returns, all the threads unite and he sees what he has been unwilling or unable to connect throughout his journey. The destruction of Troy via the trickery of the Trojan Horse was, in Nolan's telling, a cataclysmic rupture of Zeus' Law, one that echoes out in Odysseus' actions all throughout his journey homeward, the first of many acts in defiance of the bedrock of their civilisation. Agamemnon pays with his life when he returns home to Clytemnestra. Has Odysseus paid in his sanity? In his crew, all of whom die as they voyage toward Ithaca? Or has his payment yet to come? He is ravaged by guilt as he realises that his people, his crew, were the beginning of the People from the Sea. The destruction of Troy, this monstrous act in contravention to all the norms of their world, has set in motion a disruption of everything that cannot be stopped: the Bronze Age Collapse.

That I seriously enjoyed that as a concept does not preclude me also finding it quite funny, as others have memed:

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/ens0.me/post/3mr45wglb5k2g

Anyway. This is a real, historical event, visible in the archaeological record and the sudden absence of a lot of the material and textual culture of the time that went before. Nolan, then, unites history and myth, reinforcing a reading of the Trojan War as an apocalyptic event, ending the heroic age, by giving it real-world repercussions. I actually, genuinely love this as an idea. I was not expecting it. It works beautifully. The reading of the Trojan War as apocalyptic to the age of heroes is a perfectly valid and present one in the Homeric epics themselves, but to unite this with history and archaeology is, to my mind, a fascinating choice and one well borne out by the decisions made in the adaptation. The constant reinforcement of the criticality of Zeus' Law to the world of the story makes plain the stakes when it has been revealed to have been broken. But it is also a narrative and an argument that has its place in the modern world: welcome the stranger, treat him kindly, do not take lightly the bond between people, even those without connection of blood, birth or location, and if you do not... the result is lawlessness and disaster. It is a film about what bedrock we might build a society on, and how we can break the world when we forget those fundamental tenets. I'll take that reading, reinforced as it is by the creepy-as-ever Robert Pattinson depiction of the suitor Antinous and his awful treatment of dogs, beggars and people who get in his way. The person who dismisses the law of hospitality, the narrative says, is kind of a dickhead.

I think, in this unity of the historical and the mythic, Nolan's cleaving to the text is most clearly revealed. Not in literal detail, but in his selection of an argument from the original poem, and use of it as a central post around which to build his narrative tent. This is a film about ξενία, a film about a specific reading of The Odyssey as a story, to which he has subordinated all other aspects, the visuals, the dialogue, even the historicity. It's a story which cares about the text and how to read it in conversation with itself, its world, and ours. This, truly, is what I want from myth adaptations. It is a film with a clear answer to "what does this bring that the text itself did not already provide?", and a presence that is both clearly tied to its inspirations but also, indelibly, its own. And, critically, it is a story at the scale of the myths from which it draws, invested both in the personal, the story of a man who wants to get home to his wife and son, and the epic, the sweep of history that, in this time of heroes, could be swayed by the actions of a few.

Odysseus wonders whether burning the walls of Troy would - had, will - break the world entire? Nolan tells us that it did.

*Here is absolutely not the place to get into the authorial tradition of Greek epic, but short version, there probably was no such guy. It's just convenient to have a place holder way to refer to the poems.
**I am bound to point out here that it's been a good decade since I was actively studying the Ancient World, so while I feel like I'd probably have heard if someone had sorted this for certain, I don't /know/. If I'm wrong, mea culpa, I shall do a penance on JSTOR.

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POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social