Zeus’s Law: What The Odyssey Gets Right—and Wrong

I have not seen the film. I have no intentions of seeing it. The Odyssey has long been my favorite heroic tale. I have read it in several translation numerous times, and I will more than likely read it many more times before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I respect both Professor Epstein and Charlie. Charlie's points about its numerous retellings through history is a valid point. However, I don't care about those retellings. I care about the story as it has come down to us from ancient Greece. In that story Odysseus is a classical hero. He acts with decisiveness to overcome his various obstacles. He is a man favored by the gods and admired by them for his skills not just in arms but in the arts of deception. He leaves Troy intent on going home. He encounters the Cyclops, Circe, the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, a journey to the underworld, and then the long captivity with Calypso. In each encounter he uses his wits and bravery to overcome his opponent. Calypso has to be ordered by Zeus to finally let him go, but the others, like the two sea monsters, require decisive action to overcome. His men are not lost because of his choices. Ultimately, it is their own perfidity that dooms them. He abides.

When he finally reaches his home he is faced with a truly human challenge, and, perhaps, the most difficult. He must defeat a horde of nearly 100 suitors and their attendants. He is a man who has been at war for ten years. A war fought with swords and spears, close quarters combat, a man's war. While he was away, during the final years of his absence these suitors have been denuding his property and herds, disrespecting him, and the guest law. They mistreat him when he appears in their presence as a beggar, further violating those laws. They have earned their deaths, and he carries out the sentence nearly single handedly. That is all the very definition of heroism, if not in post modern terms, at least the form of heroism I grew up believing in.

I don't want a watered down hero in post modern terms. I want an Achilles who infuriated by the death of his close friend Patrocles slays Hector in single combat and the drags his corpse behind his chariot circling the city of Troy. He feels no guilt, no shame in his act. He can later empathize with Priam, but that simply shows his humanity, not weakness. Odysseus like-wise has no guilt over the destruction of Troy. What happened to Troy was preordained by the gods. The removal of the capstone over the entrance gate through which to horse was taken was prophesied to herald the fall of the city. That is the way things were seen in ancient Greece. Achilles chose to die as a young man and have eternal fame. He may have regretted that choice once he was in the underworld, but that does not diminish his glory and heroism on the field of battle.

Greek mythology has to be seen in its full panoply. The abduction of Helen due to a beauty contest in which she was matched against goddesses, the sacrifice of Iphigenia that ultimately led to Agamemnon's end upon returning home, all of these things make the drama of the Odyssey so powerful, and so untranslatable into a simple film. The ancient Greek audience that heard the poem knew all of the intertwining myths, as do I, and, therefore, I have no desire to see this film. It is the story I love with all its intricacies, not just the simple repetition of it plot without its glories.

I just saw it for the second time. I had high hopes when I saw it the first time and I left disappointed. The whimsical quality, humor and most of my favorite scenes of the original poem were altered or cut. Having grown up on Jason and the Argonauts and the magic of Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animation, I guess I was expecting a little more camp and magic. But it was unrelentingly grim and its protagonist tortured, much like the The Dark Knight, so I should not have been surprised. But I read a review in Forbes afterwards by Erik Kain which I thought was very good and realized that perhaps my disappointment that Christopher Nolan's movie did not realize my vision of what his Odyssey should have been was not exactly fair. The review makes the case that this was Christopher Nolan's vision, as is the right of every artist, especially when presenting a well known work that is over 2000 years old. So when a friend asked if I wanted to see it, I said I would even though I had seen it before. This time, I thought I wouldn't spend the entire movie disappointed that it wasn't something else and so perhaps I would take it on its own terms. I liked it much better. If Odysseus wasn't the man I knew and loved, he was a soldier with a very bad case of PTSD, something I would not have thought about at 15 years old when I read the original, but which I understand very well now. I also caught some of the dialog that I had missed the first time while stewing in my disappointment that explained his mindset and director's choices clearly, e.g., the entire Calypso episode. He did not want to go home to his loved ones until he had worked through what he had done.

I still hope that one day someone will make an Odyssey that captures the spirit of the original. Given the propensity to milk a blockbuster to death, perhaps we'll get origin stories and countless reboots. But in the meantime, I think it is a good movie with surprising emotional depths that stick with you, as long as you aren't expecting The Odyssey rather than An Odyssey by Christopher Nolan.