The Odyssey (Review)

[pablolie]

None of our critical opinions shall matter. It seems to be a commercial success and that's what matters. And don't try to naively tell me financial success doesn't equal artistic recognition these days

 

[Willem]

No doubt Nolan tried, I say it without watching yet, just by the trailer.
And no doubt he made an epic of an epic.

Where's the poem though?
The genius of Homer (whoever they are) is not just the story, the plot, etc.
Is that he made a literal poem after it. Yes, an epic poem, it reads and it's spoken like it, the original flows like liquid.

The old European scholars were proud to brag about they could recite it by heart (along with the Iliad) .
@Petrushka is right, no translation and no film can reach this (collective) genius.

I read much of it in school, in the Greek original.

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

I'm sure it's a good film. It'll be on the telly at some point.
Nothing would drag me into a cinema these days, being crushed in with people munching, slurping and nattering when they can't follow the plot! And having that sweaty 29 stone person half flopping onto your seat.

Surely, other than the first prime time performance, you are more likely to be watching it with, two others and the ushers?

 

[CD2]

Without getting into the ethics, that's flat wrong.

Even the pre-Greek, most beautiful civilization ever existed, the Minoans, had close ties with Eguptians which with their turn had close ties with Nubians, etc.
Color was not even a thing back then, unlike now.

Yup. This thing is just proof that racism melts people's brains. 1. The Homeric epics were sung/chanted/performed *poems.* Film is an entirely different medium using different tools and conventions. 2. The Odyssey is fiction from the ground up. Gods! Magic! Once men are getting changed into pigs, and underworlds are getting visited, realism is out the window. 3. Even if we entertain the question of how Homeric bards might cast this movie if we raised them from the dead and sent them to film school, Eastern Mediterranean Bronze-age warriors were significantly shorter, less healthy-looking etc. than the handsome well-fed fellas in the movie. The chuds who whine about black people on their teevee are never worried by tall fair-skinned people playing heroic roles. It's so fitting that this person is a Tolkien truther.

 

[suttondesign]

For me, Raif fiennes odyssey (“the return”) is the only awesome movie odyssey. I enjoyed the Nolan film but thought pretty/famous actors were generally cast as the priority over acting chops. Much of the casting distracted me from the myth. As for Helen, though, that casting worked for me precisely because the actress is shockingly pretty; someone for whom a city would get burned down. Circe was also convincing.
I had to wear earplugs, it was too loud.

 

[pderousse]

“Its fiction you dolt” is a fair comeback against thin-skinned whiners about casting and accents, but not really correct. In fact Heinrich Schliemann found the historical city of Troy in the 1870s and the site was indeed sacked and burned at the stratigraphy which corresponds to end of the Dark Ages. Troy and Mycenae (also excavated by Schliemann) were in fact the most powerful cities in their regions. So the trade routes theory mentioned in the film is a decent theory. (Nolan had good advisors.) Moreover, there are numerous artifacts mentioned in the poems that have been excavated (boars risked helmets, for instance, the Scaean Gates, etc), hinting at the poems’ veracity. But, It’s not history, nor is it literature (which is written), it’s oral tradition, a fact discovered by graduate student Milman Perry in the 1920s, who created the entire field of oral poetry. This means it has a rather fragile, even unknown connection to reality unlike what you and I commonly understand. You can probably be assured that the big events ‘actually’ happened in some manner of speaking. Even the religion, while not sacred to anyone living among us, was actually practiced by real people practicing their faith and should not be disregarded by fair-minded people as ‘superstition’ or ‘fiction’ either. Religious scholars have in fact pointed out numerous parallels between the stories found in Homer and the Gospels (also the product of oral tradition). Homer is a fascinating mysterious world we can barely know well enough to ask smart questions. (I still pay the bills by teaching Latin, but I miss teaching Ancient Greek.)

 

[Tell]

None of our critical opinions shall matter. It seems to be a commercial success and that's what matters. And don't try to naively tell me financial success doesn't equal artistic recognition these days

Financial success correlated quite badly with artistic recognition imo, I'd say it correlates more with good marketing, recognisable names, luck etc.

