AI-transcribed oration:
Once again, I finish Homer with a good drive ahead of me. So once again, I'll honor him with some unscripted oration. The Odyssey was everything I thought it'd be, and nothing I hoped it'd be.
As I expected, Christopher Nolan was not the guy for the job. His dialogue is always too poppy, and he specializes in plot twists and mind blows. But this story is so familiar.
It's set in stone, etched in bronze. What could Nolan do with such a classical tale? He has a sense for the epic, but not for the classic. He's a modern filmmaker, one of the more intellectually sophisticated ones, but a product of modern filmmaking.
He shows it with his obsession with technique and technology, with his special effects. Nolan is a modern filmmaker, and he hasn't done anything really classic. The Odyssey is as classic a story as any known to humanity.
It nearly defines antiquity. Nolan is not the guy for the job. Similarly, I was disappointed when I saw Matt Damon attached to it months ago.
He is not my Odysseus. I had a feeling when I first heard it that Matt Damon would just be Matt Damon. He wouldn't be Odysseus.
I hadn't put it into words like that at the time, but that's how I see it now. At the time, I just knew that Matt Damon doesn't have the majesty. He isn't high and mighty.
He's a tough guy, and such a guy. He doesn't have the classic nobility, so our director and our Odysseus are poorly chosen. I'll add Telemachus to the list.
I know Telemachus is young, and he should be, but he's also godlike in Homer. But Tom Holland was really just a kid. He spoke and acted and looked like a kid.
Matt Damon whiffed on the majesty of Odysseus, and Tom Holland whiffed on the maturity of Telemachus, even before he said dad. Thankfully, Anne Hathaway is exactly what I needed out of Penelope, and Zendaya is a compelling Athena, and Robert Pattinson can't not be a slimy suitor. But it's hard to recover from Nolan and Damon.
Not that either of them did a terrible job. I mean, Matt Damon is just Matt Damon. He always is.
And whether he works or not depends on how you use him. A hammer isn't good for drilling in screws, but you don't really blame the hammer. Matt Damon is just Matt Damon.
And Nolan did about what he could have being himself and dealing with this material. It's just not for him, so why did he try? Anyway, a word on the music. A friend told me the music was underwhelming.
I didn't really notice that, which probably means it's underwhelming. The only music that really stood out was the very strange choice of the dissonant second. Dissonant, slightly out of tune second.
Especially when Odysseus and Penelope are speaking through the screen, there's more out of tune reediness and dissonance. That was a very strange choice. Other than that, I hardly noticed the music, which is too bad for a Nolan movie.
Also too bad for the Odyssey. Imagine the potential. Maybe I need to compose it someday.
Maybe I need to write a concept album. So I've been taking the movie piece by piece so far, but let me step back a little. This movie was quite disappointing.
That's not to say I hated it, but that I needed a lot from it. That's what you're taking on with the Odyssey. It's a proud move, especially to skip the Iliad.
It's a tall task for a tall artist. Nolan is a big artist, not a tall one. He's loud, and he sells tickets, and he does some interesting stuff.
He's bold, but he's not a tall artist, and that's what we need to adapt Homer. Nolan depicted the Odyssey, and that's about the extent of it. He dramatized, he staged, he filmed a portrayal of the Odyssey, and that's about it.
He didn't reframe the Odyssey. He didn't redefine the Odyssey. He didn't interpret the Odyssey.
He didn't deliver the authoritative Odyssey. He just portrayed the Odyssey with the tools he had in his artistic toolbox. It's the wrong toolbox for the job, and I hope nobody calls this the definitive Odyssey in the years to come.
I hope somebody else takes a swing at it. I hope somebody does the whole Homeric cycle and does it right, not just because they have the money and the celebrity friends to do it. Enough people have dedicated their lives to this book, there should be someone else, plenty of people, who can do it better than this. Again, I didn't hate the movie by any means, but I can see the potential, and this just fell so flat relatively. It was sort of boring, and I really don't get bored in movies.
There are certain parts of the story that I wanted emphasized more, and yet I found myself sagging in Nolan dialogue that doesn't carry the spirit of the original poem, and doesn't move the story forward quickly enough, nor add any curious new light to it. I really wanted the Homeric spirit, and I didn't feel it at all. I just felt Nolan.
Perhaps he should stick to writing his own stories, because then, even when he's cheesy, you can call him inventive. Oh, and I should mention something about IMAX. I'm honestly not even confident I saw it in IMAX.
