Is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey any good?

Of course it is. So there, in your face, Betteridge’s law of headlines: This piece starts with a title question that can absolutely, confidently be answered with a yes. I guess Betteridge didn’t have a lot of experience with rage bait.

The thing with Christopher Nolan is the man can definitely direct. Even his most mediocre stuff often does a decent job of keeping viewers entertained and has some clear point to get across. I’d argue he run out of truly insightful things to say a long time ago, but I’d never attempt defending his work lacks quality or depth. Sure, I haven’t fully enjoyed a Nolan film since Interstellar (2014), and that was already after a long hiatus (and while doing my absolute best to ignore those utterly saccharine lines about love). If we talk about falling head over heels for a Nolan film, then that hasn’t happened since Memento (2000). Yet none of it makes me enough of a fool to claim his Odyssey will give us anything but impeccable, extremely competent film making.

Now, is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey necessary? Is it even particularly key for this moment in time?

Not really.

Going by the trailers and Nolan’s own record, this will probably be an Odyssey of the mundane, not one of wonder, fantasy, and the fantastical. After all, Nolan became a household name by making Batman as über realistic as possible. But claiming that as emblematic of our times would ignore the comic book energy that has dominated culture for almost two decades. Restrained realism isn’t really the tone of the Marvel cinematic universe. And definitely not how our age of fake news rolls.

Then again, The Odyssey isn’t a story that only gets updated at semi-regular intervals. Texts like Little Women, War and Peace, even the usual superhero suspects from Superman to Spiderman have a new adaptation at each generation, but the big ancient myths – just like fairy tales – are constantly made and remade afresh every single year. They serve less as zeitgeist mirrors than as vehicles for authors to express their own thoughts, views, and social-political interpretations.

The Odyssey had another film adaptation just less than two years ago. Not a big Hollywood production with mass appeal like Nolan’s, but still one that premiered at festivals, stared Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche in the main roles, and sprung quite a few articles in magazines and newspapers about the appeal of Odysseus’ story. Then Nolan announced his and look! the media rediscovered Ancient Greece all over again and the internet acted as if the Homeric tales were some obscure little thing forgotten by humankind for centuries on end.

A thousand posts launched.

Getting into the culture moment and adding some of our own words to the themes everyone’s suddenly obsessed with is almost a must for anyone doing cultural commentary. In fact, editorial calendars always engaged with whatever captured their audiences’ fancy at the time. It’s an easy way of appealing to readers, viewers, and listeners. To put it in marketing lingo, it gives channels a fast highway to matching people’s search intent, which in turn means going for SEO, GEO, AEO, and all those lovely clicks and eyeballs any online presence vies for in order to have a modicum of relevance.

Of course, good, insightful pieces have a much better chance at longevity than stuff like “watch these other films if you loved Nolan’s The Odyssey”. That’s also one of the joys of a certain theme becoming a cultural phenomenon: Someone somewhere will eventually publish something particularly interesting about the matter. Like Yiannis Baboulias, who wrote about the ways Greek culture endured after what we normally call the fall of the Roman Empire but actually only corresponds to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Baboulias makes a compelling case about the long term implications of taking that distinction out of popular History and how it all contributes to diminishing Greek culture and separating it from the classics.

If the current Odyssey fever only lasts long enough to get people to one extra piece, make it that one. If it lasts longer, Natalie Haynes standing up for The Odyssey on the radio is a delight; hilarious and informative all at once. And the Coen brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) makes a strong candidate for best Odyssey transposition to semi-modern times (no, I will not give it to Joyce no matter how technically brilliant that book is).

In terms of novels, I can’t make up my mind. I feel tempted to recommend Claire North’s Ithaca (2022) because it has one of the most original takes of the recent lot of Odyssey adaptations, turns Hera into one heck of a narrator, and has something to say about poets and the narratives we construct as societies, but I have yet to read the other two books in the trilogy. Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005) is witty writing in service of a feminist reading that felt a tad too basic. Madeline Miller’s Circe (2018) I enjoyed but in a mild way. Really, just go read the actual Odyssey, then move to other Greek texts. The Illiad, for certain, but also some of the theatre. Try the Roman authors as well. Maybe even get to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Big Hollywood productions are also rather good at leading new audiences to discover the original texts.

As for Nolan’s adaptation, the reviews point to a typical Nolan gist: great cinematography but problematic sound, slightly clumsy dialogue in service of a clear point of view, a film that feels old school in its scale if not at all interested in the fantastical elements of those epics of yore. I’ll catch it whenever I get a chance.

Nolan’s whole filmography has dealt with the concept of manhood, with which narratives, ideals, circumstances shape a man and his life. I’d like to see what Nolan makes with Odysseus of the many contradictions: son and father; husband, lover; reluctant warrior yet brilliant strategist; leader of a group where only he survives; king and conman.