The Poetry of Homer Between the Frames: Nolan's Odyssey

 by Shaun Lawton 

    

   One of the misunderstandings of Christopher Nolan's epic modern adaptation of The Odyssey is the assumption that Homer's poetry needed to survive in the dialogue. After sitting through its gripping two-hour-and-fifty-two-minute runtime, I walked out of the theater into the dazzling sunlight convinced that it didn't. The rhyme and rhythm of Homer's poetry was never lost. It was translated into the visual language of cinema, where it lives between the frames.

   I've loved movies for as long as I can remember. My tastes range from Stanley Kubrick, Alan Parker, David Cronenberg, and Darren Aronofsky to Christopher Nolan and Edgar Wright. I read classical literature with the same enthusiasm that I read science fiction, fantasy, and Stephen King, and I've long believed there is no contradiction between appreciating the highest forms of art and the most accessible popular storytelling. My love of Homer is every bit as genuine as my affection for Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. With that in mind, you can imagine my anticipation as I settled into the first IMAX screening of The Odyssey in Salt Lake City.

   Before the first image appears, Nolan gives us a clue to the entire film in a single sentence: "A time of apparent magic..." It immediately sets the stage for what's to come, and that one carefully chosen word—apparent—opens a doorway in our imagination to a wide variety of interpretations. Are we about to witness genuine supernatural events, or simply the way ordinary people living in the Bronze Age understood a natural world to be filled with mystery? It struck just the right note to pique my interest as the voyage began.

   Right from the film's opening moments, as the audience sits under the spell of IMAX's overwhelming sound and towering imagery, the silence is broken by the resonant thud of the bard Phemius's staff echoing through the great hall. With each rhythmic beat he intones, "A face... a man... a song..." Before the epic has even begun, the film immerses us in the cadence of an ancient bard's recitation, reminding us that The Odyssey first lived not on the printed page but in the spoken voice. Phemius is played by rapper Travis Scott, and before a single scene of Odysseus's travels unfolds, Nolan reminds us that The Odyssey began not as a book but as an oral tradition.

   Within the film's opening minutes—I couldn't say exactly how many, because I was already spellbound by the unfolding action—I became aware of something unusual. It wasn't merely the editing, but the rhythm of the editing. Certain scene transitions possessed a cadence that immediately caught my attention. I remember thinking to myself, "Okay... here we go." From that point on I was completely caught up in the film's narrative, and for nearly three hours it never once lost its grip on me.

   Another aspect I really loved was Ludwig Göransson's original score, which complements Nolan's vision perfectly. Rather than leaning on the sweeping orchestral tradition one might expect from an epic of this scale—or falling back on the signature style that audiences associate with Hans Zimmer's celebrated film scores—Nolan instead encouraged Göransson to embrace a sound world rooted in the Bronze Age, building the score around ancient instruments such as the aulos and lyre, together with bronze percussion. The result is a musical language that vividly evokes the world of The Odyssey. It never distracts from the action, instead lending just the right degree of sonic nuance to keep the audience immersed in that world. For me, it was a perfect complement to Nolan's vision, and one of the film's artistic triumphs.

   One criticism I've heard is that the cast was too recognizable—that viewers see Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, John Leguizamo, and the rest, rather than Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, and Eumaeus. While that's a perfectly understandable reaction, it simply wasn't mine. I've never expected great actors to disappear completely, not in all my decades of moviegoing. I know I'm watching Matt Damon. I assume audiences knew we were watching Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur, Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, Oliver Reed in The Devils, etc. Recognition of actors has never prevented great performances from becoming great characters.