I mean, I know I did, because it said IMAX on the screen at the beginning, and it said IMAX over the theater that I entered, and because the person at the counter told me to go to the IMAX theater, and I did. But the evidence ends there. I literally couldn't tell that there was anything different from a normal movie.
The screen didn't seem any larger as far as I could tell. The picture wasn't any more beautiful. The sound was actually kind of bad during some of the dialogue.
Like, I couldn't understand what they were saying. Now, I was quite a few rows back and a bit off to the side. I was worried about it when I got my tickets, but then when I sat in my seat, I thought it was a perfectly good seat.
Maybe I just don't know anything about IMAX, and I was in the wrong seat, or my expectations were wrong, or somehow I didn't actually see it in IMAX. But I think more likely it's just a bunch of marketing hype. I really couldn't even tell a difference.
I suppose that's the last time I'll go to IMAX until I learn some new lesson. I was also tempted after the movie ended to say that's the last time for a while that I'm going to prioritize anything by Nolan, but I kind of doubt that's true. I mean, it does depend on what subjects he takes up in the next few years.
For example, if he does another biopic, I might not be interested at all. But if he does another space movie, I don't think I'll be able to pass it up. Some of his filmmaking is just so exciting, it's really hard for me to pass up.
And it's so popular that I want to be able to talk about it and think about it. He's one of the major filmmakers of my lifetime, and I've seen so many of his movies and really been interested in a few of them that he's hard to ignore. So I can't swear to ignore him.
But I'm stating for the record that he has been quite disappointing to me in the last few years. Basically, I like Interstellar quite a bit. And every other movie of his that I remember was disappointing.
Typically, there's something interesting about it, like the concept of Inception, or like Heath Ledger's Joker. But Interstellar is really the only Nolan movie that I can say I seriously liked. Let's back up again.
The more I think about this movie, the more disappointed I am, and the less I like it. Part of that's because as I distance from the experience of the movie itself, I recall what people told me before I saw it. I remember hearing that this is the movie Nolan was waiting to make his whole life.
I remember hearing that you have to see it in IMAX. I remember hearing it was really good. I'm hyper aware of bias.
I think it's because I'm such a skeptic by nature that I really, really value pure evaluation. So I'm hyper aware of bias and other things that taint my evaluation. In this case, the bias just made me like the movie even less because it frustrates me that people see qualities in it that aren't there, or at least that aren't there as far as I can tell.
And I kind of feel like I'm not missing them. I kind of feel like they're just not there. For example, if you have to see this movie in IMAX, and IMAX is really all that it's marketed to be, shouldn't that just speak for itself in the beauty of the experience? I shouldn't have to know the technicalities of IMAX, right? I should just experience a gorgeous movie, right? And I'm completely certain that I didn't.
Therefore, that IMAX talk was as the wind. I'm skeptical, and I hate bias, and I hate spoilers. And when I try to see this movie purely, I'm left with a movie that is not terrible, but that is terribly disappointing because it took one of the mightiest stories of all time and shrunk it down to Matt Damon.
It expanded the expenditure with no dramatic expansion. It's just an expensive staging of an old story that the director doesn't understand. I'll probably see this as one of Nolan's better movies in the end, funny though it be.
It might be better than some of his plot twist movies, but I'd still rather he skipped stuff like this and stuck to the plot invention cheesy movies, because at least they're inventive. Between Oppenheimer and Odysseus, he's trying too hard to be serious and noble. He just doesn't have it in him.
He's crafty, not mighty.
Later notes:
I think I know how this came to be. Nolan asked ChatGPT "I've run out of nonlinear story ideas, give me a classic example"
When adapting, you need to either capture the original effectively (Harry Potter movies, Lattimore's Iliad) or do something interesting with it (Fennell's Wuthering Heights, Pope's Iliad). This achieved neither: it missed the original spirit of the poem, and it didn't offer any interesting new take. It introduced a ton of new dialogue, but why would Nolan ever be the guy to fill in the blanks in Homer? It cast Helen as Black, but that's not really an artistic choice, it's more of a cultural statement, and anyway that only consumed a few seconds of the movie. It combined the lotus-eaters and Kalypso, if I interpret right, but that's the lowest-effort plot-consolidation imaginable for a long poem that needs to fit inside three hours. So the most original thing this movie did is invent a ton of new dialogue, but nothing in any of Nolan's prior movies suggests he should be augmenting Homer. I'd far rather he take Lattimore's translation directly, so we can see what Matt Damon can do with "Circumspect Penelope, what word have you let escape your teeth's barrier?" I love quirky archaisms, and I typically loathe Nolan's dialogue, so it's a huge step down. And that's the most original thing about this adaptation.
