Who has a story about Odysseus? GFS Classics Faculty on Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey"

This article may contain spoilers for The Odyssey.

From the gritty realism of the Bronze Age to the psychological trauma of coming home from war, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a modern retelling of an ancient story. After seeing the film, three GFS Classics faculty members shared their thoughts on how the adaptation handles Homeric storytelling, the portrayal of women like Circe and Helen, and the psychology of Odysseus.

The Gritty Realism of the Bronze Age

The extent to which Nolan has gone to maximize realism in his movies has become somewhat mythic in its own terms, and The Odyssey is no different.

“It was such an amazing depiction of, as far as we know, Bronze Age life,” said Classics Department Head Julie Marren. “It was simple. The costumes were great … we're in ‘the wine-dark sea’ with them in that fragile boat.”

The movie also hammered home the theme of “Zeus’ Law,” or, as faculty member Maggie Sawyer accurately described it, Xenia, the sacred law of hospitality and the ancient Greek root of the word "xenophobia" (the fear of others or foreigners).

Sawyer often explains the concept to her students by asking them to imagine what it might be like to walk from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh without any maps. Guided only by the stars and nature, one would be vulnerable stopping along the way.

“This idea of hospitality—extending generosity towards someone coming to you when they’re truly in need—is such a core and different tenet of living as a good person in the ancient Mediterranean, specifically Greece," she said.

Faculty member Greta Ham confessed that her biggest worry going into the theater was how the film would handle the mythological monsters and the divine.

“I think one of Nolan's choices that worked really well was not in what he showed us, but what he chose not to show us,” said Ham. “For example, in the opening of the Cyclops scene—the Cyclops is already killing before you ever see him because Nolan puts him in darkness. … And there were nice touches, like the thundering at very ominous moments that suggested the gods.”

An Oral Tradition Meant to be Retold

This ancient Greek story was already ancient even to Homer, who wrote The Odyssey, said Marren. However, the story had been told orally for generations.

“In the early lines of The Odyssey, the poet is asking for the muse to sing in him and sing for ‘our time’ too. They're talking about something that's ancient already for them, asking that it be renewed for their times. In the oral tradition, the new teller can speak to their own times,” Marren explained. “One thing that can happen is people feel [ancient works are] frozen and there's no changing them. … I think it's much more helpful to think of every new depiction as a recreation.”

The Women of The Odyssey

Despite the flexibility in storytelling, faculty members shared a critical thread that the film struggled to capture the full agency, intelligence, and complexity of the original epic's female characters.

“It felt to me like the women in the movie were either victims or allies, but they were not people of their own story. There were some through lines in The Odyssey that tied all the women together in very powerful ways that didn't exist there,” said Ham. “All of them are weavers. In the Iliad, when we first meet Helen, she is basically weaving the story of the Iliad. Penelope keeps the suitors in control by weaving. When we meet Circe, when we meet Calypso, they are both singing and weaving as they go along, and you can draw parallels to the notion of the fates as being spinners and Zeus as being a weaver of wiles.”

Sawyer echoed that statement, focusing on Anne Hathaway’s performance of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife. 

“I thought that [Anne Hathaway] did a great job in her performance. But I think of Penelope as clever as Odysseus is, and her whole bit about how she's weaving the tapestry at night just goes by in a second in the movie,” Sawyer said. “I hoped she would have a bigger moment as this queen that's been inhabiting the throne for decades. What would it take internally for her to do that?”

Guilt and Trauma: Odysseus the War Veteran

Something that is given special attention in Nolan’s adaptation is Odysseus’ guilt and likely trauma from the Trojan War. This concept is not included in the original poem.

“Odysseus is looking back at his—largely celebrated—role as being this crafty person who was able to come up with an idea that would bring down the walls of Troy. … But he's looking back and being horrified by what had happened,” Marren observed.

Scholarship on the modern impacts of war and trauma on veterans, mirrored against that of ancient warfare, has come a long way, such as in the works of psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Shay, Ham points out.

“[Shay] really impacted how classicists see the epics. His first book was Achilles in Vietnam, and his second book Odysseus in America is about how hard it is for a soldier to come home from war. That is the focus that Nolan really takes.”

In Middle and Upper School, the GFS Classics department offers similar literary and cultural critical analysis to texts in both Latin and Greek. Dive into the GFS Classics curriculum to learn more about how our students explore the ancient world.