Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Tperforming a 12,000-line poem that takes a day to read aloud in a three-hour film always required cutting. So it’s proven and Christopher Nolan’s The Odysseywhich contains several scenes and characters from the ancient Greek history of Homer. The director has also changed the emphasis in some of the most popular parts of the story and added a few of his own. Here we present the most important changes.
What Nolan has left
Gods
Homer’s Odyssey begins with a dialogue between Zeus and Athena on Olympus; With the blessing of Zeus, Athena helps guide Odysseus’ house, helping him defeat the warriors and encouraging his son, Telemachus, while using many disguises. Meanwhile, Poseidon interrupts Odysseus’ progress and Hermes is sent on several important missions. The only god that Nolan shows is Athena (Zendaya), who appears as a vision seen by Odysseus (Matt Damon) alone and seems to represent his conscience rather than a fully realized deity.
Nausicaa and Phaeacians
One of the most famous events of the Odyssey is the meeting between Odysseus and the princess Nausicaa; Wasamba is naked on a strange island where he and his maids are playing football. After overcoming this unpleasant situation, Odysseus follows Nausicaa to the city of the Phaeacians, where she tells her stories about the Cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis before being given a way back to Ithaca. Nolan abandons the Phaeacians entirely and tells Odysseus to tell the stories to Calypso (Charlize Theron) as a memory.
Some great ghosts
The film shows Odysseus meeting his former commander Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) in the underworld (Nolan is careful not to show it as the underworld). But we don’t see Achilles, the chief of the Greek army, or Ajax, who in the poem silently opposes Odysseus’s attempts at reconciliation. Nor do we meet Odysseus’ mother, who tries and fails to embrace him three times. Another character left out is the unlucky Elpenor, who dies after drinking too much and then begs to be buried. It’s easy to see why Nolan wanted an economic encounter with spirituality, even their power and resonance in poetry.
The killing of unfaithful women
It is not surprising that Nolan refrains from including the most scandalous scene of the Odyssey, in which the 12 slave women who have been unfaithful in the house and slept with their spouses are hanged by Telemachus. But Nolan elaborates on that as he portrays one of the trickster women, Melantho (Mia Goth), who is sentenced to death by Odysseus’ wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), who pushes him to commit murder while his friends are being killed. He has spared us the terrible spectacle of what happens in the poem of the ugly goatherd Melanthius, who had his nose, ears, hands, feet and genitals cut off.
Penelope’s bed test
Homer’s Penelope is not a pushover when Odysseus returns, and convinces himself that the beggar who has just killed the couple, in fact, her husband, drags her to describe their marriage bed, as only she and Penelope know that Odysseus had made it from an olive tree. Nolan omits this detail, which shows how Penelope compares to her husband’s deception; instead, Odysseus shows him a statue of Athena to prove his identity.
What Nolan has added
A wooden horse
Homer does not tell the whole story of the wooden horse, but it is mentioned three times in the Odyssey (never in the Iliad). Since the use of a horse to enter Troy was Odysseus’s idea and an important part of the Trojan saga, it seems appropriate to include it in the film.
Otherwise
The character of Sinon (Elliot Page), who is shown in the film unwittingly tricking the Trojans into accepting a wooden horse, does not appear anywhere in Homer. Nolan draws on Virgil’s account of the fall of Troy in the second book of the Aeneid. He also makes Sinon’s back to be made to take the place of Antinous (Robert Pattinson) in the Greek army at Troy.
People from the sea
There is a lot of talk in the film about the world of the Greek heroes being threatened by “people from the sea”. This is not just about Homer’s Odyssey. Nor does any Homeric character say, as Nolan’s Odysseus does, that the Trojan War was really “trading tactics”. But this response to the concerns of historians shows that Nolan has done his research.
What Nolan has changed
Calypso
Nolan’s Calypso revives Odysseus with a lotus flower to make him forget his memory, but somehow takes pity on him and lets him go. The poet’s Calypso does not use drugs but is obsessed with sex (not what we see in the film), forcing Odysseus to sleep with her night after night despite his desire to go home. He releases him only when Hermes shows up to tell him that Zeus has decided that he should do so; as a common nymph, she knows that she must submit to the rule of Olympus. When it becomes clear that he can leave, Odysseus is able to enjoy one last love before leaving on his raft.
The Cyclops
Nolan’s Cyclops doesn’t speak (much), whereas in the poem he engages in magical banter with Odysseus. The lack of dialogue in the film makes the one-eyed giant scary, but it means that we lose several important points from the poem: the deception in which Odysseus pretends to be nobody so that the other Cyclopes will not come to the aid of the blind monster, and the moment when Odysseus recklessly exposes the Cyclops to ask the name of his father. The return journey of Odysseus. These changes are consistent with Nolan’s idea of downplaying Odysseus’ abilities as a trickster and highlighting his bravery in battle and injury.
Circe
It is not explained why Homer’s Circe turns Odysseus’ companions into pigs. He turns them back into men because Odysseus proved that he was drug free (thanks to the herbs Hermes gave him) and agreed to sleep with him. She proves to be very helpful and stays with him for the whole year. Nolan’s Circe (Samantha Morton) seems to be fueled by anger about male behavior, but she gently agrees to return Odysseus’ men to their human bodies after realizing that they shouldn’t touch the stew and making her feel sorry for the group of young men who just want to go home.
The reunion of father and son
In the film, a group of villains hired by Antinous attempt to kill Telemachus (Tom Holland) at the temple, but are thwarted by Odysseus, who arrives in hiding. Soon, Telemachus realizes that his savior is his father. In the poem, the ambush is led by Antinous at sea and is easily (and surprisingly) chased away by Telemachus, who is reunited with his father in Ithaca in a meeting presided over by Athena.
The end
Homer’s Odyssey comes to a famously unhappy ending. Nolan wisely discards all of the final events of the poem: the arrival of the suits at the place of the dead; Odysseus’ encounter with his father, Laertes, who angers him unnecessarily by impersonating him; and the anticlimactic battle between Odysseus and the suitors’ relatives. In the film, Telemachus becomes king of Ithaca, allowing Odysseus and Penelope to ride off into the sunset to honor their fallen comrades.
