Politixia
Elon Musk has been a busy man over the past couple of years, what with laying waste to essential US government programs and putting his overhyped SpaceX through an IPO which, aside from making him, briefly, a trillionaire, has cratered on the share market.
But he still has time to work as a part-time film critic. Most recently, his attention has been captured by The Odyssey, the latest epic creation of visionary filmmaker Christopher Nolan. Musk tweeted on his X platform: “Christopher Nolan desecrated blah-blah-blah woke blah-blah-blah what a worm.”
OK, I’m paraphrasing. This is Musk’s tweet in full: “Chris Nolan desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees just to meet the woke rules required to win an Oscar. What a worm.”
Not much there to trouble the legacy of Pauline Kael, the legendary New Yorker film critic, but it’s worth noting because, while Musk is wrong about most things, he’s outdone himself here. The trouble with Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is not that it’s woke, but that it’s not woke enough. (Bear with me. I’ll come to it.)
I was a classics major long ago. I probably have more experience than most with Homer. I’ve read The Odyssey at least three times. That’s three times more, I’d wager, than Musk.
Musk and others in the far-right mediasphere are carping because Helen of Troy, whose face is said to have launched the thousand ships that besieged the famous citadel, is portrayed in the movie by the black actor Lupita Nyong’o. Merely because she is black.
But there are other things about Nolan’s movie that make it something of a slog. Its box office has been overhyped, and I wouldn’t be surprised if its popularity quickly wanes.
Yes, Helen is black, but there are other Nolan touches that challenge convention. In the poem, Odysseus and his men bring misery and devastation to city states along their way. Nolan’s take is to let a terribly miscast Matt Damon give this bloody warrior a pensive and reflective side. What you might call his PC view of his battles has also drawn attacks from the right. Hmmm, Odysseus muses. Maybe we shouldn’t have slaughtered everyone in Troy and burnt it to the ground. In the poem, Homer tells us Odysseus’ seven years marooned on an island with the nymph Calypso were luxurious and, um, pleasurable. In the movie, her isle seems rather grim. We see Odysseus on a desolate beach with Calypso, an earnest Charlize Theron garbed in Pottery Barn hues. Odysseus is dazed. Gee, how long have I been here?
Homer famously tells us Odysseus is “complicated” – a “man of many ways” in one translator’s nice phrase – and he is, of course, a crafty and wily deviser of schemes. Odysseus, in the film, is overly serious and monochromatic and … not much fun. We see his Trojan horse, but didn’t we also deserve a scene in which Odysseus says something like: “Hey, I’ve got an idea. How about we build a big hollow wooden horse …?”
A lot of Nolan’s Odyssey is dark, with extended scenes in castles, lit only by torches. There’s a dour feel to it all. Odysseus seems largely acted upon. Along the way, Odysseus makes some unfortunate tactical decisions; he and his men make an awful lot of hasty retreats. (Some might find these reminiscent of the “Run away! Run away!” sequences in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)
Nolan is a serious filmmaker, but I think he missed the chance to make a truly woke Odyssey. Now, the right uses “woke” in a crude way to attack any special attention given to the vulnerable, whether they be black or women or homosexual or (insert minority here). In reality, the so-called woke want to wake us up to – and correct – the structural inequities in our society. Nolan could have tapped rich veins of the world we live in.
Some say his film is, indeed, supposed to be a commentary on the carnage in the world today. Perhaps, but if that was Nolan’s intent, I think he picked the wrong source material. Odysseus, like all warriors of his day, was a brute. His murmured misgivings aside, the mercilessness of the time is baked into this tale. Still, he is meant to be our hero. It is his journey that we follow. And yet, if anything, the bullies we see on the world stage today – Trump and Putin and Netanyahu among them – have a rather Homeric view of how to deal with their enemies.
Epics such as the poem were created largely to perpetuate the worldview of their protagonists. Why not question head-on the source of these tales? Yes, let’s see Odysseus’ many wayward adventures – as Nolan delivers them – over a 10-year journey home: the Cyclops, the Sirens, the monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis.
But then … show the reality. Here’s the funny thing about the poem that often gets overlooked. Odysseus, as the gods foretold, was destined to be the only survivor from the 12 ships he originally led to Troy. As a consequence, he is our sole source. It’s pretty clear that wily Odysseus was constructing some fanciful tales for his audience. Exposing that – perhaps accompanied by a sly smile from Odysseus – could have given our hero, and the movie, some much-needed depth.
Instead of exposing Odysseus’ hyperbole, Nolan tries to keep himself and his hero above it all. A legend at the beginning of the film makes reference not to magic but “apparent magic”. Odysseus once or twice conspicuously distances himself from the primitive beliefs of his men, telling his crew that he knows they think “the gods are after us”. (So the monsters exist, but the gods don’t?)
And please, are we really supposed to believe that Odysseus didn’t enjoy his seven-year sex romp with Theron on her Mediterranean isle? Methinks there was more going on than the two of them declaiming sonorous banalities on an unglamorous beach while Odysseus’ wife pined away on Ithaca for 20 years.
All of that might have honoured Homer’s story but given us a way to experience its primal appeal through fresh eyes. We are living in a time of brutality and fabulism. Nolan’s Odyssey could have been a reproach to Elon Musk and all those like him who are curdling our society.
Bill Wyman is a former assistant managing editor of National Public Radio in Washington. He is a Sydney-based writer.
Bill Wyman is a former assistant managing editor of National Public Radio in Washington. He is a Sydney-based writer.From our partners
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