What Scholars of Antiquity and Ancient Myth Really Thought of The Odyssey

Since Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey hit theaters last month, you could say it’s a good time to be a scholar of ancient history. The film has gotten the world talking about the epic Greek poem attributed to Homer, which is fitting, considering that people have been studying, translating, and re-telling the story for over 2,800 years.

So what did some folks, who know Homer's Odyssey inside and out and study the periods in which it was composed and performed, think of Nolan’s take on it? We wanted to find out, so we assembled a panel: Claire Lyons, curator of antiquities at the Getty Villa; Nicole Budrovich, curatorial assistant of antiquities at the Getty Villa; and John Bucher, a mythologist, story expert, and executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation.

All three were eager to see the latest interpretation of this centuries-old story and caught screenings of The Odyssey on opening weekend. They walked away brimming with thoughts to share about everything from the costumes and narrative episodes to the changes from the original text made by Nolan, director and screenwriter.

Overall, what did you think of the film and Nolan’s interpretation of the Homeric epic?

Claire Lyons: Christopher Nolan’s adaptation does fine justice to the spirit of the Homeric traditions and I admired the art of filmmaking tremendously, even more so after my second viewing. Only rarely has a film provoked so many reactions and opinions…we’re still talking about it. Especially for those of us who work in the field and have invested years in reading the literature and interpreting the art, to see the story brought to life again in such an overpowering visual medium is quite an experience. The film is epic.

Nicole Budrovich: I love that this is Nolan’s adaptation of the Odyssey, a story about a man trying to find his way home and recover his identity if that’s even possible after ten years of war and ten years of wandering. A recurring theme in the ancient Odyssey is the trustworthiness of crafty Odysseus, his identity as a “no-man” (as he called himself to deceive the Cyclops, and later when disguised under a false identity). Since all of the stories of the monsters and wanderings come from his memory, how reliable a narrator is he and can we trust him? I think this is something Nolan explored, even if shifted or adapted—the trustworthiness of memory after trauma.

John Bucher: I loved it. And I think it’s really interesting that we live in this time when in response to any issue or story, we all feel like we are entitled to a take on it, an opinion on it. I don’t go into these storytelling experiences with that frame at all. I believe the storyteller is saying, “This is how I see the world. You can agree or disagree.” And this was originally a poem that was sung. If we think about Nolan being the latest bard and the bardic tradition of singing this song to us, every bard would sing the song differently. The point was never to try and get some sort of pure version of a story. That was never of deep concern to ancient audiences. Myth is about opening up stories, not narrowing it down to specific historic moments.

What did you think about the casting choices?

CL: Terrific casting…Samantha Morton as the sorceress Circe and John Leguizamo as the loyal swineherd Eumaeus were outstanding. Casting Jon Bernthal as Menelaus picks up on his earlier tough guy roles, but here his casual violence is even more ominous…we soon understand what happened when he brought Helen home to Sparta, as Lupita Nyong’o turns her scarred face to the camera. As Antinous, one of the mob of suitors, Robert Pattinson seamlessly shifts from bravado and scheming manipulation to cowardice.

JB: The casting controversies around this film were so hilarious because in the bardic tradition, they would have spun all sorts of things. There was no canon to work out of. It’s literally the opposite of what people are trying to make it by saying, “Oh, this is inaccurate.”

How did you feel about the historical accuracy of the costumes?

CL: As John rightly points out, literal fidelity to the evidence for ancient clothing and armor is beside the point. Just as one example, there’s been a lot of debate online that the crested helmets worn by Greek and Trojan warriors are inaccurate because in Bronze Age art they are shown with helmets made from boar’s tusks, and Homer describes the special one that Odysseus inherited. But in Getty's recent exhibition The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Mycenaean Greece, one remarkable sealstone shows a hero warrior grabbing his opponent by the helmet crest …you can see his fingers pinching in bristles. We archaeologists happily linger over details, but the genre of cinema is another medium and should be taken on its own merits.

NB: Initial press images of the costumes caused a stir, especially Agamemnon’s black sculpted body armor, which looks more like Batman than a Bronze Age warrior. But I was curious to see how it would work in the movie, and for me, it really delivered. He comes through the gates of Troy and looks like a badass. He is Ares, the god of war embodied. You never see his face clearly, and that feels intentional. He has no morals or humanity. He is there to destroy Troy. And the costume conveys that power and swagger. It’s not historically accurate, but it doesn’t need to be. This is Nolan’s Odyssey. He’s telling us a version that works with the language of heroes and superheroes from the last century. Agamemnon’s helmet has the classic horsehair crest, but the end is encased in a ponytail of golden vertebrae, like an external spinal column. For me, it evoked the braids or bones of the people he had killed. In the structure of the movie, it serves the purpose of being strange and frightening and powerful.

What sets and props stood out to you for how they were presented in the film?

CL: I’ve had the chance to visit several of the filming locations in the Peloponnese, such as Pylos and Methoni Castle, and the Aeolian Islands between Sicily and the Italian peninsula. The landscapes are enchanting and appropriate as well, since in Homer’s era these areas were stops along western routes navigated by Greek and Phoenician traders. The ship was impressive. Although the Draken is a model Viking ship, the shape of its tall bow and stern worked well enough for the kinds of merchant ships we find in Bronze Age art. Using an actual wooden vessel emphasized the courage of sailing into the unknown and being out in the Mediterranean Sea during a violent storm.