I should probably mention some things I like. Agamemnon's portrayal, while weirdly non-canonical, was kind of awesome (until we heard his voice at least). Lots of the sets were nice - I don't have much historical reference for this, and Homer doesn't bother setting the visual scene, but I'm fine accepting Nolan's sets were somewhat accurate and served the story well enough. A few of the shots stood out, especially those of the sea. Anne Hathaway was spot on (in terms of casting and performance). Zendaya has the right name, and the right mystique, for Athena. Menelaos is supposed to have red hair, I think, but otherwise that guy from The Accountant was appropriately brutish. While I didn't like the casting of Matt Damon, and I didn't find his Odysseus inspiring at all, I appreciate that they held true to the "man of many turns" by exposing his flaws and mistakes, such as the folly of striking back at the Cyclops after they should have been home free, and such as his alternating reason and passion, rationality and rashness, forgiveness and rage. If this were a really satisfying adaptation, I might have rather they remove the rougher edges of his character, because he's supposed to be nearly blameless in Homer, and some of these rough edges weren't rough edges in Homer; so to keep him blameless, you have to slightly adapt his morality, essentially adjusting for inflation. I'd rather his "many turns" were almost exclusively heroic turns, which is mostly how Homer treats him, polar though he reads to modern minds; Nolan's Odysseus is actually less heroic than I'd like; he's too proud and vengeful; his pride actually compromises his brilliance, and Homer makes it clear that Odysseus' brilliance can't really be compromised except by a god. Nevertheless, I appreciate that Nolan accurately conveyed some of conflicts of his hero, because if his portrayal is to be bland, I'm glad to at least see that canonical conflict. I'm sure what I just said is not at all what Nolan was going for, but it's a concession for me.
Responding to a friend:
Nolan needed to pick a lane: faithful or interpretive
I agree, he just did The Odyssey, with no vision. I can see how he could - in theory - ride the middle road between fidelity and freedom if he did it intentionally, with a distinct outcome in mind, but the movie didn't feel intentional, more so mechanical, like "well here's the story, but look, I filmed it on IMAX." That IMAX technicality is not enough to make this a great or interesting movie.
Why did Kalypso let him go?
I felt this as well. Everything with Kalypso felt kind of arbitrary and underdeveloped (although I'd say the same for several characters). I always wonder what the actors think. Was Charlize Theron ashamed with how this ended up? I feel like we used her without giving her any space to develop a character or an arc. To be fair, I don't think Homer's answer to this is satisfying - a lot of his plotting is hand-wavy or "because the gods decreed." But I think a good adaptor would try to fill in those blanks, not necessarily in extra plot, but in emotional movement. Like, a song might go from C chord to G chord on paper, but what's more interesting is how you emotionally lead the listener from one to the other via voice leading and such. Nolan didn't make the plot make emotional sense to me, he just filmed Homer's plot.
Pattinson was wishy-washy, and the battle scenes were lengthy
I didn't particularly notice these things, but 1) I don't mind battle scenes, and 2) it's easy for me to hate Robert Pattinson haha. I don't actually hate him, but I've been disappointed by him a few times, and I was fine treating him like a villain -- however, I was confused by his ostensibly noble act of volunteering to serve Odysseus in his youth. So is he noble?
Siren music was a cop-out
I love this point. This was a cool opportunity for interpretation. Maybe you and I need to write a concept album or Broadway show adapting Homer.
Happy ending was forced and unsatisfying, though I know it's true to the poem
I mean, the poem doesn't have any kind of sentimental ending; Odysseus kills the suitors and it's abruptly over, although there was an earlier prophecy that he'd eventually go west to bury the dead or honor their souls or something. But that's not a romantic journey with Penelope or anything. So the romantic sunset sail was Nolan's invention, and your idea to kill that part is valid; although yes, Odysseus is meant to survive the suitors, under Athena's guardianship, so your idea that he dies in Penelope's arms is a departure.
Alternative casting?
I have
a whole post on this, haha, from a year and a half ago, where I'm looking for an Odysseus who's more of a classical male hero and less of a normal guy than Damon. Beyond that, the acting cast is fine with me. But as far as Nolan, I
told him what he needed to do, and he didn't do it, so the question is who should do it... and I feel like I should have an answer, but I don't. For some reason it's hard for me to map modern directors onto hypothetical projects, though I've tried a few times. I just knew why Nolan wouldn't work - I don't know who would work. But I will say that I really like the tone Denis Villeneuve captured in Dune.
