The Odyssey - My Thoughts On The Movie

I read The Odyssey at UCLA as a freshman.  That was a long time ago, but while I don't remember all the details, I do recall the basics, and the excitement I felt reading it.   Professor Pasinetti read passages of our assigned books aloud to the class in Greek, Latin, and Italian.  He made the literature come to life.  At the time I had just started college and knew nothing about him other than what I saw in class.  The Wikipedia link above added a lot about his life for me.

We don't have IMAX in Anchorage and so I didn't hurry to see it.  But finally we thought we should and spent a rainy Tuesday afternoon at the movies.  There weren't many others in the theater.  

From the beginning, the images seemed dark, literally.  I assumed it was to emphasize they were night banquets with just candle light or scenes in a cave.  The daylight scenes seemed more normal.  But the blue credits on a black background were hard to read and I left the theater wondering if the projector lamp was just weak. If so, that may have affected my opinion of the film.

In general, I wasn't impressed.  I think there were two basic reasons:

Troy today (2025)

1.  We were in Turkey last year.  When we got out of Istanbul, we took some tours - in Cappadocia, at Gallipoli, and another at Troy.  The guides in Turkey are excellent - they train, they get licensed, and
they know their local history really well.  But even so, you just get a peek at the places you are visiting.  

The movie was like a guided tour through the book.  Look quick on the left to see the suitors in the banquet hall, now on the right you can see men hiding inside the Trojan Horse, and as we come around the curve up ahead you will see the Charbidis biting off the heads of the sailors.  We stopped at some places and walked around a bit, but what we  got was a guided tour with short glimpses of the epic story of Ulysses.  

2.  We got director Nolan's visualization of key scenes of the epic.  It's his vision of what things and people looked like, and what scenes were important to portray.  In my reading of The Oddesey, Circe didn't manually reshape human bodies into pig bodies.  She cast a spell over them to transform them. Of course, every movie adaptation of a book is the director's vision of the book.  

But The Odyssey is no ordinary book.  It's a 3000 year old poem, first passed down orally before it was written.  Nolan skims the book and gives us visuals of some of the more dramatic scenes.  His Trojan Horse is no more Homer's than is the Horse Turkey has erected at the site of ancient Troy (On the right.)  

When someone listens to the story teller relate the tale or reads a modern book version, each listener and reader conjures up their own image of the events.  Once someone has seen the movie, they've had Nolan's image stamped into their imagination.  Their own imagination, their personal interpretation, is eclipsed by the Nolan image.

But I'm not too worried.  The book will remain available.  Professors will continue to assign it in classes, and Nolan's film will fade away as just another film that tried to capture The Odyssey.  

I realize that many reviewers have lauded the movie.  But how many of them had actually read The Odyssey?  How many were simply movie critics?  Or people online trying to get hits so they can increase their income?  

Here's an excerpt from Book X - story of Circe turning the men into pigs from The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Odyssey.  Far different from Nolan's image.

“When they reached Circe’s house they found it built of cut stones, on a site that could be seen from far, in the middle of the forest. There were wild mountain wolves and lions prowling all round it—poor bewitched creatures whom she had tamed by her enchantments and drugged into subjection. They did not attack my men, but wagged their great tails, fawned upon them, and rubbed their noses lovingly against them.[86] As hounds crowd round their master when they see him coming from dinner—for they know he will bring them something—even so did these wolves and lions with their great claws fawn upon my men, but the men were terribly frightened at seeing such strange creatures. Presently they reached the gates of the goddess’s house, and as they stood there they could hear Circe within, singing most beautifully as she worked at her loom, making a web so fine, so soft, and of such dazzling colours as no one but a goddess could weave. On this Polites, whom I valued and trusted more than any other of my men, said, ‘There is some one inside working at a loom and singing most beautifully; the whole place resounds with it, let us call her and see whether she is woman or goddess.’

“They called her and she came down, unfastened the door, and bade them enter. They, thinking no evil, followed her, all except Eurylochus, who suspected mischief and staid outside. When she had got them into her house, she set them upon benches and seats and mixed them a mess with cheese, honey, meal, and Pramnian wine, but she drugged it with wicked poisons to make them forget their homes, and when they had drunk she turned them into pigs by a stroke of her wand, and shut them up in her pig-styes. They were like pigs—head, hair, and all, and they grunted just as pigs do; but their senses were the same as before, and they remembered everything.

“Thus then were they shut up squealing, and Circe threw them some acorns and beech masts such as pigs eat, but Eurylochus hurried back to tell me about the sad fate of our comrades. He was so overcome with dismay that though he tried to speak he could find no words to do so; his eyes filled with tears and he could only sob and sigh, till at last we forced his story out of him, and he told us what had happened to the others.

“‘We went,’ said he, ‘as you told us, through the forest, and in the middle of it there was a fine house built with cut stones in a place that could be seen from far. There we found a woman, or else she was a goddess, working at her loom and singing sweetly; so the men shouted to her and called her, whereon she at once came down, opened the door, and invited us in. The others did not suspect any mischief so they followed her into the house, but I staid where I was, for I thought there might be some treachery. From that moment I saw them no more, for not one of them ever came out, though I sat a long time watching for them.’ [emphasis added]

Somehow this sort of nuanced detail didn't come through in the movie.