Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey has hit theaters amid high expectations and controversy. Nolan is a director with the merit of combining great entertainment with an auteur style, yet he also has the flaw of a certain hubris that, in this adaptation of Homer (given, moreover, the subject matter and historical setting…), oozes through in all its excesses.
The film, already at the center of debate for the most classic form of blackwashing, presents itself, on the positive side, as a sumptuous example of great cinema and, on the negative side, as one of the most sophisticated acts of cancel culture that could be carried out against one of the pillars of the Western canon: the Odyssey.
In short, the petty controversies over casting choices have turned out to be merely a diversion from a far broader and more ambitious goal: that of reducing Greek myth and cosmology to a simple post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The following section contains spoilers regarding Nolan’s “inventions.”
“In a time of apparent magic”
The film opens with the words “In a time of apparent magic,” a phrase that, as in the most classic of Nolan’s works, will only take on its full meaning at the end of the film.
Certainly, the film is full of monsters and sorceresses: Scylla is a sort of hydra, and we see Circe “transforming”—as in a modern body-horror film—Ulysses’ companions into pigs. And Zendaya’s Athena appears silently several times, with Telemachus seeming to sense her presence in the wanderer he takes in at the beginning of the film—a detail faithful to the original work.
But in the final revelation, we discover that the silent presence beside Ulysses is not the goddess but merely the memory of a Trojan priestess of the Temple of Athena, beheaded during the sack of the city while the Greeks themselves desecrated the temple by beheading the statue of the Palladium, Athena thus assumes, within the film’s narrative—once the revelation is complete—the most classic topos of films featuring a Vietnam veteran and the trauma of civilians burned by napalm, such as the little girl in the 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, The Terror of War.
Nolan’s Athena is “the eyes of war,” the flashback that accompanies the protagonist’s remorse. A protagonist who wanders, almost undecided about the very meaning of returning.
Certainly, Nolan deconstructs the divinity, leaving the rest of the fantastical as “trifles”: giants, witches, and Poseidon’s storms. Even the “time of apparent magic” resonates with the viewer. Perhaps it’s just a nasty superstition or the delusions of a veteran now addicted to lotus flowers.
A Film That Will Be a Success
The analysis of Nolan’s Odyssey could end here. But it is a visually powerful, technically accomplished work, in which there is no shortage of elements that lend the film an intellectual air. Historical elements analogous to the astrophysicists consulted for the black holes in Interstellar, in a film where the protagonists do not initially seem so aware of the time dilation caused by the black holes themselves.
Nolan’s premise isn’t limited to removing or downplaying the Greek gods from Homer’s work—a move we’ve seen before, such as in Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 Troy, which retold the Iliad as a modern sword and sorcery tale. Nolan surgically deconstructs divinity, transforming it into a symbol of the trauma of war and the guilt of the “white Western male.”
And he does so flawlessly, maintaining an apparent fidelity to Homer—so much so that the “time jumps” dear to the director are those of the *Odyssey*.
Emily Wilson’s Translation
What changes radically is the interpretation of Ulysses. After all, the starting point for Nolan’s adaptation is Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation. This project shares some similarities with the new, controversial Italian translation of The Lord of the Rings. A celebrated scholar with a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania and degrees from Oxford and Yale, Wilson published an English translation of the Odyssey in 2017, using iambic pentameter—the classical meter of English poetry—to adapt the Greek hexameter. This was a feat already accomplished by Alexander Pope in 1725, but Emily Wilson modernizes the language and eschews the overly chivalric heroic couplet used by the 18th-century poet.
Wilson modernizes it so much that the opening lines of the Odyssey and its polýtropos become: “Tell me of a complicated man.” No multiform ingenuity, no cunning, not even a great traveler.
And it’s even worse with polýmetis, “the man of many wiles,” which becomes the “king of lies.” A translation celebrated at the time as a new cultural landmark, as the Guardian headlined. And Il Tascabile, in an interview with Emily Wilson, despite a few raised eyebrows over the anachronisms, didn’t complain too much about the pro-immigration interpretation of xenía.
Except that we must remember that in both Wilson’s translation and Nolan’s version, the suitors meet their fate precisely because they have grossly abused it.
La xenía and the Law of Zeus
Nolan’s Ulysses is thus Emily Wilson’s “complicated man.” Just as the Greek mythological-religious framework is reduced to xenía alone, which in the film becomes the “Law of Zeus”—a law of hospitality understood as in a modern legal drama, where the focus is solely on defining how and to what extent it applies. So much so that even with Circe (portrayed as a cat lady surrounded by big cats), the issue is resolved like a closing argument by the lawyer on duty.
It is small consolation that, in the end, Nolan cannot entirely disown Homer: the suitors will still be wiped out at dawn, even though, during the night, Nolan’s Odysseus repents and laments having created the “doomsday weapon,” the Trojan Horse.