How could one capture the spirit of the poem?
Not with Matt Damon. Homer's gods and humans are very close to one another: the gods have humanlike qualities, they even pretend to be humans, and lots of the humans are directly descended from gods. So lots of characters need the air of demigods. Odysseus can't just be Homer's "complicated man" -- if that were true, Damon would be fine -- he also needs to be Homer's "noble, godlike Odysseus" who makes men's knees go slack with the green fear, and makes all of these goddesses swoon. As a matter of fact, Damon isn't good-looking enough for this role in my opinion. Odysseus is almost a god, he's a higher form of being than anyone we know - Damon is good at being relatable. He needs to feel untouchable, mighty, sacred, blessed. And this is true outside that character himself: the whole movie needs to be higher and holier. Homer exaggerates everything, but that's part of the fun: believing there was a time humans could reach up almost to heaven. It's fun when "the bronze smashes clean through" instead of just sticking in the armor. At least it's fun for me, to read all of this idiosyncratic hyperbole. I want the movie to feel escalated, even at the expense of relatability. The poem is not relatable.
What from the poem could have been interesting to pull in?
I see why Nolan avoided this, but Odysseus meets more folks in Hades, like Achilles and Heracles, so I was super interested whether Nolan would try that out and who he'd cast. I realize now I was subconsciously hoping for Brad Pitt to reprise his Achilles, just like I might have loved Sean Bean reprising his old Odysseus. But it was probably wise not to fall into that trap. Otherwise, the fight with the suitors feels cooler in the poem, which is ironic, because the cinema offers such potential for exciting battle. Nolan levels the playing field, giving the suitors more weapons, so it's not such a slaughter; but it feels cool in the poem when Odysseus is picking them off one by one from his perch above, like a god, untouchable. That's the thing, Odysseus is untouchable in the poem because he's blessed, but he doesn't feel blessed in the movie, hence he loses a lot of the mystique that makes him awesome, and the movie loses its awe. I think if all Nolan changed from this current movie is elevating the air of Odysseus, I'd be much happier. I know Odysseus is a complicated figure, not necessarily an admirable one, but there are still a lot of things I admire about him, acknowledging he's a hero from an era with different values and different ethics; so at the end of the day, I want to admire Odysseus; and this movie didn't let me do that; and that's a big reason it falls short of the poem. You may not have that penchant for classical male heroes (I assume?) but Odysseus is a character that really has the potential to move me, for better or worse. He moved me in the Iliad and Odyssey (the poems) so the movie falls flat by failing to make him inspiring.
I feel like I should have better answer for you, regarding how I would have adapted it. But at this point I feel like I'm being too verbose! And I'd have to think more about it.
Responding to another friend:
"...them using the Trojan horse and not respecting guests and being welcomed as a guest was the breakdown of the bronze civilization... Odysseus' own suitors back on Ithaca were a corollary to him, unleashing this kind of destruction and lack of hospitality on the rest of the world... It seems evident that the notion of welcoming a stranger, and hospitality are key ideas, and that the gods punish those who are inhospitable, Odysseus is punished maybe for Troy and also for what he did to the cyclops either in action or through telling his name... Will the Bronze Age survival the death of hospitality?... Troy was a pyrrhic victory... I really connected with the idea that the sea people are the Greeks who have lost faith in the gods and hospitality after Odysseus’s actions with the Trojan horse. This is like the final message of the film before he and Penelope left on the ship"
Wow, I didn't get this at all. I mean I agree that hospitality is a virtue in Homer -- Telemachos and Penelope shine heroically when they welcome the "stranger" that the suitors scorn, in the poem -- although part of me always felt like Homer's admiration was misguided; he seemed to think that the suitors' scorn was more unethical because the stranger was really Odysseus, or in another case because it was Athene; but the suitors didn't know that, so it doesn't really change the ethics, because their intentions are the same no matter who's under the rags. However, in an age when gods mingle with humans, and anybody can shape shift, it is wise to be hospitable, in case you're dealing with a god, or a godlike human. However, that's more of piety or god-fearing than it is virtue. Hence I always felt like Homer's read on the virtue of hospitality was misplaced. I don't think it was entirely wrong, but misplaced. So while I read hospitality in Homer's morality, I don't necessarily see it as a pervasive, salient theme -- more of half-baked god-fearing. It factors strongly into the story, but perhaps not coherently or consistently. I may be wrong there, that's just what my instincts recall. I thought it was interesting that Nolan cast the Greeks as the "people of the sea", although I experienced that as more of a light plot twist than as serious thematic intrigue. It gave you something to think about, but wasn't really developed in the rest of the movie -- at least not in my experience. Maybe I missed it though. I do know that people like Virgil and Hippias demonize Odysseus for the deception of the Trojan horse. I never saw it that way. It's war, dude. I don't think Homer saw it that way either, so I guess I didn't have any reason to believe Nolan would.
