If you’re interested in a spoiler-free review of the Odyssey, click here or listen to the audio version inserted below.
Well, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is already a box-office hit, and I’d recommend watching it on the biggest screen you can. It might not be the best film you’ll see this year (I had more fun with ‘The Sheep Detectives‘ and the new Spider-Man, and if that instantly makes you question my taste in movies… fair enough), but it’s still well worth a trip to the theatre.
And here’s one piece of advice I wish I’d included more prominently in my original spoiler-free review: if you know even a basic version of The Odyssey beforehand, you might appreciate Nolan’s adaptation a lot more. Although the same reason might work against it.
After discussing the film with a friend, I realised that The Odyssey is one of those movies that becomes significantly more rewarding if you already know the source material, or at least some version of it. You don’t need to have read Homer himself; any modern translation or even a faithful retelling will do. But walking into the film completely unfamiliar with Odysseus’ journey means several characters and story beats simply won’t carry the emotional or mythological weight they’re meant to.
The film differs from Homer’s original epic in several ways. For instance, the Greek gods appear far less often and rarely meddle in human affairs. But that’s not really the issue. The bigger point is that the film plays out like Nolan assumes viewers already know many of these characters and relationships, allowing him to race through the story with very little exposition. And I actually appreciated the minimal exposition, but it works against the section of audience unfamiliar with the tale.
Take Penelope, for example. Her being surrounded by ambitious suitors hoping to seize Ithaca after assuming Odysseus is dead is one of the central threads of The Odyssey. Yet for viewers unfamiliar with the story, opening the film with her predicament can feel less like the beginning of the main plot and more like a strange detour. After all, when a movie is called The Odyssey, most audiences naturally expect to meet Odysseus almost immediately.
After the Trojan War, Odysseus and his crew set sail for Ithaca, only for their journey home to stretch into years as they encounter monsters, witches, and countless other dangers. The longest delay comes when Calypso keeps the king on an island for nearly seven years. If you’ve never encountered The Odyssey before, Nolan’s film gives you very little reason to understand who she actually is. She can easily come across as just another mysterious woman, without clearly explaining how she’s able to keep one of Greece’s greatest heroes stranded for so long.
In Homer’s Odyssey, Athena asks Zeus to intervene and free Odysseus from Calypso’s island. Zeus sends Hermes to deliver the order, forcing the lovestruck nymph to reluctantly let the king go. None of that divine intervention appears in Nolan’s adaptation. For the most part, he keeps the Greek gods on the sidelines, and honestly, I think that’s one of the film’s strengths. It makes the story feel more grounded and keeps the focus firmly on Odysseus. The only people likely to feel short-changed are those hoping for a fantasy adventure full of gods, monsters, and magical intervention.
Then there’s Circe, the beautiful enchantress, also a minor goddess, in Homer’s version. After watching Nolan’s film, I’ve seen some viewers/reviewers praising him for including a supposedly powerful female character. Personally though, I thought she was underused. In fact, if Nolan’s entire Circe sequence were removed from the film, it would hardly affect the overall narrative. She functions largely as another dangerous obstacle Odysseus must overcome.
In Homer’s Odyssey, however, Circe is a far richer and more complex figure whose relationship with Odysseus unfolds over a much longer period. If you plan on reading one of the many modern retellings or translations, I won’t spoil how her story develops, but she’s certainly far more than a cameo villain who briefly appears before disappearing again.
By now, you’ve probably got the point. The issue isn’t that Nolan changes parts of The Odyssey, every adaptation does, and that’s okay. A copy paste of a work can honestly be boring and storytellers should have the creative liberty to do what they want with their version, but then, it should function as a standalone piece by itself. And Nolan’s film doesn’t stand up on it’s own. Several characters arrive carrying centuries of mythological baggage, and the film rarely pauses to explain why they matter. That approach worked perfectly well for me because I already knew the story. I appreciated that Nolan did not interrupt the narrative with constant exposition.
So my advice isn’t necessarily to read Homer before watching The Odyssey. Read Emily Wilson’s translation. Read Daniel Mendelsohn’s. Pick up Stephen Fry’s Odyssey. Even a well-written modern retelling will do. Just get familiar with the broad strokes of Odysseus’ journey first. I suspect you’ll come away from Nolan’s film appreciating many of its choices and omissions even more. Then again, maybe that’ll backfire, and you’ll spend the entire movie thinking, “Hang on… that’s not how it happened in the book.” Either way, I’d still take a little context over going in completely blind.
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