Nolan's Odyssey: Fragments of an Epic

By now the online hubbub surrounding Christopher Nolan's film, the Odyssey, has mostly subsided and folks have moved on to discussing and debating other cultural and political issues. In the weeks leading up to the release of the movie, there was quite a bit of online discussion and debate (from both Christians and non-Christians) over the nature and wisdom of Nolan's casting choices - specifically  the roles of Helen of Troy and a Greek warrior named Sinon. Additionally, there was  quite a lot of discussion and debate over the nature of Nolan's handling of the themes and subject matter in Homer's Odyssey. The reactions ran the gamut - from outright loathing, to over-the-top, glowing praise. I've read many of these reviews and found myself agreeing with some of the elements and critiques from both camps. Everyone who has voiced an opinion has some standard by which they judge films, and few have clearly articulated their criterion. This is why I appreciated Annie Crawford's thoughtful three-part series, which lays out how she evaluated the film and exactly how we should interpret works of art, literature, etc... and that is, through the eyes of C.S. Lewis and his seminal work, An Experiment in Criticism (1961). From the perspective of literature, and literary criticism, I resonate with a lot of what she says [you can read Part I of her post here]. This post will not necessarily focus on that aspect of the film, nor will I analyze specific scenes and what I think Nolan did right or wrong (although I'll just briefly touch on a couple of important points in that regard later). I also found Professor Louis Markos' thoughts helpful and insightful. Markos is a classics scholar who teaches at Houston Christian University. He has published several books on ancient Greek culture and Christianity. You can listen to his thoughts about the film here.

It is understandable why there have been so many passionate responses from both progressive and conservative camps concerning Nolan's film. The simple reason is that Homer's Iliad and Odyssey form a vital part of the foundational canon of the literature (which also includes the Bible) of Western civilization. Some scholars and thinkers, myself included, believe Western literature and civilization are under attack from multiple angles in our culture. In his small book, A Student's Guide to the Classics, Professor of Classics at California State University, Bruce Thornton writes: 

Politics, philosophy, history, epic, poetry, comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, democracy, aesthetics, science, liberty, senate, republic, judiciary, president, legislature - the terms included in this brief but impressive list have two things in common: first, their referents constitute much of the political, intellectual, and cultural infrastructure of Western civilization, second, they all derive from Greek and Latin. Classics is the discipline that studies the language, literature, history, and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, two cultures that bequeathed to the West the greater part of its intellectual, political, and artistic heritage. . . .Times have changed, and the study of Greek and Latin no longer occupies the central place it once held in the curriculum. . . .Yet at a time when Western civilization and its values are under assault, the need for classics is as urgent today as it was in the past. And people are still interested in antiquity; translations of classical texts continue to sell well, and popular films, Gladiator for instance, testify to an enduring fascination with the ancient Greeks and Romans (B. Thornton, 2003, 1-2).

The fact that Christopher Nolan's Odyssey was the number one box office hit opening weekend, earning $124 million domestically, and $264 globally reinforces Thornton's point - that people are still very much interested in antiquity. If Nolan's film caused people to add a paperback copy of Homer's Odyssey into their Amazon cart, and actually read it for themselves (and the indication is that it has!) then I would say that is a major win. 

My main concern revolves around the epic itself: the text as it has been copied and handed down through the centuries, the history and archaeology, as well as a possible indirect biblical connection. Finally, I'll offer some observations and thoughts about the meaning of the story as it has been understood and interpreted through time and its potential meaning for modern culture. To begin, I will offer a few overarching thoughts about the film itself. 

THE FILM: MY GENERAL REVIEW 

Overall, I liked the film. I watched it on Dolby Cinema not IMAX, as there was not an IMAX theater near me. I wouldn't say it was my favorite Christopher Nolan film (perhaps Interstellar?), but I did very much enjoy it! My favorite part of was certainly the cinematography (shot in 70mm IMAX). The best way I can describe it is, visceral. As I watched Odysseus at sea with his men, then landing on the beaches as he made his way back to Ithaca, I felt like I was there with them - salt water and sea spray stinging the eyes, and the sun baking the skin. 

In an increasing age of AI and CGI produced films, there is no substitute for raw nature itself. Probably one of my favorite films of all time is Lawrence of Arabia (1962), starring Peter O'Toole and directed by David Lean. I've watched numerous documentaries and interviews of David Lean, as well as Stephen Spielberg discussing Lean, and one of the keys to his amazing films (see also his Doctor Zhivago) is his use of landscape and raw nature as a key part of the story. Following in this old Hollywood Epic film-making tradition, Christopher Nolan's Odyssey thankfully did not rely on CGI but was shot at multiple exotic locations, as well as at sea. Perhaps one of the most amazing places Nolan filmed was on the black volcanic-sand beaches of Iceland depicting the scene of when Odysseus visits the "otherworldly" underworld of Hades. One of the main strengths of Nolan's film are the filming locations themselves -  the sea, landscapes and wind and how these elements left their imprint on Odysseus' body in his decade-long quest to find home. Odysseus's physical journey back to Ithaca is, in my opinion viscerally and beautifully portrayed. 

