Nolan’s The #Odyssey is closer to a remake of #Gladiator than an adaptation of Homer
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey reproduces the events of Homer, but replaces Homer’s protagonist with a fundamentally different kind of hero. /1
In psychological and moral terms, Matt Damon’s Odysseus is much closer to Maximus in Gladiator than to Homer’s Odysseus.
The key difference is what war, deceit and collapse of order does to the hero.
/2
Maximus is an honourable, serious and morally robust soldier whose world is destroyed by betrayal and the collapse of his life's meaning: family, duty, Rome and his moral order. The film asks what remains of such a man after the world has violated the principles by which he lived
Nolan's Odysseus has the same problem. The sack of Troy is expanded into the psychological origin of his journey. His cunning victory becomes a burden. He is grave, guilt-ridden and haunted by what he has done in war.
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Contemporary critics have noticed precisely this transformation: Nolan’s Odysseus has been described as “impassive and burdened,” with the Trojan Horse and destruction of Troy turned into the defining moral trauma of his character.
But this is the inverse of Homer’s Odysseus!
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Homer’s hero is not burdened or broken by being cunning. He does not regard deception, disguise or manipulation as corruptions forced upon him by an unjust world.
They are expressions of his excellence!
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His mētis - cunning intelligence, improvisation, deceit, disguise and the ability to become “Nobody” - is one of the central qualities through which he survives and ultimately reconstructs his place in Ithaca.
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Scholarship on the poem explicitly treats Odysseus’ lying, disguises and continual reinvention not merely as moral defects but as fundamental expressions of his identity.
That distinction matters.
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Maximus: "I was a good man, dutyful man of order; the brutality of the world has broken my life and forced me into violence."
Nolan’s Odysseus:"I won the war through terrible means; what have those acts done to me, and can I still return to the man and home I once knew?"
vs.
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Homer’s Odysseus: "The world is dangerous, gods and men are unreliable, and I intend to outthink all of them until I get home."
The first two belong to the same modern heroic psychology. The third does not.
This also changes the meaning of #nostos, the return home.
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For Homer, returning to Ithaca is an exercise in #mētis. Odysseus arrives disguised, lies repeatedly, tests everyone around him, conceals his intentions and constructs the circumstances in which he can reclaim his household. Homecoming through identity play and #deception.
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For Maximus, home is something morally pure that has been lost.
His longing for home is essentially longing for restoration and release.
Nolan moves Odysseus toward the latter conception.
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Home increasingly becomes the opposite pole from war: Penelope, Ithaca and the self that existed before Troy.
The central tension becomes whether a damaged warrior can return from violence.
That is the story of #Gladiator.
Not #Odyssey.
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In both Gladiator and Nolan's version the protagonist is representation of the modern ideal of the morally serious soldier:
physically formidable, emotionally contained, devoted to home and family, uncomfortable with political or moral corruption, and burdened by violence.
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Nolan's Odysseus as well as Maximus #dignity lies partly in the fact that brutality wounds him.
"Are you not entertained!" taunts Maximus the decadent mob for cheering purposeless violence.
Nolan's Odysseus is somehow abhorred by Greeks finally sacking Troy.
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Homer’s Odysseus on the other had has is nothing of the like.
He is slippery. He enjoys verbal games. He can be vain, cruel, manipulative, theatrical and opportunistic.
Odysseus lies even when lying is not obviously necessary.
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Athena admires him because she shares his cunning.
His identity is not a fixed moral core that war has damaged.
Identity is something he can continually disguise, narrate and reinvent.
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#Nolan therefore performs a curious substitution:
He keeps Odysseus’ itinerary but gives it to
Maximus’ personality.
Cyclops, Circe, Calypso, Hades, the Sirens and Ithaca remain. The geography is Homeric. The incidents are Homeric, but the hero is #Maximus.
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Nolan's @odysseymovie is therefore a remake of Ridley Scott's #Gladiator.
Nolan has done something interesting: he has placed the protagonist of Gladiator inside the plot of The Odyssey.
The result is an excellent epic film!
Welldone!
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@odysseymovie @threadreaderapp unroll
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