by Gary Tedman
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Homer wrote, or
compiled (from songs), The Odyssey as a follow up to The Iliad, which is the
story of the sack of Troy - Ilion was another name for Troy. Parts of the Iliad
story are retold in the film. Homer’s book does not begin with the preparation
for or the start of the war, it begins instead with the hundreds of ships of
the Achaeans, to us better known as the Greeks, pulled up on the beach, and
with the siege of Troy having already begun a while ago. In the film as in the
book there is a strong sense of time having already passed.
OK, this is not a
history lesson, but some things I needed to clarify for myself in the writing
of this review: ‘Achaeans’ was the term for the people who shared the Greek
language and a similar culture, Greece is the name we have for the relatively
modern nation state which did not exist during this period, in which there were
only city states, like Athens. However, Homer was writing for this Greek
language audience, to which he is obviously biased. It is also important to
note that what we call the gods of the Ancient Greeks, or the ‘Greek gods’,
belonged in reality to the Achaeans and were not shared with the Trojans as far
as we know, but in Homer’s books the adversaries shared the same Greek gods, which
were assumed to be ruling over all peoples.
The Odyssey film begins
with the war already having been won, but at some cost, by the famous subterfuge
of the hollow wooden horse, and there now seems to be only two black ships on
the beach, the one of Odysseus, and Agamemnon’s. Although they have achieved a
victory, there is an ominous feeling to the proceedings. The plot concerns
Odysseus’ trials as he tries to lead those Achaeans still under his command home
after having been away for years.
The activities of the
gods feature quite a bit in The Iliad: of Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Thetis, Hera,
and so on. They seem like an extended Greek patriarchal family with added superpowers.
Achilles, the great runner, is for instance a demi-god. And this brings a
problem also for the Odyssey film and the director Christopher Nolan - of how
to deal with the real and the imagined.
Nolan obviously opted
for a treatment of the subject in a similar realist way to his other war film,
Dunkirk, but does this work? - Perhaps Homer was also aware of this problem,
all that time ago. For instance, in The Iliad book there is a peculiar passage
where the author-narrator tells us about not being able to make the reader
aware of the simultaneous events in the battle at different gates of the beach
encampment protecting the boats of the Achaean myrmidons from the Trojans, who
have come out of the city to attack them. These are the actions of mere
mortals. But Homer evidently has no trouble telling us about what the gods are
doing, and how they interfere in the lives of these warriors, which seems
contradictory, for, surely an author who knows what the gods get up to can also
know what ordinary men do, even if they do it at the same time in different
places? I therefore wonder if Homer is deliberately revealing something to us
about the writer’s art? A modernist element in Homer?
Nolan’s realist
treatment is caught between trying to depict a historical reality that we
presume must have existed, and the mythology of the actors within this history,
and which is in the handed down stories of Homer and which form an integral
artistic part of those stories. Simply put, the problem is, does the artist,
writer, or film director, refer to the Greek gods as affecting the lives of these
fighters, as really existing gods, or not? If not, we still need to get some
idea of how these gods operate in the imaginations and alienations of these
heroic figures, do we not? Because these imaginings would have helped shape
their feelings and thus also take part in determining their actions, even in
the real history of Troy.
Is it a timely film?
It is plainly anti-war. The aftermath of the horrors of war figure here in
indirect ways, revealing guilt and an unclear search for redemption. The viewer
or the reader does not really find out why Troy was being attacked. There are
hints in the film about an economic struggle over trading routes to the east
which do not exist in Homer as far as I can tell. Historic Troy, which was not
long ago discovered, was on an important sea route, the Dardanelles, near the
entrance to the Sea of Marmara, which itself is connected to the Black Sea by
what is now the strait of the Bosphorus (Thracian Bosporus). Currently we have
the war between the US and Iran involving the Strait of Hormuz waterway.
The reason for the war
given in the account of Homer is Helen, the most beautiful mortal woman, who was
either, taken forcibly, or removed willingly, from her husband, by Paris and ensconced
back in Troy. All this also involves the intrigues of the gods of course, but it
still seems to us, today, too feeble an excuse to launch a thousand ships and
destroy a city state. The Helen story could be allegorical of course,
symbolizing the Trojans unfairly stealing the Achaeans trade and obtaining
beautiful booty that they felt that they should have. Homer does not dwell on
Helen much, although she seems wise and a little regretful. It would have been
in any case an historical economic fact that this society, being slave based,
and agrarian, would have required occasional conquest and plunder to add riches
to it, as well as to excuse its faults by blaming evil foreign forces.
Homer’s The Iliad book
is full of the top commanders wearing resplendent custom-made armour, with
bronze, silver, and gold decorations, worn by the heroes, wielding amazingly
wrought weaponry, which the sides fight over and strip as a spoil when they
have succeeded in killing them. But The Odyssey film shows little of this
splendour, it seems deliberately grubby, gritty, and dark, with no make-up
evident on the actors, even the pores of the actors can be seen, which is
unusual. Probably the ordinary soldiers, not professionals in the modern sense,
in reality had to make do with their more humble gear and were modestly attired
and evidently even needed to be cajoled and corralled into battle by their
noble commanders, but I suspect the leaders did look pretty impressive even in
the mundane real world of the Bronze age, but not so this filmic Odysseus. Otherwise,
Matt Damon achieves all that is needed of him in the role, he is good at this
sort of thing, if perhaps too recognisable, Jason Bourne in a Greek helmet.
Nolan does not show us
the gods, but he does hint at them sometimes, a little, by some camera
techniques if I am not mistaken, but also when he does have to show us the
mythical manifestations and appearances, given they are a mainstay of the story,
like the one eyed giant or the siren, he does it in the aforementioned realist
manner, which is peculiar: the giant has a twisted face, malformed, he seems
merely disabled, rather than having a central alien-like eye. I found myself
wanting some CGI for once (maybe there was some, I don’t know, but I wanted it to
be more obvious). If ever there was a justification for some extravagant
special effects, this was it, I felt, it required a spectacle. But the
opportunity was not taken up. I found myself pining a bit for Ray Harryhausen’s
stop motion animation such as in Jason and the Argonauts.
Nevertheless, the
movie was gripping, even without attaining the epic quality that Dunkirk did
sometimes succeed in. It made me want to read The Odyssey again. I had read an
abridged version when I was young, but apart from the famous bits I had
forgotten most of it.
Neil Libbert, 42 Street 1960