Imax camera filming scene at Sea 

With such powerful cinematography, careful to attention to setting,  and epic storytelling, one would expect the score to rise to the occasion. The film score was not terrible, but also not memorable. At times the synthesized score didn't fit the scenes or the emotions portrayed on screen, while at other times, such as when Argos, Odysseus's dog recognized him, it seemed appropriate. I do recognize that music is also a matter of taste, and some may have enjoyed the score. I couldn't help but think, however, of all of the great scholarship and archaeology that has been done on ancient instruments and and ancient music in the past several decades. Surely Nolan's writers and researchers must have found some of this research. One of the criticisms of the film is that it didn't depict much in the way of actual ancient historical Greek culture. One way Nolan could have solved this is to have included ancient Greek instruments in the score such as the Greek Kithara [a type of lyre - the type played by musicologist Peter Pringle], from the Golden Age of Greece (ca. 500 B.C.). The beautiful and ancient sound of the Greek Kithara would have added a simple but evocative element and voice to Nolan's minimal and epic cinematography. 

Kithara player - Greek vase ca. 520 B.C. 
Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich

Writing in the 4th century B.C., the Greek philosopher Aristotle outline in his Poetics, what he thinks is the essential plot in Homer's Odyssey: 

"A certain man has been abroad for many years; he is alone, and the god Poseidon keeps a hostile eye on him. At home the situation is that suitors for his wife's hand are draining his resources and plotting to kill his son. Then, after suffering storm and shipwreck, he comes home, makes himself known, attacks the suitors; he survives and they are destroyed." 

Of course, there is much more in terms of nuance, and subplot, but if we use Aristotle's summation of the Odyssey as our criterion, then Nolan certainly succeeded in conveying it through the medium of film (poor casting choices notwithstanding).

THE TEXT, THE HISTORY & THE FILM: Some Observations

While much has already been written about some of the major themes, motifs and and differences between the ancient text of Homer's Odyssey, and Nolan's film adaptation (see links above), I would like to make a few comments about the epic itself and its relationship to history and archaeology. 

Controversy and argument is not new to Homer's epic. Debate has surrounded the Iliad & Odyssey since it first appeared in the historical record approximately 2,700 years ago. The ancient Greeks believed that it was composed by a single author named Homer, even though practically nothing is known about him through historical sources. Like the much older Epic of Gilgamesh (from ancient Iraq) the Iliad & Odyssey were likely passed on through oral tradition (possibly first sung), then finally written down and standardized in their textual form. Like its Eastern cousin The Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's epic also took on anachronistic elements in its composition, such that people in ancient times surely argued and debated about these changing elements.   

Today, classical archaeologists & historians believe that there is a kernel of historical truth behind the legendary fall of Troy by the Greeks. Most scholars today believe that the historical backdrop behind the legendary events of Homer's "Trojan War" was some time during Late Bronze Age (LBA). In the past few decades, archaeologists have learned quite a lot about the Late Bronze Age (LBA), and some of the tumultuous events which happened during that time. The data from archaeology and history suggests that there was a major upheaval or "collapse" (sometimes called "the Late Bronze Age Collapse"by historians) in the nation-states in and around the Mediterranean. In his book, 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed, archaeologist Eric Cline (widely considered one of the top scholars on the LBA collapse) of George Washington University traces the archaeological and historical evidence of a massive influx or migration of the "sea peoples," known as the Peleset by the Egyptians, and the Philistines by the ancient Israelites. (to learn more about LBA "Collapse" check out Prof. Cline's excellent lecture at U.Chicago here). 

In quite a few scenes in Nolan's film, several characters mention the "Sea Peoples" and the "end of the age of bronze." Perhaps these elements were added into the story to make it more "authentic" to the time. Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect. It's almost certain that Nolan or his screenwriters did their research on the historical backgrounds of when the Odyssey might have taken place, and read Professor Cline's book. Although it is a minor nitpick, I personally didn't care for the references to the "Sea Peoples," in the film and found it out of place and ineffective. The Greeks and Trojans would not have referred to themselves as living in the "Bronze Age." It would be like watching a movie about King Arthur and one of his courtesans exclaims, "Arthur! You, O king are by far the greatest king of the Medieval period!" Even though some of the characters of the Arthur legend may or may not be based on actual historical individuals, people who did in fact, live in the middle-ages did not use the term "medieval" to describe the time in which they lived.