Nolan’s Odysseus is an even more contrite version of his Oppenheimer. There, the head of the Manhattan Project regretted having given the Bomb to mankind; Odysseus regrets having given the Achaeans the horse, because the horse, as a gift, would have violated Zeus’s law. Ulysses’s remorse goes further; he realizes that his “horse/bomb” will lead to the end of their very own civilization…
The crutch of blackwashing
From Wilson to Nolan, there is a single common thread of adaptation and deconstruction of the Odyssey, but in the end, those who contest the project have fallen into Nolan’s trap: the multicultural casting.
A marketing ploy based on carefully calculated rage-baiting: I’m outraged, and you should be outraged too because I’m outraged. A choice that was evident from the very start of the production’s communications: no official announcements about the cast featuring on-set photos with the film’s makeup and hair. For the Odyssey, there were only rumors, the evidence of which the production even denied.
Lupita Nyong’o as Helen (and then also as Clytemnestra, presented as twins—thus turning the myth into a mishmash here as well), but no confirmation. Rumors about Elliot (formerly Ellen) Page in the role of Achilles, but it turns out he’ll be “just” Sinon. As for rapper Travis Scott, there was even talk of him being cast as Homer, while he’ll actually be the bard Femius.
A rapper because, according to Nolan, rap and Homeric epic poetry—in its oral tradition—are one and the same. The problem is that the scene does justice neither to the oral epic nor to rap, with Travis Scott merely uttering four words on a couple of occasions while keeping rhythm with a stick like a auctioneer at a livestock fair in some charming English village—the only scene that reveals the British side of a now-Americanized Nolan.
Faced with these announcements designed to trigger rage-baiting, much of the conservative cultural world has fallen into the trap like a bull before a red rag.
The author has been denouncing the deconstructive practices of blind color casting for more than a decade. This form of blackwashing—which has been exploited in every possible variation and strategy—may have been at the forefront years ago, but today it’s merely a relic of the past. It must be fought, but it cannot remain the sole strategy.
It’s clear that in the case of a character like Elena, casting a moderately famous actress like Nyong’o in a cast of established spokesperson divas for major fashion houses—such as Hathaway, Theron, and Goth—was merely an instrument of rage-baiting. If there had been a diva like Zoe Saldaña or some outsider with a Victoria’s Secret runway appearance on her resume, there would have been no controversy.
But controversy was needed to divert attention from the film’s true objective. The deconstruction wasn’t about the cast; it’s about the very meaning of the work itself. This central element gets lost amid the controversy and leaves itself open to the usual interpretations: if you criticize the deconstruction of Ulysses, you’re just someone who doesn’t want a multiethnic cast.
And it must be said that the cast of the Odyssey is so meticulously multiethnic that there isn’t even a single Greek-Mediterranean face to be found by accident. It’s enough to make you long for Anthony Quinn’s Zorba. But even this is just smoke and mirrors, like Lupita Nyong’o’s statements in an interview where she claimed that Homer hadn’t given enough space to the female perspective in the Odyssey (a sign that she hadn’t even read Emily Wilson). And this is about the classic work with the most female co-protagonists in history. But in Nolan’s *Ulysses*, women ultimately don’t interest him; he doesn’t seduce, nor does he want to be seduced. Nausicaa disappears, Circe is a cat lady, and even Calypso, in the end, is just a nurse who overdoes it with fentanyl.
And in the end, Nolan also somewhat disappointed translator Emily Wilson, who stated on the 92nd NY podcast: “I kept searching in vain for the feeling that this was a film about glory. I think it’s a film that’s somehow interested in shame, but I don’t think it’s interested in glory at all.”
Popularizers and the Paradox of the Bronze Age
Another central element of the rage-baiting-based marketing for Nolan’s Odyssey is the instrumental use of the Bronze Age, which allowed him to tap into part of the world of social media-based historical popularization to first speak “very badly” and then “very highly” of the film.
From the very first images, it was crystal clear that the intent was not to offer a realistic interpretation of the Trojan War setting during the Bronze Age. Nolan’s Greek costumes LARP (that is, they take a not-too-realistic live-action role-playing approach) a vaguely defined “Classical Greece,” featuring bronze, leather, and dark materials.
In this regard, the Trojans’ fanciful armor and helmets are actually better; with their light, almost white color, they seem to be inspired by the linothorax—armor made of overlapping layers of linen—which Homer also mentions in the Odyssey.
The Viking Ships
Worse still are the ships that don’t look like Viking ships—but are Viking ships. Ulysses’ flagship is the drakkar Harald Hårfagre, which, incidentally, is considered historically inaccurate even by the Norwegians themselves, and the set designers didn’t even bother to draw an eye on the bow. Although some argue that the base is a ship from the Magan civilization that flourished in the Persian Gulf during the Bronze Age—and of which a replica was built a few years ago (a ship with a profile similar to a drakkar but a different aspect ratio, and which, lacking the Suez Canal, we would hardly have seen inside the Mediterranean)— but in the end, it boils down to the classic debate over philological elements deemed relevant or irrelevant depending on the film’s interpretation.
