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We can discuss later whether my education was merely eclectic or an utter catastrophe, but somehow, having successfully avoided the spoilers for nearly 3,000 years, I went into an early screening of "The Odyssey" with no idea of what it was about.
Was this the story where Orlando Bloom uses an arrow to shoot Brad Pitt's foot? Is Medusa involved?
"Should I try to speed-read it?" I asked my editor about four hours before I had to leave for the press screening, and, because she had read "The Odyssey," she told me, no, I should not try to speed-read a 500-page translation of the most foundational epic in the history of the Western world before ordering a Coke Zero and losing my parking validation.
"But I have personally heard you correctly use the term 'Odyssean,'" another friend told me, and yes, this is how culture works: Eventually it becomes so entrenched that you can know what you're talking about without knowing what you're talking about. We all know that "Odyssean" means, roughly, related to a long or eventful journey, and otherwise we are going to walk into the theater and wing it.
But first: what even is "The Odyssey"?
"The Odyssey" is a massively long poem.
"The Odyssey" was written somewhere in the 7th or 8th Century Before the Common Era, allegedly by "Homer."
This is a drastic oversimplification of authorship. "The Odyssey" is a window into the lost art of oral poetry: like its companion, "The Iliad," it was almost certainly spoken before it was written. It's possible that "Homer," who might have been one person or might have been many, composed the epic orally and then later learned to write it down. It's more likely that he transcribed an epic that an illiterate poet had spoken to him out loud, an epic that generations of illiterate poets had passed down to one another.
(Here is where I wrote and then deleted three paragraphs about the fascinating things linguists have discovered about the differences between how oral and literate cultures think about poetry, because we were getting quite off topic, but please email me if you would like to hear them.)
"The Odyssey" is a thing you can buy tickets to, and we're going to talk about the movie, I promise; this is the journey part of the story.
"The Odyssey": In terms of cultural and artistic impact, it is the most important book aside from the Bible, according to a recent episode of "The Rest Is History," which is hosted by historians Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland, who, confusingly, is an entirely different Tom Holland than the Tom Holland who stars as Telemachus in the new "Odyssey." Both Tom Hollands recently sat down together to discuss "The Odyssey," an event that, inexcusably, was not marketed as "Double Dutch."
"The Odyssey," this time around, is brought to you by Christopher Nolan, the writer-director responsible for such mind-bending works as "Inception," "Memento," "Interstellar" and "Oppenheimer."
Some of Nolan's casting choices immediately became controversial. He cast Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong'o, one of the most beautiful women alive, as Helen of Troy, one of the most beautiful women alive, and this ticked off Elon Musk because, I don't know, once you have a movie that includes a 20-foot-tall cyclops, it's apparently very important to be historically accurate with White actresses? He cast Elliot Page, a transgender man, as one of about a hundred Greek soldiers, and this also ticked off a horde of commentators because, I don't know, they are weird cashews.
"The Odyssey" is a meditation on aging, Amy Poehler suggested to Matt Damon in a recent episode of her podcast, "Good Hang." "The Odyssey" is a meditation on PTSD, Matt Damon suggested back, while also informing her that "The Odyssey" made him go gluten-free. "The Odyssey" is about "the urgent desire to get home and to belong somewhere," according to scholar and translator Daniel Mendelsohn; it is about "what it means to survive violence, and what it means to come home," according to scholar and translator Emily Wilson; it is, said Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy, "a journey of the soul."
Let's go in the theater.
The movie opens. We are in a crowded hall full of partying men and one very exhausted woman.
Penelope, the Queen of Ithaca (Anne Hathaway) has been awaiting the return of her war-hero husband for two decades. Odysseus was the one to finally end the Trojan War by stuffing a giant, hollow horse full of soldiers and tricking their enemies of Troy into bringing the horse inside the city walls. But after the battle ended, Odysseus and his ships never made it home. Queen Penelope's partying men are all menacing suitors who believe it's time for her to marry again; they are there to deplete her resources of food and wine until she chooses one of them. The main contender is Antinous, played by Robert Pattinson and a real toe rag.
But meanwhile, we learn that Odysseus is (1) Alive and (2) Matt Damon. Matt Damon has washed up on an island belonging to Charlize Theron (Calypso) after surviving a series of calamities and tests of the gods - storms, starvation, giants, the literal gates of hell. Calypso, besotted, feeds Odysseus memory-scrubbing lotus blossoms to make him forget he already has a wife and child, but after enough time passes, even her psychotropic flower power is no match for the pull of home. Odysseus has heard rumors of a violent Sea People marauding the Aegean; the longer he waits to return, the more exposed he leaves his beloved Ithaca.
His son, Telemachus, has nearly reached adulthood, but is too young to keep the throne secure. His faithful servant, Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), is hanging on as best he can, but is too old to keep the suitors in line.
As I walked into the screening, the woman ahead of me remarked that she hoped it wasn't "too Nolan-ish," but truly, why would you go to a Christopher Nolan movie if you wanted anything else? This movie bends time, flashes forward and backward, nestles stories within stories, piles ambition on top of ambition, wrangles every esteemed thespian you forgot you loved (hel-LO, Samantha Morton) and is three hours long.
Nolan is known for using classic effects rather than CGI and this movie is, stunningly, no exception: real Greek caves, animatronic puppets, massive water pools, everything a visual feast.