   To me, it's part of the attraction of Hollywood cinema. The question isn't whether you recognize the performer; it's whether their performance ultimately persuades you. As far as I'm concerned, all the major actors in The Odyssey truly pulled it off, particularly Anne Hathaway as Penelope, whose finest moments are reserved for the film's final act. The same is true of Robert Pattinson's Antinous. He never once overacts, maintaining the character's calculated arrogance from beginning to end. I really appreciated John Leguizamo's Eumaeus. He brought a genuine warmth and humanity to the role, making him one of my favorite characters in the movie. Also worthy of note was Samantha Morton's haunted portrayal of Circe, and I appreciated Nolan's interpretation of her character, to which Odysseus responds in a satisfying way. The moment I saw Charlize Theron as Calypso, I was entranced by the casting choice. Even if the sequences on Ogygia don't quite reach the intensity of the movie's best passages, they do provide a welcome pause, and moments of stillness during an otherwise relentless epic. I should add that I thought Matt Damon put in an outstanding performance as Odysseus, imbuing the character with a certain humanity that struck the perfect balance between humility and heroism. 

   Several sequences left me in genuine awe, among them the entire Trojan Horse passage. Watching Odysseus and his men emerge in secret within the walls of Troy to prepare the city for siege, and then witnessing the gates swing open to reveal King Agamemnon's waiting army, produced one of those rare collective gasps from the audience that remind you why great films are best experienced in a theater. Thrilling stuff. I must also say that Agamemnon's blackened, regal armor was stunning to behold.

   This is one point where I can understand how others may feel differently, perhaps because of our separate expectations of how a historical epic should be portrayed. Some viewers understandably want one to pursue archaeological authenticity, while others are more interested in how a filmmaker interprets the past through a distinct artistic vision. I admired the liberties Nolan took with costume, architecture, and design, not because they claim historical certainty, but because they reveal a coherent artistic vision. This, too, is part of the poetry of cinema. Rather than reconstructing the Mycenaean Age as a museum exhibit, Nolan paints it as myth remembered—vast, dreamlike, and splendidly alive. I thought it was just glorious.

   Like many viewers, I found the encounter with Polyphemus unforgettable. Without spoiling the sequence, it's enough to say that Odysseus commits a single, crucial error—one that reverberates throughout the rest of the film. Rather than presenting him as an infallible hero, Nolan reminds us that greatness and weakness often inhabit the same person. Odysseus is courageous, intelligent, resourceful, and deeply honorable, yet his own pride becomes one of the greatest obstacles on his long journey home. In that sense, The Odyssey is ultimately not just an adventure, but the story of a profoundly human man learning to live with the consequences of his own choices.

   While Odysseus clearly stands above his subjects in strength, intelligence, honor, and sheer resourcefulness, what impressed me most was his deeply developed sense of ethics. Early in the film we're told that he would never hunt a deer without first plucking his bowstring to announce his presence, thereby giving the animal an opportunity to escape. In doing so, he levels the playing field, revealing a noble character who refuses to seek an unfair advantage, even in the hunt. It struck me as Nolan's way of paying homage to Homer's portrait of kingship, where greatness is measured not only by courage and skill, but by moral character—qualities that may, in turn, be reflected in the sons destined to inherit the throne.

   It's also clear that Nolan has little interest in portraying Odysseus or Telemachus as demigods. Instead, he grounds them firmly in the human world, where ordinary people interpret the forces of nature as the work of gods—whether the radiant Dawn or a violent storm attributed to Zeus. Read in that light, Odysseus's long and harrowing journey home, with its monsters, shipwrecks, and years stranded on Calypso's island, becomes more than an adventure. It feels like a moral reckoning, as though every hardship serves as a measure of retribution for the flaws of an otherwise extraordinary man and king.

   The manner in which Christopher Nolan demonstrates the epic challenges and enduring consequences of war, as seen through Odysseus's own reflections near the film's conclusion, makes for a profound meditation on how those ancient struggles continue to echo in our own world. Appreciating that layer of the film requires an attentive audience willing to look beyond its spectacle. Those who do may discover that beneath the action and adventure lies a surprisingly thoughtful examination of leadership, responsibility, and the lasting moral cost of war.

