The Odyssey

[GuiltyCowboy]

No. Note my use of the word ‘probably’.

My guess is that he probably didn't [quite achieve what he was trying to achieve].

He's not a top drawer filmmaker but he's good enough to make excellent films like Dunkirk and Oppenheimer and he makes really fun blockbusters like Inception and Interstellar: given the truly amazing material in the book, I do think he'll look back at The Odyssey and think he could have done better with it.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Here's a piece by Richard Brody, who is not an expert on The Odyssey or the ancient world but is one of the finest film critics working today:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...-nolan-movie-review?utm_campaign=partnerpromo

He's always very good at teasing out whether the form of a film works with the story and themes within it.

There are some interesting points about making the main characters more likeable for modern tastes, and more forceful to suit the modern blockbuster.

 

[crookedletter]

I do think he'll look back at The Odyssey and think he could have done better with it.

I'd be suspicious of any artist/writer/etc. who didn't feel this way about their work, at least a little bit.

 

[PennyThompson]

AI enabling vast new levels of "Inventing a new type of person to get mad at"

 

[Writer61]

AI enabling vast new levels of "Inventing a new type of person to get mad at"

Artificial Idiocy?

 

[PennyThompson]

Here's a piece by Richard Brody, who is not an expert on The Odyssey or the ancient world but is one of the finest film critics working today:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...-nolan-movie-review?utm_campaign=partnerpromo

He's always very good at teasing out whether the form of a film works with the story and themes within it.

There are some interesting points about making the main characters more likeable for modern tastes, and more forceful to suit the modern blockbuster.

I enjoyed this review quite a bit, though I disagree with one point he makes:

it represents an effort to redeem Odysseus for modern times and to render him both sympathetic and tragic.

Although Nolan definitely puts modern ethical and emotional frameworks onto the characters, I didn't fully read Odysseus as a sympathetic character. His victims -- Sinon, his wife and son, Athena's priestess (or possibly Athena herself) -- are the sympathetic characters. Odysseus is both protagonist and antagonist, in my reading.

Nolan loves protagonists who are their own worst enemy, after all! Memento, The Prestige, Tenet, they all do this!

The idea of how to adapt an ancient story and ancient understanding of the world is interesting though! It's one of the reasons I enjoy Robert Eggers' movies, he's interested in understanding the worldview and psychology of his period subjects, and making the world that they perceive, not the world we perceive.

Eggers' The Odyssey would be wild to see

 

[crookedletter]

Eggers' The Odyssey would be wild to see

Yes please.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I didn't bother going through all the many, many pages I've missed since being on here, was Wednesday or yesterday? Any-ole-who, I see the debate lives on. To those who believe it's woke, time to wake up to fact, it isn't 1952 any longer.

 

[MillieDynamite]

And let me make this clear: while I'm not anti-Christian, I'm certain only that there may be a God. But the Bible is in no way an inspired and sacred book. There are around 700 inconsistencies in the text, where direct contradictions from one thing stated exist later in the text. In the numbers of members of the tribes, within a few chapters of one another. And if you believe homosexuality is a sin because the bible says so, you need to start stoning cheaters, people who wear leather belts with cotton clothes, rapist unless she's single, and then you only pay the debt to the father and marry the girl, sell your kids into slavery, and hole bunch of other shit that has absolute no baring on life in the 21st centure. I'm more of a Deist; if there is a god, he doesn't care what happens to us. If he did, we wouldn't be killing each other so much, and all the injustices out there wouldn't be that way. Don't give me that free will stuff; if a personal god exists, he created evil as well as good; therefore, he doesn't care about any one person all that much.

 

[TheOneUpright]

"Civilization will rise again."

"The dawn will break on the darkening world... and once again, our mistakes will be forgotten."

I'm no genius. Maybe slightly above average, but definitely not a genius.
Still, sometimes I swear I wish I were below average - a complete moron, even - just so I, too, could occasionally enjoy a crappy movie with terrible casting, bad acting, stupid dialogue, clunky pacing, loads of bloated fluff that has you mashing an imaginary fast-forward button. Then walk out of the theater grinning like an idiot, and rave about it like so many others seem to.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

To those who believe it's woke

I'm no genius.

Millie, somehow you've summoned them! Is it possible to un-summon them?

 

[Writer61]

"Civilization will rise again."

"The dawn will break on the darkening world... and once again, our mistakes will be forgotten."

I'm no genius. Maybe slightly above average, but definitely not a genius.
Still, sometimes I swear I wish I were below average - a complete moron, even - just so I, too, could occasionally enjoy a crappy movie with terrible casting, bad acting, stupid dialogue, clunky pacing, loads of bloated fluff that has you mashing an imaginary fast-forward button. Then walk out of the theater grinning like an idiot, and rave about it like so many others seem to.

Congratulations on insulting those of us who did enjoy it.

You probably thought it was smart. It wasn't; you just showed your intolerance.

 

[TheOneUpright]

Congratulations on insulting those of us who did enjoy it.

