Απ´ό,τι διαβάζω, την ιστορία/υπόθεση της Οδύσσειας πραγματικά την κατακρεούργησε. Εδώ π.χ. αναφέρονται αρκετές λεπτομέρειες: «A friend paid a ticked for me to watch Nolan's Odyssey. Despite all of my reservations about the way the movie was marketed, I really wanted to like it. But it was worse than I expected, much worse. The casting and the costumes were the least bad thing about it.
Here are some thoughts and an antidote to the movie's gross misunderstanding of the epic's philosophy.
1. The casting was bad. Apart from the obvious examples that have been discussed on X to death, the most bizarre scene was the following:
A man asks in Greek, soldiers that are raiding his settlement: 'who are you? Are you the sea peoples?' And an Indian replies in English: 'we are Greeks.'
I have to give credit to Matt Damon though for making Odysseus likeable despite Nolan's obsessive attempts to portray him in the most negative light possible. More of that below.
2. There were massive alterations in the story. Some of them were done to save time (e.g., there is no island of the lotus eaters, no Nausicaa and the Phaeacians, etc.) But there were also changes that changed the story so much that the title Anti-Odyssey would be more apt.
3. Throughout the movie, Odysseus is represented as being hated by Zeus (just read the first pages of the epic to see that this is not the case), as being arguably worse than his crew, and as being punished for being THE SUPREME VIOLATOR OF ZEUS' LAW OF HOSPITALITY. Why? Due to the Trojan horse. He is also represented as someone who dishonoured his crew for doing things that just aren't in the epic (e.g., not burying soldiers -that Polyphemus devoured in the epic- while trying to exit the cyclops' cave).
This is a gross misunderstanding of the entire Greek lore. If that were the case, Odysseus would not get to return home. Or, he would meet his downfall if he did manage to return home (like Agamemnon who was murdered by his wife and her lover for sacrificing their daughter when he launched the Achaean attack on Troy).
Odysseus doesn't represent someone who loved warfare and carnage. He was someone who got caught in it, and contrary to those around him, he devised a stratagem to actually END it as quickly as possible. Of course, it wouldn't be by singing with the Trojans John Lennon's Imagine. This aspect of his cunning/resourcefulness is also obfuscated in the very rushed portrayal of the scene with Polyphemus.
4. Nolan represents Odysseus as having forgotten his mission and his destination to return to Ithaca because he was being fed lotuses by Calypso. And then, to make matters worse, Nolan portrayed Calypso as telling Odysseus that Zeus hates him (perhaps I misheard due to this scene's awful sound) and that she was trying to get him to leave the island.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.
Odysseus NEVER forgot Ithaca. Hence, one of the major themes of the epic is the nostos of Odysseus, his longing to return home.
Odysseus NEVER ate the lotuses (some of his men ate them in the island of the Lotus eaters, not the island of Calypso).
And Calypso didn't want him to leave the island. He was there for 7 years and he yearned to return to Ithaca despite the sorrow caused to him by his memory. When she was ordered by Zeus, Athena, and Hermes to let him return to Ithaca, she offered him immortality and eternal youth to get him to stay. This is another pillar of the philosophy of the Odyssey that was completely left out of the movie.
Furthermore, there was a fabrication. There was no Sinon in the Odyssey. By implication, there was no Sinon among the souls Odysseus spoke to in the underworld.
Nolan missed the opportunity to depict one of the most beautiful and philosophically substantive scenes of the Odyssey: that of Odysseus talking with the souls of Achilles and his mother, Anticleia. And why did Nolan miss such an opportunity? To insert a story that wasn't there in the Odyssey to portray Odysseus as having tricked an Ithacan in such a way that it led to his death.
5. And because he missed that, he ALSO missed the fact that in the Odyssey, Odysseus is presented as one of the very few Achaeans who got to return home and reclaim his kingdom BECAUSE of his embodiment of the qualities of Metis (ingenuity/resourcefulness/cunning/wisdom), the goddess whose marriage with Zeus represents the marriage of supreme force with wisdom and then leads him to establish a just order when he won Kronos and the titans. This is what Metis represents and to any extent that Odysseus embodies it, it is certainly not to defy the gods and to be an amoral Machiavellian.
6. Bonus rant: Menelaus is presented as an utter sleazeball and Helen is presented as hating him, which just wasn't there in the epic.
The whole thing was a missed opportunity. It could have been much better. I sincerely doubt that those defending it (progressives and conservatives who flip flopped last minute alike) are familiar with Greek mythology.»
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