My understanding is that it is faithful until the death of the suitors and then … nothing about meeting Laertes or fighting the suitors' relatives. Instead we get a version of the Grey Havens scene in LotR.
Yeah, the original goes on with more cyclical vengeance before the gods step in and end it, that would have taken another fifteen or twenty minutes though
It was indeed very creepy. The only thing that was missing was Blue Moon on the soundtrack...
I'm guessing this is almost everyone on those cinema seats. Most people reading here probably have a nodding acquaintance with Santorini and Linear B, and understand the expression 'between Scylla and Charybdis', and so on. Me, the first time I read the Odyssey as a child was in E.V. Rieu's prose translation in Pelican*, and yes as I type that I know how incredibly pretentious it sounds. But I really have no idea how much the average person, the average target viewer, knows of the Bronze Age setting, or of the story. A few bits (the Trojan horse, say) are universally familiar. How much of the rest of it is an entirely new story that can't be compared to pre-existing ideas? How many people know about, say, Circe?
Yeah, that was very unpleasant.
I agree completely with this. The mix of emotions and the intensity of emotions at his return should have been given far greater care (cutting Laertes didn't help).
Seeing the words 'E.V.Rieu' just did something very weird to me. Could swear I suddenly felt the itchiness of grey flannels.
Oh yeah, and the Trojan Horse was just perfect, utterly believable as a ploy in a way that I never really found plausible in any other rendition!
I struggled a bit with it. My initial impression was that it was half buried in the sand, but inside Troy it became clear that its hindquarters were distorted/extended somehow (a blanket?). That question distracted me.
Hmm, I guess I didn't notice that? I think it just had a large flowing tail that served to stabilize it since the horse was rearing up?
I wish we had gotten more time with her and less time with Calypso, tbh… time to finally read Madaline Miller’s Cercie, I think
I came away with the same thought.time to finally read Madaline Miller’s Circe, I think
Penny's Review, Part 1
The climactic battle with the suitors is occasionally exciting, but it just goes on for what feels like forever, and I don’t think it’s successful at either showing Odysseus as a source of righteous vengeance or as someone being consumed by his own hatred. It just… kind of happens. At least Nolan doesn’t have Telamachus murder a bunch of female slaves for their sin of being raped by the suitors
I did think about that, but there seemed to be far too much for it to be just a particularly bushy tail (unless it was a horse-squirrel cross).
Do you think it's too much for a 13-year-old? I told a friend it would be fine but this info gives me pause.
I think it's fine, the violence is pretty bloodless for the most part. There are screens that are squicky and creepy, but mostly via sound and implication. There's some implied off screen rape, but I don't know if a 13-year-old would even pick up on that? It could probably have been given a pg-13 with very minimal edits, but I'll bet that the studio decided an R would make it feel more like "Serious Cinema."
I took my 12-year-old. He often has nightmares. He loved it.
Depends a bit on the child.
There are some grim deaths but nothing is dwelled upon. I suspect it's the transformation into pigs - Circe appears to have the men turn to playdough in her hands and press their feature into their new shape. Half the audience had hands in front of their faces and went 'ugh!'.
That is my thought, too. I'm 65 and went 'ugh' at that. Even before Circe went to work, the eating was pretty horrible.
The Iliad and Odyssey are specifically historical fiction about the Bronze Age, told by an Iron Age author (or authors). Nolan is following Homer's lead here.
The Trojans retrieving it from the beach made a hell of a lot more sense than an opposing army bringing it to their gates and offering it as a gift.