   The quiet revelations awaiting attentive viewers provide enough food for thought to fuel rewarding conversations long after the credits roll. The film's reflections on "the people from the sea," on family sustained by faith and loyalty against impossible odds, and on humanity's enduring struggle to become better than itself all emerge naturally from the story rather than being imposed upon it. For me, these ideas elevated The Odyssey beyond spectacle into something genuinely moving.

   There was one quick scene transition that completely changed the way I understood the film. I won't describe it in detail because it deserves to be experienced without advance knowledge, but it occurs during Odysseus's recollections of Troy. In the space of only a few seconds, Nolan transforms what initially appears to be an act of intimate human violence into something much larger—a meditation on civilization itself. The cut is so unexpected, yet so inevitable, that I realized I was no longer watching an adventure story. I was watching a filmmaker use myth to examine not merely the cost of war, but what war ultimately destroys.

   Without wanting to spoil anything else about this remarkable cinematic achievement, I do feel compelled to point out that what I loved best about 2026’s The Odyssey, besides the sheer spectacle of it as captured on 70mm IMAX film, was its enduring focus on the humanity of the story, even while preserving many integral mythological passages concerning monsters and magic. In retrospect, the apparent magic captured among many key sequences, seems very much as if it were remembered from a dream. For example, the sequence when they’re ambushed by the giants in steel clad armor comes swiftly and unexpectedly, without any explanation as to who they are. Of course readers of Homer know these are the cannibal Laestrygonians of Telepylus, but it’s not necessary for our audience to know this. What’s important is the sudden and visceral violence of battle they incur while Odysseus and his terrified men struggle to escape their relentless attack.

   Of course, the entire story points toward Odysseus's long-awaited return to Ithaca, and even viewers who know absolutely nothing about Homer's poem will find themselves anticipating an unforgettable homecoming. To say that Nolan does not disappoint would be the understatement of the year. The less I say about the thrilling conclusion, the better. I appreciated every last beat and measure, every carefully judged detail that sent waves of excitement through me and much of the audience seated around me. It has been quite some time since I watched a film that was not only so well attended, but that elicited such enthusiastic reactions from the crowd. Judging from the spontaneous hoots and hollers throughout the final act, I was clearly not alone in being moved by the emotional power of the story's conclusion.

   Christopher Nolan wasn't making a cinéma vérité drama populated by unknown performers. He set out to create a modern epic in the tradition of David Lean, filled with actors capable of carrying mythic roles across the largest possible cinematic canvas. For me, it represents the triumphant return of the classic Hollywood epic. The Odyssey isn't simply a successful adaptation; it's compelling evidence that audiences still hunger for ambitious, director-driven films conceived first and foremost for the theatrical experience. If Hollywood has the courage to follow Nolan's example, perhaps the cinematic epic has far more life left in it than many of us have dared to hope. And perhaps the greatest tribute Nolan pays to Homer is not that he preserves the poetry on the page, but that he discovers where it has always been waiting—in the visual language of cinema, between the frames.

Phony Cheat Under the Spotlight on Independence Day

 by roving reporter Shon Grub 
             

   The grave threat to the nation focused most of his scripted speech before a stupefied crowd of several thousand gathered together to defy social isolation Wednesday and get a piece of their penny of time alongside the few minutes left for this freak show ringleader to hunch down and gloat over. While the glib human toad is in the business of tearing down U.S. history's heritage, his particular idiomatic response is to channel this singular reproachful fact about him back at his attackers and make them appear to be guilty of the very crimes he's committed. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book and they fall for it every time.

     Tottering before the sacred grounds of the Lakota in supplication before the stony carved visages of real chief executives before him, the crotchety slouch's shadow leans away from Bethlehem as he whispers in a croaking vocal about his arrogant dream to further deface the sacred mountain with his own likeness and erase more of its vintage primordial pareidolia of real native faces blending into the landscape. Genuflecting to his propped-up false idols while wishing to join them, Don Drumpf clicks his boot heels obliterating any golden opportunity for the president of these United States to make a single coherent statement in support of the great diversity of American people standing by during a national emergency crisis of a pandemic that is spreading at maximum capacity now that this demented fire-starter demon in grotesque human form openly doubles down on the oppression of the indigenous tribes whose sacred land has been violated explicitly by our government's spiteful demolishing of the Sioux's own spiritual justice and society. 

