Lost at Sea: Homer in Hollywood

Writers have been riffing on Homer for over two and a half millenniums. There'd be no Greek literary tradition without him, including Greek theater; no classic Roman literature, including Virgil or Ovid; no post-Renaissance heavy hitters, including Milton, Melville, Joyce, or Walcott; and many others. Why shouldn't there be a contemporary take as well? It's just a story after all. In fact taking on one of the world's greatest writers isn't at all difficult so long as one comes armed with: a profound literary sense; noteworthy erudition from years of study; a philosophical head and a head for parody, the classical kind; and an uncanny feel for the human condition––all known Homeric traits. Absent any of these, there could be trouble.

In fact only a fool would take on Homer without the right stuff. By flashing the words "The Odyssey" across a screen one is inviting comparisons; scrutiny from viewers who know the work intimately, who love and respect it. I disagree with all those who've told me in so many words that Christopher Nolan's version is "just a movie" that owes nothing to Homer. The break-even figure for the film is a whopping $750 million, so we're talking a ridiculous sum, of which only Hollywood is capable. Can so much be spent––should so much be spent––for a mere diversion from the ennui of modern life? If so, it speaks to the unserious and even shallow tenor of our age; the fluffification of serious art. On the other hand, if we're talking a genuine effort to create something of note, something new, with considerable depth––something to say––then a thoughtful critique is more than fair game; indeed it's invited. 

For decades I've been saying that original works and their film adaptations are two separate animals. They hie to different rules and requirements, including different technical and even thematic demands. What doesn't vary is that all works of art trade in the exact same tropes, as well as a feel for narrative. What's more, they require a certain logic. If you go thinking you're a big man around Hollywood with big money to spend; if you've won a passel of awards; if you consider yourself the darling of the Academy––if any of these is true and you decide to drop Homer in a blender the way Dan Akroyd dropped a live fish in the Bass-O-Matic on SNL back in the day, then you better damn well have a good reason for doing so. After all, when thinking Homer we're talking about an author, and work, with a vibrant life still today; an author who is still topical and not dead in the least. 

That, in my view, is where Nolan fails badly. He slices and dices Homer on every level, but to what end? What new is created in the effort? In a world in which religion––a kind of adult make-believe––still directs people's life choices, including their votes, what would be the point of eliminating the gods from the film, with the exception of a spectral Zendaya/Athena? Also if you choose to squeeze a narrative that took weeks and perhaps months to orate in Homer's day into a film shorter than three hours it makes sense that some things must be cut, but what is the logic of the scenes that were retained among the dozens on offer? How do they cohere, beyond the fact that they're outré and at times cinematographically cringe? Was the Circe episode included so the film could make the deeply profound point that all men are pigs? And are the Trojan scenes in the film, only tangential in the epic, there so the equally profound point can be made that war is bad and warmongers should feel guilty for their actions? Is that the logic? Should it have taken three-quarters of a billion dollars simply to make these pedestrian points?

Another question I have is: how is it possible to make such a male-centric film in the modern age? Anyone who knows the epic knows that the place of women in Homer is key––truly central. For example, Eurykleia, who gets pitifully short shrift at Nolan's hands, is especially pivotal to The Odyssey. Homer's narrator luxuriates in portraying her, a "mere" maid. We only see her twice in passing in the film, including the epiphanic moment that lasts mere seconds in Nolan's version. By contrast Homer goes on for many pages about her, including a scene in which she holds the hero's leg while remembering how he got his identifying scar, the one mark that assures his loved ones it's really him returning and not some imposter. Homer's narrator comments:

"This was the scar the old nurse recognized; she traced it under her spread hands, then let go, and into the basin fell the lower leg making the bronze clang, sloshing the water out. Then joy and anguish seized her heart, her eyes filled up with tears; her throat closed, and she whispered, with hand held out to touch his chin, You are Odysseus! Ah, dear child! I could not see you until now—not till I knew my master's very body with my hands!"*

The passage goes on for many more lines, though when I taught the work we could easily spend an entire class session discussing the maid's bronze basin alone. There's the caress of the leg; the emotional shock of recognition in the moment, a flash of knowing; the suspension of time and action; the loss of bodily control that emotional shock entails; the significance of bronze; the round shape of the basin vs the phallic shape of the hero's sword; the fall of the basin and the audible clang; the sloshing and spilling of water; and so on. What Eurykleia wants to do is scream in delight, cry copious tears of joy, embrace someone she herself nursed in her youth: in some sense Odysseys is her son. But circumstances don't allow such a show of emotion, so the basin cries out for her––I'm perennially haunted by its clang and what it signifies. The basin cries metaphorically of course, emitting a loud noise and spilling water, i.e. ersatz tears. A lot of them. 

It's one of the most poignant moments in the entire text, one episode among many in which female intelligence and feeling become the central point, but it's completely lost on Nolan, who wastes the moment, much the way he blows a great opportunity with Argos, the dog. It's the same with Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who along with Penelope is a powerful driving force in Homer––she's arguably more interesting than Odysseus himself. Also all lost on Nolan, such that I sat in the theater astounded; that the ancient author turns out to be far more modern than the Hollywood wunderkind. Whatever's delicate in Homer, including Penelope and Odysseus's extraordinary refinement as a couple, turns hard in Nolan; even bitter. But to what end?

There are far too many missed opportunities, ones that might have helped Nolan evade the kind of cynicism and nihilism that's become common in American popular culture these days. Complete cliché. In place of genuine human emotion we get spectacle. A lot of men yelling. At times I thought my chair would break away and head down some fun-house track at Disney or Six Flags. The soundtrack was almost offensively loud in that way, the performances in places as mechanical as fun-house characters––or as wooden. Having said that, Anne Hathaway managed to surprise me despite the paucity of her lines. The same with Elliot Page's Sinon. It would take too long to tell the many ways the viewer is robbed of Penelope's profundity; her smarts. 

In many places I found myself rolling my eyes, I admit. What struck me is that the currency of films like it, what they bank on, is the unfamiliarity of the audience with the original, the fact that viewers have either never read it or did so so long ago they've forgotten its glories; otherwise the jig'd be up for Nolan. To know Homer is to be dismayed with the movie on some deep level, given the lightweight and downright old-fashioned nature of Nolan's macho vision; his reefer insights. He set out on a journey with the project but got lost on the way.

*Homer, The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: FSG, 1999, p. 368.