NB: I will say I was a little sad that Circe was in a hovel-shed situation. In the text she has a full-blown palace. She lives in opulence. So, Nolan changed that and I get it. His Odyssey is very grounded in reality—the gods are absent and the magic is tactile. Nolan’s Circe is an unassuming, humble lady who turns out to be a witch and who uses her magic to teach Odysseus some lessons about his men.

I was also very thrilled to see cups and drinkware like those found in late Bronze Age palatial sites!

Can you share one scene you were particularly excited to see and what you thought of it?

JB: There's one moment I’d love to point to in the film: that moment where Odysseus goes to Hades to convene with the dead and the warriors that have gone before him. He gets there and rather than going into some deep, dark cave where Hades exists, the dead rise out of the ground and come up to the surface covered in dirt and soil. I thought this was one of the more interesting takes that Nolan has, about death and Hades and what it means to be alive and how the dead reflect on their experience of life.

NB: I was super excited for the Cyclops scene. When I finally saw Polyphemus, my first reaction was, “Whoa, weird.” Ancient representations of the Cyclops show his eye lateral in the middle of the head, whereas in Nolan’s version, he’s shown with a kind of twisted, contorted face. The choice to have him be nonverbal at first (in the text, there is dialogue between Polyphemus and Odysseus)—where you’re thinking, “Oh, he’s a monster. He doesn’t even have a language and he’s naked. He’s so barbaric”—was tricky. Only later do you learn that he can speak and he’s whispering or praying to Poseidon. Nolan did a great job of paring it down, really emphasizing the horror and strangeness, only for you to realize, “Oh wait, he just wants to make cheese, tend his flock, and sleep…he seems OK.”

CL: Agreed, but let’s think more about Polyphemus, one of the Cyclopes that supposedly inhabited the slopes of Mt. Etna in Sicily. The Homeric Odyssey was being performed around the 8th century BCE, a time of long-distance trade and colonial settlement. Greeks confronted strange and unfamiliar peoples, some welcoming and others hostile. Seen in that context, Odysseus’s dangerous adventures are metaphors for the clash of cultures. After torching some villages, his crew invades an indigenous homeland, rustles sheep, and pilfers cheese on the pretext that it’s “Zeus’s Law” (really?). In Homer’s account, they blind the Cyclops once he’s hopelessly drunk on potent wine, a moment I wish Nolan had included in the script. Things do not go well. Does this scenario sound familiar? It should.

In the poem, most of the Greeks manage to escape by the ruse of binding themselves under the sheep's bellies but in the film, they tie branches to their backs, a more practical solution for evading detection. From what local Greek archaeologists told us, it was already hard enough to get cameras and crew up to the steep location, known as the Cave of Nestor, which is not far from ancient Pylos, the actual site of a once magnificent Late Bronze Age palace.

What do you think Nolan is saying in his version of The Odyssey?

NB: Nolan picked elements of the story to emphasize—mainly the danger of breaking moral codes, breaking what they call Zeus’s law (xenia, the custom of guest-host friendship), and letting war and destruction spiral out and even follow you home. It can lead to the end of a civilization. And for Nolan, I think he’s asking us to look around at our own political landscape. It seems he’s trying to say something about our world today.

CL: For me, Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon succeeded in exploring Odysseus’s contradictions and the traumas of war suffered by family and community. Remember that in the first line of Homer’s Odyssey, he is polytropos, “complicated” for translator Emily Wilson but even better rendered by Daniel Mendelsohn as “having round-about ways,” in terms of his journey’s winding road and his crafty turns of mind. But there’s another intertwining thread—the righteous anger of the women, from Penelope, Circe, and the nurse Eurycleia to Helen and her half-sister Clytemnestra, all casualties of war and warriors.

JB: One of the interpretations of this text is that it asks us to remember. And that’s in many ways what Nolan is asking us to do as well, with both the format he chose—70 millimeter, a format that goes back to the roots of film—as well as the story itself and the themes. One of Nolan’s first films, Memento, was a story about someone who couldn’t remember. So I think Nolan’s long been interested in this idea of a cultural memory and how that plays with a personal memory and what it is to truly remember something.

In a way, memory and remembering something is preparation for the next season. The Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Egyptian Book of the Dead are both fine examples of that—you read to someone as they’re preparing for this journey into the next season. Nolan is sort of reading us the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He’s asking us to remember before we go into this next season, because I feel like everybody on the earth recognizes we are about to enter an entirely different chapter of the human experience. We do not know exactly what awaits us. It’s not unlike those preparing to die. They have no idea what the afterlife holds. And that’s us right now. I think specifically AI is poking at this conversation [about how the human experience is changing], not just because of the technology, but what happens if some of the more extreme ideas around AI do occur.

CL: Then let's trust that Homer's Odyssey remains as timeless as it has always been, and that it will be meaningful in whatever ways we need it to be, like so much Greek art and literature. With all the deserved attention the film has earned, we hope everyone can read the epic poem, visit its settings, and experience some of that legacy at the Villa.