     The little clown prince standing stiffly like a marionette whose strings have been cut now seems possessed as his facial tics twitch and his smile quirks on and off like shorting circuits and his hands fan out in a supplicating gesture—an indication he wants you to see he's got nothing to hide up his sleeve. But you see, as I do, that the reason he does this, is because he's exactly got something quite hidden up his sleeve. He's a human who's snake skin has been shed within and molted to rot on the inside. This dime store ancillary celebrity in a cheap two dollar suit (with a tie soaked in blood that is very much too long—like his time spent in office) whistling his fake song luring the all-too-susceptible with ease and carrying it off just as effortless as you please with closed circuit television and private donations with digital feedback loops circulating through the bloodstream of users online throughout the nation like a viral infection on the attack as more false memes replicate in the speech patterns of generations of young people who are just trying to have a good time beyond Moses and the steeple. This executive officer is a con man with Norman Rockwell delusions; a puffed-up scarecrow, a dry straw-man sowing confusion until one of his own who's fed up will drop a lit match upon, after striking up a light on a cold moonlit night, heaving a long pent up sigh in a wheeze of disappointment that will disappear into the wind over the sea. No one will have heard it and besides, they will have moved on trying to forget about the damage he caused because reparations have already been well underway for some time now.  We, the people of this great nation, are nothing if not resilient. 

     In truth, it is Trump himself who has been demolishing both justice and society from his deleterious appointments in the white house while under the banner of official US social justice.  He's the primary instrument of incessantly stating and tweeting everything he can to maximize division and actively stir up the idea of vengeance in his excitable base's easily stoked views. The only one standing out as being dominant and exclusionary is the two-faced liar-in-chief that got elected president of the United States on a degenerate lark.  He spits the selfsame rhetoric that makes him a sick tumor on the face of our outstanding nation. He needs to be excised as quick and with as much precision as we can manage. Voting him out of office at this point has become a matter of paramount mandatory civic duty. For the sake of American families across all fifty states of this tremendously strong and diverse land, the demonic annihilator of our American dream must be stopped once and for all, if we can. 

     Donald Trump represses the American dream and twists it into a parody of itself before his rapt audience who manage to act as a sieve and let it all get soaked in to their shared public bath-house without realizing the scabrous toxic stink that will surely infect the precious limited air they voted into office seeping into their lungs like a deadly odorless gas displacing the oxygen we need to breathe one molecule at a time. He is the animate focal point of this lethal viral transmission. It's his own paranoid radical ideology that actually steals the dreams of the people he intends to rob blind while he dares to plaster a deceptive grin across his own face like a leering mask he can wear for the cameras.  A more terrifying monster I find difficult to imagine in a realistic context, considering my place in the matter at stake. And the pundits and paid advertisers who sponsor the program reiterate the mantra memorized oh-so-well while they mass-hypnotize the malevolent lurkers and ignorant watchers and innocent victims gathered around and held under this cabal's growing collective spell.  All while striving in every legal capacity to silence the people during the short window he has left before the possible guillotine blade of his first term drops down to bid it's sharp farewell. The bald faced split-tongued deceiver and misleader clicks out his tweets and fabrications in what could only be thought of as masterful verbal manipulations by the very crowd stunned into submission by it. 

