After hearing about it for weeks, I finally saw Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.  A couple of weeks ago, I listened to the audiobook of Robert Fagles’ translation of Homer’s The Odyssey.  It was narrated by Ian McKellen, and was an engaging 13 hours.

As an adaptation:

The word “adaptation” in film criticism is too broad, so I propose two new terms.

A “clever adaptation” changes all the details, like title, setting and characters, but is faithful to the central theme of the original work.  The George Clooney movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou, is a clever adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey.

A “skin-suit adaptation” retains the details, like title, setting and characters, but has a central theme that is unrelated to the original work.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a skin-suit adaptation.  By giving it the same title as Homer’s work, he tricks the audience into thinking he is showing a different perspective on the literature we vaguely remember from high school.

In Homer’s version, gods are real, and the goddess Athena is a close ally to Odysseus, helping him throughout his journey.  Odysseus is a clever, charismatic leader who is tireless in his efforts to get him and his men home.

In Nolan’s version, gods are discussed, but nobody worries too much about them.  Athena seems to be a an artifact of the tortured mind of Odysseus.

If Nolan had named his film, “An Odyssey” or “Odysseus Returns from Crippling PTSD” or anything other than the exact title of one of the oldest pieces of literature in the Western canon, he wouldn’t be blamed for going so far off into the weeds.

As an adaptation, this gets a 3. 

As a film:

Nolan’s The Odyssey has been called, ‘A hero’s journey without a hero.’ 

That’s accurate.  Throughout the movie, other characters refer to Odysseus as a great leader who is brave, skilled and fierce.  Everyone has heard of him and admire his heroic deeds in the siege of Troy.  We see none of that until the last bit of the movie.  We see a man who seems to have PTSD, is racked with guilt, doesn’t want to go home, makes bad decisions, and doesn’t have the respect of his men because he keeps getting them killed.

Odysseus isn’t heroic, admirable or particularly likeable.

Other characters have a backstory or motivations we don’t know anything about. 

Circe is a witch who turns people into animals.  We don’t know why, maybe she hates men or something.  Calypso spends seven years supervising the mental and physical rehab of Odysseus. We don’t know why, maybe she does that for anyone who washes up on her beach.  Penelope is the interim queen, but she lets potential boyfriends have banquets in her castle whenever they want for many years.  She seems to think that’s how hospitality works.  It never occurs her to tell them to go pound salt, or to feed them really shitty food.  The guy who keeps the pigs seems to be a good friend of Odysseus for some reason.

It doesn’t make sense why anyone does what they do.

The movie looks terrible. 

Forget what you imagined the Mediterranean looks like.  No deep blue water, olive groves and cypress trees. One Scottish movie reviewer said it looks like home.  It appeared to be lightly snowing at the site of the pig witch.  Charlize Theron’s island looked like a mud flat or tidal basin, and she lived in a wicker basket.  

Greek reviewers pointed out that the structures weren’t ruins in the time of Odysseus.  Penelope’s castle in Ithaca looked weathered.  This was supposed to be 1200 BC.  When was that building constructed to have already been so pitted?  Troy was the only location that looked sharp and maintained, but they made junk out of that.

There weren’t many monsters.

The movie’s theme seemed to be that civilization depends upon everyone obeying ‘Zeus’s Rule’.   That is, one should be kind to strangers because the beggar may be a god in disguise.  This would have made more sense if this world had walking, talking gods.  It would land even better if, in one instance, the beggar turned out to be a god.

Zeus’s Rule is a mundane hospitality custom, but in Nolan’s world, it extends to not using a tricky Trojan horse to end a siege that has been going on for a decade and to potential boyfriends who intend to take the throne by gobbling up all of Penelope’s resources.

The actors did the best they could with what they had to work with.  So, that’s a bright spot. 

As a movie, I’d give it a 6 out of 10.  I didn’t mind watching it, and toward the end, there were a few touching moments, but nobody is going to watch it a second time.