The Odyssey
Synopsis: Ancient Greek guy takes a long time getting home after the Trojan War.
The Odyssey follows a person on one of history’s worst cruises. The guy’s name is Odysseus and he wants to travel from Ithaca to Troy. A scant 170 miles apart: from western New York, east to upstate New York. Ithaca, home to Cornell University, is a charming town in a region full of waterfalls. Troy, with its numerous 19th Century buildings is on the Hudson. The small city rises precipitously from the riverbanks. Woe be to anyone who dares to drive its tricksy one-way streets or climb more than a few blocks upwards to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus. I guess things could turn out to be an Odyssey…
But, according to my atlas, there is also an Ithaca in Greece and a Troy in Turkey. Based on my Greek Mythology studies in middle school, I figured these places were mythical! Apparently, they are real. The island of Ithaca is west of Greece’s mainland whilst Troy is in present-day Turkey. The ancient city’s ruins were found close to present-day Canakkale, close to the Dardanelles Strait.
Director Christopher Nolan first had the notion to make a film about the Trojan War about twenty years ago. He decided to adapt the Greek poet Homer’s The Odyssey, written in the 8th Century BCE.
Homer also wrote another famous epic poem, The Iliad. That one is about the Trojan War and the warrior Achilles– you know, the guy with the tendon injury. The roots of both poems are in oral literature.
But was the Trojan War a myth like the stories we’ve heard of gods and goddesses? Certainly, people in Homer’s time believed that the war happened hundreds of years before. Presently, scholars point to archaeologist findings that there was a catastrophic burning of Troy. Sadly, there were enough sieges in the region that those battles may have been fused into one Trojan War in terms of storytelling. That the kidnapping of a king’s wife started the battle is likely apocryphal.
Another important question… was the Trojan Horse– in which Greek soldiers concealed themselves until the “gift” was brought into the city– real? Probably not. Translations may have actually described a giant battering ram that gained them entry into the city. But don’t be dismayed! There are many Trojan horses awaiting movie-goers in cinemas showing The Odyssey. They are foot-tall plastic figures that conceal a bellyful of popcorn. Exciting!
Taking on an adaptation of The Odyssey may smack of hubris, but Christopher Nolan seems pretty fearless. Kudos to Nolan for filming in Greece and using Greek actors, of course. After all, the epic poem is an important historical and cultural product of Greece. Uh… okay, turns out the lead actors who play Odysseus, his wife Penelope and son Telemachus are of British Isle extraction. Imo, at least cast leads who look ethnically Greek. In fact, the only credited Greek actor has a non-speaking part as a frightened Greek citizen.
Matt Damon plays Odysseus, Anne Hathaway is his wife and Tom Holland plays Spiderman—I mean, the son, a Greek Prince.
The script skips through time pretty expertly, beginning with scenes of the great Trojan Horse partially submerged in sand at the shores of Troy. It turns out that Ody, King of Ithaca, sailed with his men ten years ago and have kept the city under siege ever since. This gave them lots of time at the beach to build the fake gift to Troy. I have to say, it looked good. Lots of good craftsmen among them, I guess.
Meanwhile Penelope is back in Ithaca, forced to house over a hundred suitors who keep telling her that her husband must be dead. I don’t know why their twenty-year-old son can’t rule. Maybe they had some rule that a son couldn’t take over the throne until he looked at least sixteen.
There is very dramatic footage of Ody and his soldiers climbing out of the horse late at night inside Troy’s walls. They terrorize the city, killing civilians and the Trojan soldiers who wear cool Art Deco ivory-colored masks. The area is all lit up from the places they are setting ablaze. Ody stops and looks a little sad. I figured he had second thoughts about the carnage they were committing. No, he was looking at the Trojan horse that was tipped over and in danger of burning.
After the Greeks win, Ody pays homage to King Agamemnon, whose wife Helen was abducted by or ran off with Paris of Troy. In this film, Benny Safdie is the king and just stands around like a really arrogant Darth Vader. Lupita Nyong’o is Helen of Troy. She looks really unhappy to be back in the court of her husband, the brother of King Agamemnon, King Menelaus of Sparta (Jon Bernthal).
Ody agrees with his men that they all want to hurry up and get back home, so they pile into a few smallish Viking ships that look like you could put about ten of the craft inside a billionaire’s yacht. Somehow, it takes them ten years to get home!
Some of it is not their fault, with stormy seas assailing them. Poseidon is mad at them for assaulting a member of his family. But along the way, Ody whiles away his time with a nymph named Calypso (Charlize Theron) at what seems to be a soft opening of a new Club Med-type island resort.
Ody claims that he doesn’t remember if he has a wife. She says: We could stay like this forever. He says: Forever is for gods, then resumes stuffing his face with lotus flowers like they are sugar’d Doritos (ie, irresistible).
With about 20 years gone by since Ody left Ithaca Penelope is having a hard time holding off power-hungry suitors. She weaves on her loom, behind a screen in the basement-like setting where the suitors gather. Don’t these guys have a job or anything else to do?
I hope she is not feeding them anything good like spanakopita, moussaka or baklava. My advice? Start feeding them kale and they will clear out within 24 hours.
These suitors often torment Ody & Penny’s son, Telemachus. First off, stop giving them that delicious Greek diner-style coffee. They just use that caffeine energy to smash things up like 1970’s rock stars at a posh hotel. Another thing I hated about them was that they were mean to Ody’s faithful dog Argos. Damn them!