 

[Willem]

“Its fiction you dolt” is a fair comeback against thin-skinned whiners about casting and accents, but not really correct. In fact Heinrich Schliemann found the historical city of Troy in the 1870s and the site was indeed sacked and burned at the stratigraphy which corresponds to end of the Dark Ages. Troy and Mycenae (also excavated by Schliemann) were in fact the most powerful cities in their regions. So the trade routes theory mentioned in the film is a decent theory. (Nolan had good advisors.) Moreover, there are numerous artifacts mentioned in the poems that have been excavated (boars risked helmets, for instance, the Scaean Gates, etc), hinting at the poems’ veracity. But, It’s not history, nor is it literature (which is written), it’s oral tradition, a fact discovered by graduate student Milman Perry in the 1920s, who created the entire field of oral poetry. This means it has a rather fragile, even unknown connection to reality unlike what you and I commonly understand. You can probably be assured that the big events ‘actually’ happened in some manner of speaking. Even the religion, while not sacred to anyone living among us, was actually practiced by real people practicing their faith and should not be disregarded by fair-minded people as ‘superstition’ or ‘fiction’ either. Religious scholars have in fact pointed out numerous parallels between the stories found in Homer and the Gospels (also the product of oral tradition). Homer is a fascinating mysterious world we can barely know well enough to ask smart questions. (I still pay the bills by teaching Latin, but I miss teaching Ancient Greek.)

As a professional ancient historian I have much to disagree with. For example, there is no reason to assume that what Heinrich Schliemann excavated (badly) on the coast of western Turkey has anything to do with any Troy, whatever that was. Anyway, the Homeric hymns are fiction in an oral tradition. They mostly reflect Dark Age society, i.e. the iron age world between the Minoan/Mycenean world and Archaic Greece. I still think Moses Finley's The World of Odysseus is the most perceptive reconstruction, and elegantly written. I will not watch the movie.

 

[pderousse]

As a professional ancient historian I have much to disagree with. For example, there is no reason to assume that what Heinrich Schliemann excavated (badly) on the coast of western Turkey has anything to do with any Troy, whatever that was. Anyway, the Homeric hymns are fiction in an oral tradition. They mostly reflect Dark Age society, i.e. the iron age world between the Minoan/Mycenean world and Archaic Greece. I still think Moses Finley's The World of Odysseus is the most perceptive reconstruction, and elegantly written. I will not watch the movie.

Nice to meet another audio/ancient history nerd! Xaire! It would be most academically honest to acknowledge that yours is a minority position on the location of Troy (No one need trust me, just consult a map.). You join the chorus in decrying Schliemann’s methods, but like it or not, he invented archaeology, and his use of the epics to find places like Troy, Mycenae, Orchemenos, etc is widely accepted. The Hymns are indeed from a later period, the Hymn to Hermes being quite late archaic I think, but my comments as you know, were regarding the epic cycle which was Bronze Age.

 

[pablolie]

As a professional ancient historian I have much to disagree with. For example, there is no reason to assume that what Heinrich Schliemann excavated (badly) on the coast of western Turkey has anything to do with any Troy, whatever that was. Anyway, the Homeric hymns are fiction in an oral tradition. They mostly reflect Dark Age society, i.e. the iron age world between the Minoan/Mycenean world and Archaic Greece. I still think Moses Finley's The World of Odysseus is the most perceptive reconstruction, and elegantly written. I will not watch the movie.

Very well put.

Clearly, claiming "historical accuracy" about the Odyssey epic is silly, since it was always a tall tale. How can the intervention of gods or the involvement of half-god heroes be "historical", ever?

Surely there were wars to control that strategic point between the Aegean and the Black Sea. In fact, the excavations show there were several Troy cities built on top of each other over time, and one of them was quite possibly destroyed in war (although even that can't be proven}. But it wasn't the huge city Hollywood (or Homer, for that matter) want you to imagine, if you go to the site you'll be surprised by how small it is [1]. Thousands of ships, ten-year siege, gods and half-gods... probably nonsense. And the city was destroyed in ~1200BC... as in well over 500 years before Homer wrote the epic tale, so give us a break about historical accuracy... that's basically more time than there is between Shakespeare and now...

[1] Probably no more than 6,000 people lived in Troy. But that wasn't necessarily a very small city in the Bronze Age. But clearly, it's all been blown up -even in Homer's tale- for storytelling effect. Homer knew talking about armies of a few hundred hoplites fighting for a few days wouldn't get his listeners to hold their breath for too long; they'd be like "Hey, I was in a bigger melee last month, nothing special here!"

 

[pderousse]

Not since Schliemann himself have there been serious voices in Classics that regard Homer as history, but it does not stop legions of scholars from finding the parts that actually happened and re-tooling chronologies based on this or that latest find. The world of gods is theology, but the belief in them is historical.

 

[Somafunk]

This may be of interest to some for classical context

 

[kemmler3D]

None of our critical opinions shall matter. It seems to be a commercial success and that's what matters. And don't try to naively tell me financial success doesn't equal artistic recognition these days

I'd say whether the box office $ "matters", depends on whether you care about that stuff. It definitely determines what kind of impact the movie will have on the industry and culture in general, though.