For months, popular historians have debated the costumes and props, with a fair amount of skepticism toward Nolan. And now that the film is in theaters, Nolan has become a cornerstone of popular history for his ability to draw on a couple of elements from 1177 B.C.: The Collapse of Civilization by historian and archaeologist Eric H. Cline.
In the film’s finale, Odysseus, repenting for the “destruction” of Troy, foretells the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the “Hellenic Middle Ages.”
It’s so off-base that it seems like a last-minute script gimmick, given that the film is a constant display of visual elements that scream “this isn’t the Bronze Age” in the Mediterranean, covering a range from Classical Greece to Vikings and high fantasy elements à la Excalibur, see the Laestrygonians in their anodized aluminum armor in a coniferous forest where snow seems to be falling (or perhaps it’s pollen, or perhaps it’s the fallout from Troy, given the ideal continuity between Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Nolan’s Ulysses).
AOdyssey steeped in culture that appeals to popularizers
The end of the Bronze Age brought about by the “Sea Peoples.” A mysterious population (mentioned in Egyptian history) that, in the finale, Ulysses—in the film’s second moment of insight—realizes are the very same Achaeans who, in the destruction of Troy, gave rise to the dark legend that now threatens them (as in Retaliation, 1962, by the witty science fiction writer Fredric Brown).
Thus, the destruction wrought by the Achaeans on Troy created a phantom threat that disrupted the fragile balance of a world built on palaces and trade. If trade ceases—even in the absence of a real threat—civilization will collapse nonetheless. This is one of the elements of Cline’s thesis.
This insight allows Ulysses to foresee the end of the Bronze Age’s historical cycle and the end of writing, and that the stories of the Trojan War will ultimately survive only orally.
The writing system in question is Mycenaean Linear B, a proto-Greek script that does indeed disappear. It plausibly disappears because it was a written accounting language used in palaces and commerce, not because of the already oral epic tradition. But the plot device at the end of the film regarding the “end of writing” as a curse intrigues the educated viewer and prompts the uninitiated to delve deeper.
An Odysseus Between Tolkien and Asimov
A device that feels out of place within the film’s narrative. Nolan’s Odysseus isn’t particularly shrewd (aside from the legal drama with Circe) and thinks more like certain protagonists in student slasher horror films who do nothing but get themselves into trouble (see the graveyard of armor and helmets in front of Circe’s residence).
An Odysseus who, while fleeing Polyphemus, can think of nothing better than to shoot another arrow at the cyclops to enrage him even further, ultimately causing him to devour yet another of his companions. Yet in the end, he realizes that his “horse/bomb” will bring about the end of writing and leads him to say to Penelope: “our Bronze Age is coming to an end.”
Nolan’s Ulysses, who has spent the last few years high on lotus, has a historical-political epiphany worthy of the elves of Tolkien’s Third Age—who, after millennia of existence, come to understand that their era has come to an end. Or like Hari Seldon from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, who realizes—thanks to a science rooted in history, mathematics, and sociology—that the Galactic Empire is entering a phase of stagnation and decline.
Thalassocracies: Troy as Hormuz?
Yet this message—which has nothing to do with Homer, but serves to give a nod to those familiar with historical details and capitalize on the buzz generated by online coverage—risks becoming a genuine highlight of the film for contemporary viewers. Agamemnon, who waged war on Troy for control of the sea lanes, but who—once the war was won—could not restore those lanes due to the phantom threat of the “Sea Peoples,” seems like a perfect allegory for Hormuz and the U.S. war against Iran (or the tariffs). A war that may one day be recounted as a war to liberate a strait that was already free before the war broke out.
Giving the (liberal) viewer what they want
While Nolan certainly doesn’t understand (or care about) Homer, he does understand the contemporary liberal-progressive viewer and gives them exactly what they want.
The great sin of the white Western man, the multiracial and transgender cast, a couple of instances of “feminist-splaining” by Circe and Penelope. And the references to current events, with nods to Trump-Agamemnon and perhaps to ICE.
The fact that Nolan’s Odyssey checks all the boxes for progressive liberal causes proves that Nolan is certainly a great director, but not a great auteur, since he limits himself to serving up the usual woke slop in a sumptuous, gourmet style.
The good news is that, in the end, Homer is stronger than Nolan, and that the interest sparked in the audience is genuine. And even if many will fall into the trap of the translation by the “sorceress” Emily Wilson, there is no shortage of foreign YouTube channels giving airtime to the Rai version of the Odyssey as the more faithful adaptation, prompting many to discover or rediscover what was objectively an unrivaled masterpiece. The hope is that even this exquisite exercise in cancel culture will not fully succeed in its intent.