      I'll tell you who won't be silenced, you piece of filthy dried-out sausage casing. You terrified zombie in a zoot suit. You illegitimate offspring of a drunken bet gone wrong put on by overgrown frat boys who never got rid of their juvenile rape fantasies and jock straps. It's the staggering heartfelt majority of this nation that's still great and strong despite you being in it, that's who—Mr. Helter Skelter, bad weather inciter, Senor No Me Gusta y un hijue de la gran puta. Mr. Stuttering Blunderbuss—time to take what's left of your luck and get the hell outta Dodge. Mr. Sad Faced Clown Man who ended up getting pulled off stage with a great curved cane. When the lights wink out and the curtains swing shut that'll be the end of you, Scuttlebutt. Vamoose, idle executioner of the poor and displaced. Get the Hell out of here and never dare to show your face in public again because we can't be held responsible for the reactions you engendered.  

     The forty fifth president of the United States who directed police troops to "do what it takes" to clear the pathway for his walk to a church for a deliberate photo-op with a bible he doesn't even believe in; this man who crashed the republican party and not only sold them his snake oil which they willingly bought but I'll bet he intimidated them too with his sinister cabal of connections. And he has the emotionless audacity to stare at the camera without blinking once and accuse the people of the USA of totalitarianism? It appears the man hasn't instructed an aid to look into a dictionary for him in quite some time. It's apparent he can't even read (or at least won't be bothered to) and he's never even considered some of us may actually know what those words mean! 

     During an unprecedented novel coronavirus pandemic and a paradigm shattering revolutionary systemic uprising and openly flagrant rebellion toppling monuments while inciting riots and defacing public property while being framed for it too by all manner of public and covert gang members operating as double agents who some wear it black and some wear it blue but all are nothing more than your dime store domestic terrorists on the loose; make no mistake about it, and while I'm at it, let me shout it from the rooftops.  

     Turning Americans against one another is what this president does best. And you know what he says, he's the greatest at it, don't you even doubt it. Oh yeah this guy's all about it. You can see through his disguise if you look with open eyes and notice this emperor without any clothes on. He's like an evil substitute teacher who stumbled into class one day half drunk and is now teaching his students to hate their own people and to believe their ancestors who helped build the country weren't heroes but villains and monsters.  And for some reason nobody will ever fathom most of the classroom laps it up, hootin' and hollerin'.  Well this A-hole's flat out lies aren't something most Americans are willing to be swallowin'.  And that's the truth reflected from behind the mask. We the greater portion of Americans won't breathe in the hot air and foul gas. We can see beneath our own lamp light, thank you very much. And I don't need any paid TV pundits or made up stories to read about on the web that try to dictate what goes on in my head to lead me on to believe what's not true. My own head is already squarely set on my shoulders, Mr. Trump. So you can take your tired old see through shtick and shove it where the sun don't shine.  Which happens to be in your direct political future. You put our lives at stake and on the line so now we must drive that wooden stake, after sharpening it, back through your heart. It's the only way to stop your kind, that's the difficult part.  Or maybe we should just harpoon you and drag you out from under the cellar to be consumed for all to see screaming out in agony in the wide open daylight in front of everybody. There won't be much of a crowd by then no matter how much space is allowed. But hold up because this reporter isn't done. 

  I've got an idea for the fourth of July. Ban the popular sale of public fireworks completely. Why don't we make them illegal? And if we go out and buy them on the black market, the Firepolice come to your home to spark it with their Firetrucks full of kerosene and...I'm just kidding, all you drooling idiots, they don't burn your home down, because frankly, we're doing a well enough job of that right now on our own.  We don't really have to fulfill our dystopian scenarios, even if they're already well under way. We know what two and two make. We like the rainbow of colors, not just gray.  If each state's cities sanctioned an official fireworks display, think about how much more special it would be when you had to bring out the whole family. Talk about restoring classicism to our most venerable old traditions in a legal and systematic way. But I digress, where was I, what a mess. Can any of you even imagine for a moment what Mount Rushmore would look like today if our own government hadn't defaced it with the awesomely garish hackneyed display which destroyed the mountain's natural possessed beauty and its majestic original state? Nothing can prepare the human mind for the exquisite face of nature. It's a shame that men in charge before us decided to undertake an enterprise of such immense scope and proposition as to veritably guarantee, looking at it in hindsight, that the endeavor was done out of sheer spite dressed in open hatred and hostility not in disguise, as if it were an act of sadistic defiance, kicking the fallen and grinding the native American's profile into the dirt under our military's sanctioned boot-heel. As an American citizen I demand nothing short of a redress of grievances and a concerted effort from the federal government to restore proper ownership of these sacred lands to the Lakota Indian tribes. Furthermore I have prepared a petition to merely consider demolishing this so-called "shrine of democracy" that took seven years to carve out of the mountain in defiance of the Six Grandfathers it was formerly known as. Just a moment of silence considering our disrespect to show the council of elders a micro-fraction of solidarity.  A gesture that we're collectively sorry today that our ancestor's trampled over their rights. Some indication we are willing to pay for our own grandfather's mistakes. 