Like, does the broccoli hair trend matter? To me, zero. If you sell hair chemicals for perms, it matters a lot.

Whether $ = artistic recognition also kinds of depends on what kind of recognition you personally care about. Do the Oscars even equal "artistic recognition"? IMO no, it's just an industry event with prizes, and merely reflects the prejudices of people who work in the industry, not what's artistically important. That industry being "entertainment" they manage to make the awards seem very glamorous, but at the end of the day it's just a bunch of producers and stuff voting, the same people we like to think know nothing about art the other 364 days of the year. But I am sure opinions vary on that.

 

[kemmler3D]

As for the race-baiting argument... I am sure they are equally outraged about how few of the white actors look even a little bit Greek.

 

[Tell]

As for the race-baiting argument... I am sure they are equally outraged about how few of the white actors look even a little bit Greek.

I've been bothered by that since day one. They don't look greek at all and they don't even try to have any kind of greek accent or anything, just plain modern US-american. To me it would be much more immersive with greek looking actors speaking greek, in costumes that look like they're from the greek bronze age on sets that looks as colorful as they did back then and on locations in Greece. Sure some artistic leeway is fine, but Nolan haven't really captured anything greek in this movie. The only thing I hear him brag about is that tiring IMAX IMAX IMAX which is an annoying marketing chapter in of itself.

I'd love to see The Odyssey done by either Robert Eggers or Mel Gibson, they really know how to capture whatever period their movie takes place in!

 

[Mnyb]

I'm sure it's a good film. It'll be on the telly at some point.
Nothing would drag me into a cinema these days, being crushed in with people munching, slurping and nattering when they can't follow the plot! And having that sweaty 29 stone person half flopping onto your seat.

They fixed most it for you with a very loud soundtrack

 

[Mnyb]

When you read these books you care so much about, be sure to pass over the parts where Homer ‘writes’ about Ethiopians, or the fact that Poseidon dines with them, or Odysseus’ dark skinned squire Eurybates, or Helen’s knowledge in book 4 of Egyptian drugs (which she got while there) or the long tradition in Euripides, Herodotus and Stesochorus that Helen spent the war in Egypt and never went to Troy. Homer, which means the Greek tradition of epic poetry, was well aware of black skinned people. Imagining the alternative is absurd. In fact, you possess, special knowledge, unknown to anyone else, if you know a) that Homer was a person (Plato didn’t) or b) that “he” never knew a black person, or c) that he did not imagine Helen to be black. There are experts in these fields, but you may persist in your beliefs.

1+ It’s a movie , it’s not more absurd than an Irish American as Odyess himself . I can’t object to cast one the most beautiful women ever

What about the Indian sidekick he has on the boat ? Or the asian guy. Funny enough people just get riled up when there is people off color involved which really says it all , sadly .

The whole cast is ”wrong” but it did not matter at all as everyone did their part well , so the casting worked out for me that’s the art of acting.
Go to a theater or an opera they make it work with the cast they get it’s part of the art .
Nolan like to work with certain actors and they are all there in the movie .

I liked the movie go and see . It’s an interpretation of an interpretation and has its own twist , but no one should get thier knickers in twist if someone spins what’s already a tall tale some more

 

[Mart68]

but no one should get thier knickers in twist if someone spins what’s already a tall tale some more

I do find it a bit strange. There's lots of films which are based on more recent and extensively documented events which bear little resemblance to what actually happened, yet they don't attract the same level of criticism.

There was no singing contest between the Welsh and the Zulus at the battle of Rorke's Drift but you don't see anyone complaining about that (or any of the many other accuracy problems with the film 'Zulu').

But 'The Odyssey', based on an oral tradition from 2500 years ago, most of which is clearly invented, is to be subject to intense historical scrutiny? Makes no sense.

Not that I'm any fan of Nolan, think he's massively over-rated and I suspect this film is over-long, laboured and probably quite dull. But still...

 

[Holmz]

As a professional ancient historian I have much to disagree with. For example, there is no reason to assume that what Heinrich Schliemann excavated (badly) on the coast of western Turkey has anything to do with any Troy, whatever that was. Anyway, the Homeric hymns are fiction in an oral tradition. They mostly reflect Dark Age society, i.e. the iron age world between the Minoan/Mycenean world and Archaic Greece. I still think Moses Finley's The World of Odysseus is the most perceptive reconstruction, and elegantly written. I will not watch the movie.

I’m no historian, but I thought that the dark ages were between the 5th and 11th centuries, and that Homer preceded that?

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

I’m no historian, but I thought that the dark ages were between the 5th and 11th centuries, and that Homer preceded that?

Wow. Didn’t he say “reflect?”