The worst of the bunch is RPatz, well, Robert Pattinson as Antinous. He torments Tele and any beggars that come through. I wished that Tele had Tom Holland’s Spiderman powers so that he could kick RPatz/Antinous in the head, wrap him in a web and sling him into the Aegean Sea—he is that awful!
Speaking of Tom Holland, his partner Zendaya keeps showing up. I hope that Christopher Nolan let them fraternize onset. He famously wants no one to sit on set or relax in between takes, but maybe he at least let them stand near each other as they obeyed him. So, Zendaya is Athena, Goddess of Wisdom. Sometimes she shows up like Ody’s conscience. She walks beside him looking concerned and shakes her head when he makes bad decisions.
As I was saying earlier, the cruise from island to island goes poorly. There is a cyclops at one stop. You’d think it might be an okay excursion because he has a herd of goats and makes fine feta cheese from the ewe milk. But no, Cyclops is not selling any and he doesn’t like humans. Except eating their flesh. (Cyclops is based on the pantomimed acting of Bill Irwin in a notable performance.)
Another island has an angry witch, Circe (Samantha Morton) who wants to feed the sailor-soldiers food that gives them worse than gut troubles. On another island they are chased by giants in armor. Just about every island, Ody and the men end up running back to their boats at top speed, clamber onto the crafts and yell ROW ROW, at the top of their lungs. Yeah, do they need reminding that they have to row, not once, but over and over to get the boat to move through the water?
They skip a shore excursion where sirens are lounging on rocks near shore. It’s very spooky, the sirens have an unearthly look about them as they beckon them with their deadly songs. As they near the women-like creatures, Ody orders his men to plug their ears with wax or bread or whatever is handy. Taking advantage of the perk of being their leader, he has the men tie him to the mast with rope so that he can hear the siren songs,but not be beguiled into jumping off the boat and trying to swim to them.
After they safely pass, the men ask Ody what the songs sounded like. From the pained looks on his face as he listened, I thought it was some horrible yacht rock. But no, he unhelpfully responds that the music was: A song of all the promises I failed to keep.
Even though the men initially seemed to revere Ody as their Ithacan king, they have been sailing for ten years. I mean if they were circumnavigating the globe, I get it, but Ithaca and Troy are just 1,000 kilometers as the crow flies. (By the way, if you’d like to drive there and use the ferry system, it’s a 14-hour drive.)
So, yeah, the men are getting a bit peeved. Ody’s second-in-command Eurylochus (Himesh Patel, excellent as usual) starts disagreeing with Ody’s navigation commands and having lots of little asides with the other sailors.
But Ody also has his reasons to be irritated. When they stop at an island to gather provisions, the men marvel over a herd of grazing cattle. Ody says: Listen those are Apollo’s cattle, and we’ll bring his wrath down upon us if you slaughter them. But you can eat anything else. It made me think of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, when God told them: Eat anything you want. Just don’t have any apples. Well, you know how that turned out.
Does Ody make it home? And my most pressing question: What becomes of his superannuated doggo, Argos?
The Odyssey is a tough sell to modern audiences who live in the shadow of nuclear arms and two world wars in the 20th Century; we know that our species’ survival is imperiled by war, but The Odyssey by Homer, glorifies war-making and home country victories.
I wish the movie had stuck to the universal theme of: I want to go home. But they hammer away at the concept of Zeus’ Law, which is basically a superstition that you better welcome guests with hospitality because said guest may be a god in disguise.
As we close in on twenty years since Odysseus left home, Penelope is fed up with the suitors who are a bunch of raucous freeloaders. Their son wanders around asking randos: Do you know where my dad is?
Slowly sailing home, Ody has begun to have misgivings about the war: Did I violate Zeus’ Law by giving the Trojans a really bad gift?
Maybe gifts that kill the recipients aren’t really a gift at all. But in all likelihood, Zeus was probably too busy hitting on goddesses and earthly women to even notice.
My advice: go see the movie and if you take a cruise of the Greek Islands, double check what the shore excursions are.
P.S. Regarding casting… my dream cast would have been Oscar Isaac as Odysseus, Penelope Cruz as Penelope, Theo James as the main suitor and some Greek actors. There are sectors that objected to Lupita Noyong’o as Helen of Troy. Well… there were enslaved and free people from Africa in Ancient Greece, albeit a small percentage. In 2004’s mediocre Troy,fair-skinned German actor Diane Kruger was Helen. Why not a Greek woman for these English-language adaptations? Idk, other than the filmmakers want even the smaller roles cast with ‘name’ English-language actors. Another objection, from some, is that Elliot Page was cast as a soldier. The objection is based on their trans identity. The actor was previously cast in Nolan’s Inception. Ultimately, Nolan decided to go with actors he has worked with and an international cast. Except for Greeks actors.
Movie Loon Movie Review Shortcut:
Grade: A-
Cut to the Chase: Visual splendor and much action. Some really clunky dialogue, but good acting.
Humor Highlight: Where to begin with the unintentionally funny stuff? I think I’ll give top spot to Robert Pattinson as one of Penelope’s suitors. He’s a cruel snob and a coward, quick to have others fight for him. When his sensibilities are offended by the sight of a beggar, he yells: Somebody get these beggars out of here!
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