You probably thought it was smart. It wasn't; you just showed your intolerance.

At least you got to enjoy it. Imagine how I felt.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My guess is that he probably didn't [quite achieve what he was trying to achieve].

It's certainly been the most-advertised film of the last couple years.

Had the radio on earlier and they had a brief interview with Nolan, which went "What were you trying to achieve with your film of the Odyssey?"

Nolan: I wanted the audience to feel like they were there, make you feel like you were on the ship with Odysseus in the storms, feel like you were in that cave with a Cyclops.

By that measure, I think he did pretty well. And the hype has been a total boon to IMAX cinemas - they're even selling out performances at 8.30am for the next three weeks!

 

[MillieDynamite]

Me thinks you sell yourself short. Above average, not so much as I can see. You shouldn't've associated yourself with racist, misogynistic YouTubers if you want to be above average.

"Civilization will rise again."

"The dawn will break on the darkening world... and once again, our mistakes will be forgotten."

I'm no genius. Maybe slightly above average, but definitely not a genius.
Still, sometimes I swear I wish I were below average - a complete moron, even - just so I, too, could occasionally enjoy a crappy movie with terrible casting, bad acting, stupid dialogue, clunky pacing, loads of bloated fluff that has you mashing an imaginary fast-forward button. Then walk out of the theater grinning like an idiot, and rave about it like so many others seem to.

No, I only know how to pull them into the light not how to shove them back into the darkness.

Millie, somehow you've summoned them! Is it possible to un-summon them?

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Although Nolan definitely puts modern ethical and emotional frameworks onto the characters, I didn't fully read Odysseus as a sympathetic character.

Interesting. The more he fucked up, the more I empathized with him!

I suppose one of the issues I had with the film is that it references or make explicit some aspect of the story - his guilt for example - but then the film won't generate the feelings or the mood that that particular aspect would require. It's the difference between the reach and the grasp.

And I definitely think Brody's right to point that out in the case of the missing 'continuity between the natural and the supernatural realms...including the ambience of the divine and the distinctive moral realm that goes with it.' But I'll admit that that's something that I was most looking forward to seeing in the film so I'm a bit hung up on its absence.

It would be one hell of an impressive trick to pull off but I don't think Nolan gets close to finding a cinematic expression for the 'ambience of the divine'. Maybe it's unfair to expect that in a summer blockbuster. But I reckon Kubrick would have had a crack, and Eggers too.

PS I also like Brody's point about PTSD.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Nolan: I wanted the audience to feel like they were there, make you feel like you were on the ship with Odysseus in the storms, feel like you were in that cave with a Cyclops.

By that measure, I think he did pretty well.

Fair enough. I think he did that. Especially inside the wooden horse - I thought he absolutely nailed that.

 

[Writer61]

At least you got to enjoy it. Imagine how I felt.

No, thanks. I try not to empathise with intolerant people.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

No, I only know how to pull them into the light not how to shove them back into the darkness.

Yeah, me too. I'm quite good at being rude to them though. I can try that.

 

[Writer61]

I suppose one of the issues I had with the film is that it references or make explicit some aspect of the story - his guilt for example - but then the film won't generate the feelings or the mood that that particular aspect would require.

I thought the reasons for Odysseus's guilt, and the display of it (apart from the 'Grey Havens' ending) were clear.

And I definitely think Brody's right to point that out in the case of the missing 'continuity between the natural and the supernatural realms...including the ambience of the divine and the distinctive moral realm that goes with it.'

Given what they got up to, the idea that the Greek gods existed in some kind of moral realm is laughable.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Given what they got up to, the idea that the Greek gods existed in some kind of moral realm is laughable.

The reference to a moral realm refers to humans trying to figure if some misfortune (usually inflicted by nature) was the result of their behavior - hence the link between nature, the gods and morality. I'm not saying the gods are morally upstanding!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Here's a piece by Richard Brody, who is not an expert on The Odyssey or the ancient world but is one of the finest film critics working today:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...-nolan-movie-review?utm_campaign=partnerpromo

He's always very good at teasing out whether the form of a film works with the story and themes within it.

There are some interesting points about making the main characters more likeable for modern tastes, and more forceful to suit the modern blockbuster.

An interesting take. I didn't like it that much, as the critic spends way too much time telling us the plot and the themes in very broad strokes. Just a few times does he go more in depth.

But what he says at the end feels in tune with most other criticism, including my own and the one I linked: the prosaicness of Nolan's movie in comparison to the source material. Maybe he did it deliberately, maybe he was just being pragmatic; maybe he understood the modern audience better than any of us and gave them what they wanted - a summer action/adventure flick.

 

[Writer61]

The reference to a moral realm refers to humans trying to figure if some misfortune (usually inflicted by nature) was the result of their behavior - hence the link between nature, the gods and morality. I'm not saying the gods are morally upstanding!

For me, the primary theme of the film was about taking responsibility for one's actions.

 

[TheOneUpright]

For me, the primary theme of the film was about taking responsibility for one's actions.

Incarnation of a live satire.