Two opposing themes stood out to me about Christopher Nolan’s cinematic portrayal of The Odyssey (and The Aeneid): trickery and hospitality. “Zeus’s Law” or the social contract of hospitality when broken was a severe offense against the gods. In the movie, we see both hosts and strangers violating this sacred Greek code—what’s supposed to be an unbreakable bond between them. For example, antagonistic characters, such as Polyphemus (the most famous cyclops) was an ungracious host toward Odysseus and his Mycenaean men, seeking to eat them instead of feeding them. And Penelope’s suitors were disrespectful guests in Odysseus’s house, slaughtering and eating his herd.
But in my opinion this modern-day adaptation of Homer’s epic poem starts to take existential shape when Nolan has the leading protagonist, Odysseus (King of Ithaca and most cunning general under Agamemnon’s command), process his own post-war trauma and guilt for violating the Zeus’s Law. Odysseus and, by association and obligation, his soldiers, who chronically contributed to societal-decay, became a Greek cautionary-tale, spreading their socio-political disease that collapsed civilizations every time they pillaged lands and raped the women of the towns they plundered. Homer and Nolan demonstrate a connection between the actions of men and their consequences. For example, consider the disturbing scene on Circe’s island where she turns some of Odysseus’s men into pigs—the hedonistic, primal beasts they really are. I found it fascinating that Nolan blurred the lines between the “Sea People”—seafaring raiders—and the Mycenaeans.
But Odysseus not only breaches xenia—the guest-host code—he is Homer’s biggest trickster. Actually, Odysseus’s hubristic subterfuge is the main method he employed to squirm out of unwanted circumstances, fulfill his will, and ultimately win the Trojan War. Regarding the first, consider how he invoked Poseidon’s wrath for telling Polyphemus (the son of Poseidon) that his name is “Nobody” so when he’s blinded in the cave and screams out in pain, the surrounding cyclops would hear him saying, “‘Nobody’ is hurting me!” (That part did not make it into Nolan’s film.) Poseidon’s divine wrath punishes Odysseus’s crew with monsters like Scylla and myths like the Sirens, delaying Odysseus’s homecoming, blowing him off course with tumultuous storms that ultimately kill all his men.
Regarding the second, recall the conversation Odysseus had with Sinon in Hades. Feeling betrayed, Sinon emerged from the mud, rebuking his former commander for lying to him about staying behind to convince the Trojans to accept their equestrian gift to take back with them into their city gates, all-the-while, the belly of the Trojan beast was filled with Greek assassins. (This part of the film was not in Homer’s story but in Virgil’s The Aeneid.) Lying to Sinon to sell the lie to the Trojans to trust him was justified by Odysseus as a necessary evil (trick). And thus regarding the third, this trick won them the war. But at what cost?
The Trojan horse broke the sacred laws of hospitality and trust. Odysseus’s pride and trickery may have kept him alive all those years but it also kept him from his wife and son and kingdom. Will he be able to trust himself after all the subterfuge done under his command? And will his wife love him for the man he is now, a man who failed his soldiers and his kingdom?