"The Odyssey" is - and let's be serious movie people for a moment - absolutely astonishing. Damon slowly transforms from a brawny war victor to a scrawny, haunted veteran, a little hubris and a few pounds gradually chipped away as each new calamity calls his leadership into question. Nyong'o, who is also cast as Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, adds a layer of weariness to the face that launched a thousand ships. She's back home now, but what had her rescue operation - which she neither wanted nor asked for - cost the world? Would anyone go to war for her now? "Maybe 500" ships could be mustered, jokes her basic husband, Menelaus, the Spartan king, as he watches his wife grit her teeth through another banquet.
For a director who has made his bread-and-butter on extremely masculine movies, Nolan displays incisive curiosity and respect for all of the women of "The Odyssey": Anne Hathaway, as the flinty Penelope, lets her rage over the parasitic suitors simmer just below boiling until she finally erupts at her unsavvy son. Why is he so obsessed with figuring out who will sit on the empty throne? She, the holder of all the responsibility but none of the power, tells him, "I have been sitting on that ‘empty throne' for 20 years."
This is the kind of movie that turns out not to be what you think it's about. Where information is revealed that radically changes your understanding of the story, in a way that feels earned rather than like trickery.
The Greeks are the heroes of their war campaign, so why is it that so many of the people they encounter seem terrified of them? Why do they find the songs of their own exploits so grating? Why don't they ask for directions?
And Calypso alludes to another question: When Odysseus left Troy, he could have taken the known trade route home to Ithaca. Other ships did, and they were able to reunite with their loved ones years ago. So why did Odysseus, a man who claimed to desire nothing more than get back to his wife, a man who had originally feigned madness just to escape the call of duty, a man known by all as the cleverest in the entire country - why did this man separate his ships from the pack and take the unknown route instead?
Asks Calypso: "Why do you not want to go home?"
What even is "The Odyssey"?
After sitting in the theater, gobsmacked as the credits rolled, I felt strongly that I had come into the story in exactly the right way: completely ignorant.
Can I tell you whether the screenplay diverted from the original text in matters of importance? I cannot. If it did, it wouldn't have bothered me. A colleague revealed that her 12-year-old was irritated by the absence of a scene involving the G od of Wind which is, apparently, quite important in the original text, and that girl definitely went to a better middle school than I did.
All of you out there who have apparently been trying to read "The Odyssey" before you see the movie - stop that. It's not necessary. It is, in this case, actually ill-advised.
Because what "The Odyssey" is, at the end of the day, is a very long poem that has been read for a very long time. Long enough for interpretations to shift and bend, each translation reflective of the culture and time in which it was translated. Each era gets "The Odyssey" it deserves.
Alexander Pope's 18th-century translation elevated the language from what had been written in the original Greek; a nod to the Enlightenment's values of aristocratic refinement. The scholar Emily Wilson, whose 2017 version I'm now about halfway through (Yes, I am now reading "The Odyssey"; I love "The Odyssey"; it has been my favorite book for 3,000 years), discusses how, in older translations, women who slept with the villainous suitors were frequently labeled "sluts" or "whores." But the original Greek did not use derogatory language: These women were not sluts but slaves.
In Christopher Nolan's 2026, "The Odyssey" becomes a meditation on, yes, aging and PTSD and, if you are Matt Damon, the benefits of giving up gluten. But mostly, about living with what you have done. Wondering whether your attempts to save your country have instead ruined the world. Wondering what will become of your homeland. Whether you are on the right side of morality as well as victory.
And through every era, "The Odyssey" is a story of a man trying to come home, and what he did before he got there, and the people who are waiting for him, and how they will make sense of his absence and his presence.
This is the part of the epic that is personal to every one of us. Because we all do terrible things and great things, or great things that become terrible things.
And we all have long and eventful journeys toward trying to put things right again, wondering if others will recognize us when we get there. Or if we'll recognize ourselves.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Previously:
• Parenting in the world of 'Million Dollar Nannies'
• RFK Jr. is now handling snakes. What does this mean?
• The Oscars are a lost cause
• I think I know why everyone's lost their minds over Taylor and Travis
• 02/23/23: Don Lemon returned with an apology in a can
• 06/02/22: The trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was too much and not enough
• 03/30/22: The misguided chivalry of Will Smith
• 02/03/21: AOC compares the talking points of her GOP colleagues to the tactics of an abuser
• 11/10/20: The end of Trumpism? Yeah, keep dreaming
• 11/09/20: America's confused obsession with Mary Kay Letourneau
• 07/09/20: The debate over schools reopening isn't about education. It's about how parents are quietly losing their minds
• 07/06/20: Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly turned an intuitive female bond into a tool for abuse
• 06/10/20: The world is messy and hard to control. Take help, and give it, where you can
• 05/21/20: Knock, knock: Who's there? Answering the door is no joke during pandemic
• 04/15/20: Don't wave away frivolous pleasures. Those are also 'essential' in hard times
• 03/20/20: Pandemic, panic and toilet paper mathematics
• 01/13/20: Meghan Markle just flipped the princess fantasy on its big crowned head
• 01/08/20: In court, powerful men have a lot to gain by looking helpless
• 10/18/19: Does Mayor Pete sound assertive or ... shrill?
This time, it's not just female candidates beset by archetypes and associations
• 09/18/19: The messiness and meaning of Caroline Calloway
• 08/29/19: Andrew Luck, ultimate male?
• 08/12/19: Epstein did not deserve to keep his 'allegedlys'
• 08/02/19: The Dems' 2020 'Wife Guys'
• 01/09/19: R. Kelly, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK: How pretending to be bad boys helped them get away with being bad men