I finished reading Odyssey ( Verse , Robert Fagles) just in time to catch up with the Movie Release. As a book, Odyssey is a very fluent read and I was surprised that I was able to follow the story line despite the jumping free flowing verses. Aphoristic nature of the text forms the prime delight of reading Odyssey; we relate to Our Life at many verses written many years ago with overwhelming clarity. Odyssey, the movie turned out to be an excellent primer of the book Odyssey.
Spoilers Ahead
Movie is almost faithful to the book but for a few delightful changes which has come out well. Movie keeps the adventure Action as the foreground while the reflecting Odysseus in the background provides a remarkable Life context to each of those adventures.
Each adventure scenes stands out on its own open to philosophical moorings. Each scene is breathtaking on its own, to list, The Trojan Gift, In the one eyed Giant ‘s Cave, The Bewitching queen Circe, The Kingdom of the Dead, Song of the Sirens Crag of Scylla & Charybdis Vortex, Calypso Nymph & Journey back to Ithaca – each of the scene is breathtaking to watch and the dialogue and set up in those scenes serves as a background to deeper reflection of Life by King Odysseus.
when crew shouts during shipwreck “pray to Poseidon”,
at the Hades, ” is this going to be our fate”
at the Cave ” Do you speak to Ants? ”
at the Circe ” they would have harmed me”
at the siren “we see only Odysseus unbearably crying “
when athena says ” loose control" Odysseus lets himself go on a lone raft
Odysseus is back in Ithaca as a stranger , a beggar , an unknown man to weigh in his plans against the suitors, Nolan picks up this detachment angle and Matt Damon has done extremely well to portray the pain of a man call Odysseus, who lost all his comrades, all in the name of war, all the in the name of Gift, all in the rage unleashed after waiting for ten long years at the enemy s front. Matt Damon’s Eyes reflect both the horror and pain of his journey. Nolan transforms the Adventure of a Man returning home after War Triumph into a Man returning home painfully reflecting the actions of the past. Nolan does not fully indulge in trying to portray why Gods are not favorable to Odysseus to return home, he rather turns the table inward towards Odysseus whose painful reflection of the wrongs of the war forms the bedrock of the movie. Odysseus is a war hero to Many but to himself he is lone man trying to make sense of the past and immediate calls of action to save his Son, Kingdom and reunite with his wife Penelope. With a screen in between them Painful moving conversation between Odysseus and Penelope is very moving.
to Penelope when Odysseus says there is no home to come back
and the final shot when he painfully looks at somethin in the fallen Trojan horse under fire
Odysseus see the Troy Saga as a lesson in which Men s fragile bonds being broken by a tricky gift, leading to collapse of the civilization which may take years and years to build again. Nolan s primer sets the Homer s Odyssey book period between Bronze and Iron age. Book that has crossed many years must have indisputable wisdom of what we learnt from our past. Nolan has weighed in the books s relevance to Our age, and his reading of the book has come out well.
