When a work of literature becomes a movie, the question of who the ultimate author is can be confusing. And that’s only partly because of the obvious differences between the two art forms.
The more telling question concerns the intentions of the individuals behind each work. These intentions, it should be noted, reflect not just personal sentiments but also attitudes of the time and place in which they originate. And this distinction is never more apparent than when an adaptation departs from the work’s original meaning so as to appear more relevant in its exploration of contemporary themes.
The most recent case of such a departure is The Odyssey, writer-director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the classic Greek poem attributed to the poet known as Homer. Just to be clear, both The Odyssey and its prequel The Iliad are full of myths involving humans enduring the capricious moods of the gods they worship. Yet the idea of Homer being a single individual may be a myth as well. Many scholars debate whether Homer existed at all.
In terms of Nolan’s adaptation, however, the question of authorship is hardly in doubt, no matter who Homer might have been. The basic outline of the film is clearly Homeric, while much of the rest else is pure Nolan.
As a reminder, The Odyssey tells the tale of Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, and his 10-year struggle to return home after – as related in The Iliad – serving in, and becoming a hero of, the Trojan War. Odysseus and his men encounter a number of challenges on their return journey, which lasts a full 10 years … the same length of time as the war they’d just finished fighting.
Most of these difficulties are caused by the antagonistic relationship between the gods and the humans who keep failing to show them the respect they demand. Odysseus in particular is guilty of this, marking him as a typical classic hero.
In a National Geographic article, Candida Moss makes the case that Odysseus is the kind of character all too familiar to Greek tragedians of the fifth century BCE. Not a good guy by today’s standards, Odysseus was seen by the people of his time as “a smooth-talking aristocrat with sketchy motives.”
Take the sequence in which Odysseus and his men get trapped by the cyclops Polyphemus. In Homer’s poem, the cyclops asks Odysseus to identify himself, but he lies. After blinding Polyphemus, Odysseus angers the sea god Poseidon – Polyphemus’ father – by arrogantly shouting out his real name. To the Greeks, arrogance (or hubris) was one of the most fatal of flaws.
Or take Odysseus’s relationship with Circe, played by Samantha Morton. Homer’s Odysseus breaks the spell that she cast on his men, turning them into pigs. Then, instead of sailing away – as he does in Nolan’s film – Odysseus become Circe’s lover – for the next full year. So much for being a family man.
That’s not the character as Nolan sees him. Beginning with his casting of Matt Damon – the most likable actor this side of Tom Hanks – Nolan sees Odysseus more as a troubled but good-intentioned guy who can’t seem to catch a break. As even Nolan admitted to Time magazine, this makes his version of Odysseus far more similar to the real-life title character at the center of his Oscar-winning biopic Oppenheimer than anyone remotely Homeric.
Of course, none of this is to say that Nolan isn’t a master filmmaker. His version of “The Odyssey – all two hours and 52 minutes of it – is an extraordinary achievement. It boasts any number of impressive sequences, from the dramatic to the many action scenes rendered through state-of-the-art special effects.
One local viewer who saw Nolan’s film twice, and who claims to have read The Odyssey in the original Greek, told me that he thinks Nolan is making a comment about the dark times that our modern world is facing – much as Homer was writing about the dangers facing humankind in his day.
That could well be true. Artist that he is, Nolan has every right to reinterpret Homer any way he sees fit. Let’s just be clear: This is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, not Homer’s.