Christopher Nolan’s "The Odyssey" is not the first adaptation of Homer's epic Greek poem, but it's the first ever produced at such a scale.
While the critics and public may differ in opinion on the film itself, many agree, no screen version can capture Homer's epic 24 book poem in its entirety.
“There's no way to tell it in a film. It's too big. It's just vast," said Amanda Wilcox, a professor of classics at Williams College.
When you see Nolan’s "Odyssey" as Wilcox did with her children, she said it’s important to let go of expectations. Each person who encounters the original poem is going to come away with a different take.
"The remarkableness of this poem I think lies in the fact that it speaks to these very basic human problems of like, how do we treat one another?" Wilcox said. "How do we manage disagreements with one another? How do we express love and faithfulness?"
She was anticipating hating Nolan's film, but Wilcox said she found it engaging.
"For me as someone who regularly gets to encounter the poem as a whole, part of what made the viewing experience very interesting was seeing what Christopher Nolan felt had to be included," Wilcox said.
For anyone who hasn't heard some version of Homer's "Odyssey," briefly — the poem is the story of a warrior’s return from the Trojan War explains Colin MacCormack, an assistant professor of classical languages and literature at Smith College.
“Homer's "Odyssey" is about the voyages home of the hero Odysseus, and while he is trying to find his way home, his home is languishing in his absence. His wife [Penelope] is beset by suitors," MacCormack said.
Those suitors are "eating up the household and probably going to kill his son [Telemachus who is] coming right up to the cusp of adulthood, figuring out who his father is, trying to figure out who he is," MacCormack said.
Ultimately Homer's poem is about Odysseus's return, reclamation and ultimately reconciliation MacCormack said, and audiences should watch the film foremost as a film.
"Then we can talk about everything else that comes along with it," MacCormack said, beyond plot and characters. "That's the framing, the blocking, the lighting, the sound, the score, all that stuff, and on most of those fronts, I think Nolan, he's pretty good at making movies."
With so many adaptations and translations of the original poem, MacCormack said people have a lot of ideas of what it could or should be.
"There's an old joke that the greatest "Star Wars" film is the one that never got made," MacCormack said, who in addition to teaching at Smith College co-hosts a podcast called "Movies We Dig" where he and others regularly discuss history, archeology and mythology, and how they're seen in popular media — and Nolan gives the Odyssey a story where the fabled characters speak almost like they live in 2026.
Williams College's Amanda Wilcox said at first she found that jarring.
"Early on in the film, Odysseus is standing on the beach, the war has ended and he says 'ten years on this effing beach!' Although he uses the F-word, and my daughter leans over to me and says, that's a guy from Boston," Wilcox said laughing.
Nolan’s script is said to have been inspired by the 2017 translation of "The Odyssey" by Emily Wilson — which tells Odysseus's story in language that is relatively straightforward.
Compare Wilson to the often used and beloved translation by Robert Fagles published in 1996. It begins:
"Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns … driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds..."
And Wilson's version begins:
"Tell me about a complicated man, Muse. Tell me how he wandered and was lost. When he had wrecked the holy town of Troy.
And where he went and who he met...."
Also a professor of classics at the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson recently slammed Nolan's film in the London Review saying it lacks many of the elements that make the poem great -- namely "psychological, emotional and ethical depth."
While there are many female characters Wilson said in Nolan's hands, none of them has much to say — in contrast to Homer's poem.
It's a point being made by others critics and academics, said Amherst College Professor Rick Griffiths.
Nolan flattened the character of Helen of Troy, Griffiths said, the beautiful daughter of Zeus whose elopement caused the Trojan War.
"She had almost nothing to do. She was just a face and deeply regretful," Griffiths said. "So it's all part of a larger thing that so many people have talked about, that Nolan took the trickery and the deceit out of this Odyssey."
Griffiths enjoyed watching the film he said — it was riveting. But in Homer's poem, Odysseus is conniving, lying and often in disguise. On screen Griffiths said Nolan made Matt Damon's Odysseus sincere.
"He's not coming back from Troy really, he's coming back from Vietnam. He's very burdened, he's very regretful; he's caused a lot of harm," Griffiths said.
As for the ending (not quite a spoiler alert, but consider yourself warned), Griffiths is candid. He doesn't like Nolan's or Homer's.
Just after Odysseus and Telemachus slaughter their fellow citizens of Ithaca — dozens of men and women — at the end of Nolan's film Odysseus and Penelope sort of sail off into the sunset while, around them the world is about to take a nosedive.
After the bloodbath in Homer's poem, "finally Zeus sends a thunderbolt and says 'enough!'" Griffith said. "Then Athena sets this whole magical spell of forgetting, as like Truth and Reconciliation. So amnesia sets in. It's really a bad ending."
While the film may not please everyone, Smith College's Colin MacCormack said Nolan wrote an Odyssey for this era and the movie continues Homer’s storytelling.
“There are contradictions in Homeric poetry that are part of the way we know they are these oral traditions," Nolan said. "The way the story is kind of stitched together suggests that this is like a long, ongoing tradition and the Nolan "Odyssey" is part of this," MacCormack said.
It's a strong bet that this fall, Nolan's and Homer's "Odyssey" will be hashed out among students taking Ancient Literature courses — and regardless of what the audience makes of Nolan’s film, it’s a net-positive for the field of classic literature.