I'm also wondering why the Trojan horse would indicate a lack of hospitality. It's a deceptive offensive maneuver -- same with Odysseus insulting the Cyclops, that's not really a lack of hospitality. The former is deception, the latter is pride, but both are contextualized by the drive to survive and for one's comrades to survive. The incident with the Cyclops is an obvious flaw on Odysseus' part, and the gods do punish him for it -- but I'm not sure it relates to hospitality, and in any case, it's a brief episode of gloating after escaping horrible death in an otherwise long and virtuous epic, so I'm really seeing Odysseus as a hero, if you can accept his military tactics and his slaughter of the suitors. It's an odd read that he would be a parallel to the suitors. Presumably you're seeing a parallel between them infiltrating his house and him sacking Troy? But the latter was warlike, and the former was just scoundrelry. It was Agamemnon and Menelaos' war anyway, Odysseus was just doing his patriotic duty by participating and helping them win it. If anything, I can see Agamemnon as being punished for the sack of Troy, by virtue of the chilly welcome he received on returning home.
In terms of Troy being a pyrrhic victory, yes, although I put those losses on Agamemnon's shoulders; Odysseus just did his patriotic duty by winning the war. I would hope the gods wouldn't pin that war on him and use him to represent the end of the bronze age of hospitality.
Actually, after a little help, I can see this now, partly... the Trojans welcomed the horse, and it betrayed them; thus Odysseus, as its creator, represents the betrayal of hospitality, even though the horse isn't itself an act of inhospitality. I can see that. I don't really see it that way, but I can see it that way.
I loved being in this theater with all these people, experiencing the fun of a blockbuster, which now reverberates through social media like the twang of Odysseus' bow. I like being part of that phenomenon. I didn't try to experience the movie artistically, and I didn't really have any preconceived notion of what an Odyssey adaptation should be. I liked Agamemnon's aura, and Odysseus' bow twang. I didn't love the editing, especially the Kalypso cuts. But I totally dug and enjoyed the movie overall.
I tried to have my own serious experience of the movie: no trailers, no theater companions, no social media, totally insulated. This is because I care enough about the source material and the character - I somewhat idolize Odysseus, and I associate him with Sean Bean, and I dig old epics in general. And I read the poem. So The Odyssey is already on a pedestal before the Syncopy card shows up. I have notions of who Odysseus should be (and who should play him) and admiration for the story; and I want to be really perceptive to how Nolan does it. Well, this attentiveness made it much less fun in the end - but you can imagine that, if the adaptation was really good, the attentiveness would have deepened the satisfaction. For example, I could have caught references to the original, caught spurts of artistic inspiration (such as Agamemnon's aura and Odysseus' bow twang, like you mentioned - those were high points in the movie for me as well, because Nolan rose above the source and made some bold stylistic calls; unfortunately there was nowhere near enough of this), and soaked in this new medium for the story with extra love, like how reading about Gandalf in LotR or seeing him in Amazon's series was so emotional for me because I already had context from the Jackson movies. That extra context heightened those experiences for me, just like in theory my knowledge of Rome should have heightened my experience of Rome. I'm not sure that it did, just like it didn't for the Odyssey film; but perhaps that's because those two things are inherently mediocre as far as any standard assessment of mega movies and mega cities goes. So I've seen both sides: predisposition toward Gandalf dramatically deepening my experience of new Gandalf content, and predispositions toward Odysseus and Rome making the new content disappointing and tired and redundant. I'm sure if some new film did a terrible job at depicting Gandalf, I'd be in the latter camp - so the difference isn't just whether there are predispositions, it's also the quality of the depiction. In this case, the depiction of the Odyssey isn't all that great in itself, it's more of just a fun movie if you aren't expecting a great depiction of the Odyssey. I wanted a great depiction, so I prepared for one; that left me underwhelmed at the mere "fun movie", but if the depiction was better, it would have left me more satisfied than if I hadn't prepared.
