I saw Nolan’s Odyssey last night. I really, really expected to like it. All the good things I heard or read were really good; all the bad things I heard or read I felt indifferent to or thought were dumb. I’ve got lots of room for adaptation over translation and no major issues with modernizing interpretations or prose dialogue. I’m also a very sympathetic movie watcher (and sympathetic crier). But I found the characters, almost across the board, flat and unmoving. Same with the dialogue. I could certainly stand a bland, not-so-polytropos version of Odysseus if it were used to lift up Penelope’s character, and even hoped for as much, but I did not find that to be the case.
Also, broadly speaking and especially at the end of the film, the lack of trust in the audience was near Sunday school level. “Show, don’t tell” was basically thrown overboard entirely (cf. Julian Barnes).
The last thing I’ll say is that Nolan’s general lack of grotesque violence in his films was a motivating factor for me. In a positive “show, don’t tell” way, he’s good at including violence without the gore. But the Circe scene, turning Odysseus’s men into pigs, really spoiled that feeling. That was straight up Event Horizon-level horror, man. I am tempted to think that, as with a few other films in the past, I would like it better on a second watch. But my desire to never see or think about that scene again probably precludes that possibility.
There’s more to criticize and to praise, but I’ll save that for beer talk, particularly with my friend Matt, whose a genuine Odyssey fan — he actually named his dog Argos, majored in Classics, and (I now say justly) refuses to see the film.
I’m still happy that so many people enjoyed the movie and I’m encourage to perhaps finally pick up a prose translation of Homer’s Odyssey. However, if I could eat a lotus plant and forget that I ever saw the movie, I think I would do it. 🤓