   This forty-fifth president brings to light the entire grisly and candid phenomenon of our fore-fathers' arrival to this sweeping land's shores.  There's a whole nether history of native American ghosts and vanishing tribes on the winds of time still lingering in the air. If we haven't the capacity to learn from our past errors and today make the changes within us necessary to do the hard work of paying back what we owe in terms of unjust butchery and pillaging of the people who lived here in relative peace before us, then are we just doomed to repeat the same old cycle of pent-up vengeful violence as we stand back and allow the machinery of war to grind on both economically and with its outmoded idealism preserved? That's a perverse abomination of the real spirit behind our nation. How about this if you can just imagine it. The president of the United States arrives to the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota, and in an historic moment filmed before a panorama of international cameras, he officially decrees these lands to be fully surrendered back to the original tribes that owned it, restoring the former glory to the Six Grandfathers in an act of contrition that vows reparations. Pardon me; that would only be possible if we had a real leader with genuine courage and the moral capacity to lead us forward through these dark and turbulent times—and weren't stuck in a rut with Donald J. Trump for president. That's just the dream of an alternate timeline where we progressed onward as the great nation capable of justice we were initially set up to become. Until he accidentally slipped in to this three-ring-circus our broken political system has turned into. 

     If you really want to celebrate our Independence this year so we may collectively live on to realize our great nation's wavering dream, please consider your civic duty to register and officially vote this November, because if enough good people gather together to vote this Crimson Clown out of office just five months from now we may have just reached the malignant tumor and excised it before it metastasizes to render our promising country into the dead and rotting corpse that petty oligarchs with delusions of autocracy such as Trump do not care they are most decidedly pushing us toward.  Get as many of your friends to vote in November for anyone but Trump so we can move ourselves forward. The reason we've always been a great nation is due to the fact we're a melting pot comprised of all the diverse ethnicity to be found on Earth. The extensive variety of sworn-in US citizens from every national culture on the planet combined here to flourish together in peace and prosperity and bound by our constitution is exactly what our heritage stands for. And we should not allow ourselves to fall when we can stand together and elect a better president who can guide us forward through all the coming storms of rough weather ahead.  Bless America, every single one of us.   

Among the black hills of South Dakota there exists a great mountain that was once considered the center of the universe by the tribal people who lived there. Until one day, roughly one-hundred and forty years ago, some New York lawyer visited the area looking for mining rights, and through a nefarious quirk of fate ended up having the sacred mountain named after him, instead. If you visit this mountain range today, and camp out at night nearby, they say that on certain windless evenings in the winter, if the cloud cover is just right, with the starlight gleaming down from the darkened face of eternity itself, the carved visages of US presidents fade away temporarily, to be replaced by a mysterious pearlescent sheen, as if evoking prehistoric conditions beneath the sea, and under the right lighting, one may gaze upon the glory of its eminence in its pristine form. In even more ancient indigenous lore, this mountain range was known as The Upraised Fists of the Great Mothers of Pearl, so far back in human history that no traces of it exist except in the minds of certain wandering people scattered now throughout the world by the four winds.