THE ILIAD & ODYSSEY: Historical Roots & Archaeology

Finally, for those still reading and who might be interested, I'd like to briefly address the actual historical events and archaeological sites connected to Homer's Iliad & Odyssey. In his book on the history of archaeology, Dr. Eric Cline (same scholar mentioned above), describes in the opening pages, one of the momentous events in the history of archaeology - the possible archaeological discovery of ancient Troy mentioned in Homer's Iliad! For many years scholars and classicists hotly debated whether or not there was any historical truth or backdrop to Homer's Iliad & Odyssey. In the late-nineteenth century, a German businessman-turned-archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann believed beyond a doubt that it did indeed exist. In western Turkey, in the 1870's,  at a site called Hissarlik, Schliemann teamed up with American excavator Frank Calvert and after several years of excavating, announced that they had indeed discovered the ruined walls of the "topless towers of Ilium." According to archaeologist Eric Cline: 

Homer's story is rich in detail and yet scholars continue to question it. Was there an actual Trojan War that served as a basis for Homer's epic? And could archaeological evidence for it ever be found? I believe the answer to both questions is "yes" and there is now evidence showing that the war was a historical event that took place sometime around 1184 BCE, which - as it turns out - is just about the time when Mycenaean culture and the entire Late Bronze Age came crashing down. It may be that the Trojan War was part of a much larger catastrophe (Three Stone Make a Wall, 2017, Cline, pg. 28).

Apart from Homer's epic, how could scholars and archaeologists, positively identify the archaeological site of Hissarlik to ancient Troy? Students of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, will find this next part of the "is ancient Troy real?" question super interesting! It has to do with a people group mentioned in the Old Testament: the ancient Hittites. The Hittites are mentioned over 60 times in the Old Testament. 2 Samuel Chapter 11 states that Bathsheba's husband, Uriah was a Hittite. Additional references to the Hittites include, Genesis 26:34, Joshua 1:4, 1 Kings 10:29 and 1 Kings 11:1 as well as many others. 

In 1906 the German archaeologist Hugo Winckler started excavating at a site in Turkey. As the excavation began to uncover artifacts from an unknown culture, the British Assyriologist A.H. Sayce (who was also a founding member of the Society of Biblical Archaeology) suggested to Winckler that the site where he was excavating belonged to the the ancient Hittites mentioned in the Bible. As it turned out, Sayce was correct, and Winckler spent the next several years excavating the ancient Hittite capital of Hattuša, which also contained a large trove of pictographic tablets. The tablets were inscribed with a text that as later identified as Hittite. Currently, there is an ongoing translation project at ISAC (The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures) at the University of Chicago finalizing the remaining volumes of the monumental Hittite Dictionary - a dictionary of the extinct Hittite language! According to Eric Cline: 

Among the tablets are a few that document the ongoing troubles that the Hittites had with a small vassal kingdom located in northwestern Anatolia, which they called Wilusa. Eventually, sometime early in the thirteenth century BCE, probably about 1250 BCE, the Hittites signed a peace treaty with the king of Wilusa, a man named Alaksandu.

 

It was not long after this tablet was deciphered that some scholars began suggesting that this was a Hittite reference to the same man whom Homer calls Alexander (Paris) of Ilios and who was responsible for the beginning of the Trojan war because of his romance with Helen. Philologically, Wilusa is close to the Greek name (W)Ilios - the original "W" sound in Greek, known as a diagamma, dropped out over time, so that by Homer's time it was simply Ilios And, of course, Alaksandu sounds very much like Alexander (Cline, 2017, p.32).  

Later excavators at Hissarlik, after Heinrich Schliemann - such as Wilhelm Dörpfeld, Carl Blegen, and more recently Brian Rose have focused their attention and debate on the archaeological levels of Troy VI and VII. The evidence as it stands today (to my knowledge) is that at around 1180 B.C., a great siege and battle took place at the site, the same time frame which literary and historical references in Homer subtly suggest. 

Late Bronze Age walls of Troy (Wikipedia)

NOLAN'S ODYSSEY, TRANSCENDENCE, & HISTORY

Quite a few years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I was introduced to the scholarship of Glenn Hughes by my friend and archaeologist, Jack D. Elliott. Hughes is a philosopher of history and much of his work is based on the writings of the philosopher Eric Voegelin, St. Augustine and others. His book Transcendence and History (2003) is a study of how we as humans search for and long for transcendence, and how this can be traced throughout our own history and stories. He writes: 

As human beings, we desire to know. Especially though, we want to know about ourselves, and about our situation in reality; who we are, where we came from, what we are involved in, what we are intended for, what we may and may not aspire to, what we might become, create, arrive at. We are concerned, in short, about the meaning of our existences, our parts in the human drama. However, the purpose of one's own participation in the human drama could be known fully only by knowing the meaning of the drama as a whole - through comprehending the ultimate truths pertaining to the whys and wherefores of human existence and history (G. Hughes, Transcendence, 2003), 19). 

If Nolan's film, which contains major fragments of Homer's story of Odysseus' journey home and self-reflection, causes people to pause and think about questions of ultimate reality and the meaning of existence, (heady stuff, I know!) then I think it can be counted as a success. 

In his 1961 novel The Moviegoer, which contains quite a few existential elements and themes, Walker Percy perhaps summarizes best what I'm trying to say about a film's ability to cause us to stop and think about ourselves, and about reality itself. If there are indeed people who are searching (and I believe that many people in our culture are), then there remains open the possibility that films (like the Odyssey and even Interstellar) will cause us to search. Not to search (or even to wonder whether or not there is a God) is to be lost and in despair, and sadly many people are there, too. Percy explains:

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be on to something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.