Film Analysis of Odyssey Adaptation

What did you think about the film in terms of this notion of the

Odyssey as an anti war text?

I mean I thought it,

I do, I want to not spoil anything about the film because I know the majority of

people haven't seen the film.

The film has these flashbacks to the Trojan War.

I'm not sure if I see it as an entirely anti war film,

but it certainly presents us with an Odysseus who feels very bad

about certain things that he's done in war and is struggling to process

them in a very, I would say, very modern, psychiatrised way.

And he's struggling to

process them and needs drugs to do so for help with his recovery.

And he seems to feel bad

about being a warrior and we never actually get to see him doing much warrioring,

which I thought in a way was a bit of a shame.

I mean we do get to see the boat,

which is lovely, but I think in some ways, I mean, I was realising,

thinking about the film,

there's a tolerance for ambiguity in the world of the Odyssey,

which I don't think there exactly is in the world of Hollywood blockbuster

action films.

And I think that's one of the big challenges for Nolan, is that he has to

make the protagonist a likeable all American hero, which is a real challenge if

you're basing this on a poem where the hero is not necessarily motivated

by romantic love or being a nice suburban parent,

but actually he wants glory and he wants to get spoils from the sack of a city,

which you'll see what Nolan does with all of that,

but it's different things from what Homer does.

I kept looking in vain for a sense that this was a film about glory.

I think it's a film that has some interest in shame,

but I don't think it has any interest in glory.

I was going to ask you if there were any scenes from

the book that you wish had been in the movie,

or tonalities, or if you had written the screenplay,

are there moments you would have loved to include?

I mean this is a very

different adaptation from any that I would have done, but it is

very much in tune with things that Nolan has been obsessed with his whole career.

So I think if you're a Nolan fan,