The film is Nolan’s adaptation of the ancient epic poem and it is an inspiring, important, and gripping movie, perfect for our cultural moment.
Imagine a world where men are acting like pigs, the ties to God and family that once rooted society are gone, and people have become crass and violent. Now imagine you are a young man feeling unable to start your life in that world, feeling abandoned by your father and doubting your purpose.
That is the story of the world outside your door — and the world of Christopher Nolan’s new movie The Odyssey. The answers the movie proposes are insightful and important.
The film is Nolan’s adaptation of the ancient epic poem, and while Nolan’s casting choices have raised hackles, his story choices are very much in the spirit of Homer.
Here are five lessons (and spoilers!) from the film.
First: The film shows how fatherlessness destroys societies and family commitments restore order.
The movie is a parable about fathers.
As the story begins, the hero Odysseus has won the Trojan War after 10 years of fighting, but fierce obstacles prevent him from coming home to Ithaca, where he is king. His wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, are at home dealing with men who have taken advantage of their culture’s tradition of hospitality to overstay their welcome and draw down the family’s resources.
Both the poem and the movie focus on the coming-of-age story of Telemachus, who finally does find his meaning and purpose — by finding his father. After discovering his father’s nobility, he is reinvigorated, telling his mother, “I don’t know where he is but now I know who he is.”
The men who are taking advantage of his household are themselves fatherless because of the war, and Odysseus blames himself for breaking “the fragile bonds between men” by his long absence from his home.
Triumph in the movie means a father coming home at last and protecting his family.
Second: The film says sticking to your marriage is hard, and can feel hopeless, but pays off.
The movie also gives us a heroine and hero of marriage.
Penelope has opportunities to stray from her vows, but stays faithful, even when straying seems very much in her best interests.
And the movie’s Odysseus (unlike the poem’s) is also true to his wife. Their fidelity to their marriage vows fills their reunion with deeper meaning.
Third: Choosing psychological escape over responsibility destroys you (and others).
The movie even gives us a model for how to deal with addiction to scrolling, working, drinking, social media, or entertainment as means of escape.
The movie smartly compresses two incidents Odysseus faces in the poem: the drug-like lotus flowers that make men forget themselves and the captivity of Odysseus by the quasi-divine Calypso.
In the movie, the lotus flower blots out Odysseus’s emotional pain for a long time and he only sets himself and his family free when he chooses his responsibilities over escapism.
Fourth: In the film, victory is no good if it is won dishonorably.
The way Odysseus won the Trojan War haunts him in the movie. He gave the Trojans the gift of a giant horse with warriors hidden in it to pull into their walled city, claiming it was a token of Greek surrender.
Millennia of readers have seen the dishonor in that — Dante even puts Odysseus in hell over it. In the movie Odysseus comes to see this sin as the root of the moral rot that followed — along with another crime that shocked antiquity, the rape of Cassandra in the Temple of Athena, a double violation that is suggested, but not shown, in the movie.
Repentance has to proceed Odysseus’s redemption, and his people’s.
Fifth: The movie shows that when men don’t check their appetites, they become animals.
The fact that men become like beasts over women and food is a recurring theme in the movie — from the grand hall of Odysseus’s home in his absence to an incident on the island of Helios, the Sun God.
But the point is made most literally when the men meet the witchlike Circe on their travels. The meaning of what she does to the men was not lost on Greek boys who read the poem in school, and should not be lost on us.
Fifth: Most surprisingly, the movie is all about the consequence of breaking God’s law.
The laws of Zeus are referenced again and again in the movie, particularly the law of hospitality — the compulsory gift-giving and welcome owed to strangers. Those who break it suffer dire consequences, including the cyclops, overeager suitors, and Odysseus’s crew.
Odysseus also identifies his own violation of Zeus’s law as the heart of his homeland’s problem — and his ultimate victory comes only after he abandons himself to Zeus, surrendering his life to save it.
The Odyssey is an inspiring, important, and gripping movie perfect for our cultural moment.
It tells a story we desperately need right now.
