As Christopher Nolan brings Homer’s epic to the big screen, a Tufts professor explains why audiences return to the classic story
Matt Damon plays Odysseus in “The Odyssey.” Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
One of the most famous stories in history is getting a major big screen moment—with The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan, out on July 17.
Based on the ancient Greek epic, the movie stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca who takes a long and dangerous journey home after the Trojan War to reunite with his wife, Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway.
Anticipation for the film, Nolan’s first since winning the best picture Oscar for Oppenheimer, has sold out IMAX screenings throughout the country weeks in advance. While it’s no surprise that people would turn out for a star-studded cast that features Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron, was it a given that movie-goers would flock to a tale that was written around 700 BCE?
Maybe yes. The story of the Odyssey has persisted in world culture for nearly three millennia. Marie-Claire Beaulieu, associate professor of classical studies, said what makes the Odyssey so enduring is that it’s a story of discovery—and you can find a new understanding of it each time you read the epic poem, obsess over the Percy Jackson & the Olympians book series, see a performance of it as a play, or watch an adaptation of it in in a movie theater. Tufts Now spoke with Beaulieu about Nolan’s film and why we keep telling this same story.
Video: Haley Lerner
Tufts Department of Classical Studies students and alumni share their thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
Why is the Odyssey a story we continue to tell?
The Odyssey is one of the most complex stories that we have in world literature, and I say that with no overemphasis. It’s so complex that you can read it on a multitude of levels. You can read it as a story of homecoming. You can also read it as a feminist story, and actually, many people have done that. There are so many possibilities.
Recently there’s been a lot of work done on it as a story of colonialism, which certainly is a valid read, because in the Archaic period, when the story of the Odyssey was probably first composed, the Greeks were actively sending colonies around the Mediterranean. In the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery, the Odyssey was reinterpreted to think about the experiences of travelers and colonists who set about to “bring civilization,” as they claimed, to non-European lands.
An aspect of it that I’m interested in in my work is the notion that Odysseus’ journey actually encompasses the whole universe. He goes on the sea, goes on land, and he also goes to the world of the dead and the world of the gods. I wrote a book, The Sea in the Greek Imagination, which discusses precisely how the sea functions in ancient Greek mythology as this permeable barrier between the worlds. In the course of his journey, Odysseus visits all parts of the cosmos and comes home with the special knowledge of those few who have seen beyond the veil.
The poem leads us in so many directions, and every time you read it, you can find something new.
What lessons from the Odyssey are still valuable today?
I come from a Francophone background, and we say “les voyages forment la jeunesse,” traveling molds youth. In colloquial English, we say “this was an odyssey of sorts.”
Traveling is a big theme of the Odyssey, this notion that through travel you get to a greater understanding of both oneself and the world. These are the first few lines of the Odyssey: “Tell me, O muse, of the man of many wiles who was tossed around so much on the sea, after sacking the sacred city of Troy. He saw the cities of many men and learned their minds.” Odysseus saw so many things and learned about other cultures and he comes full circle back to Ithaca.
Recently, Emily Wilson published a new translation of the Odyssey, and she has the first line say, “Tell me about the complicated man,” which I think really captures his essence.
The reason I teach mythology and I’m so enthralled with it is that there are never any clear lessons. Mythology asks you questions and it never gives you an answer. But the questions themselves are what’s interesting.
The Odyssey has a particularly good bunch of questions, in my view. One of them is: What’s so special and important about one’s home, and the people in it? Odysseus spends 10 years just trying to return home and is offered many opportunities to settle down in luxury with new wives and new kingdoms, and he rejects them all.
One of these opportunities even involves eternal life with a goddess, which asks us another important question: If you could, would you live forever? Is mortality something that’s actually desirable? As you see, we can take these questions to all levels, from the very basic to the deeply philosophical.
Why are there so many adaptations of myths and ancient stories? Do you have a favorite interpretation of the Odyssey?
We’re still having the same experience that people had in the ancient world. Imagine you’re living in the Roman period, you can read the Odyssey itself, or see it performed in Greek. I think it’s the multi-layered and multimedia nature of these things that make them so fun and so engaging.
It is very important to remember myths are not literary stories, per se. Written works are often a vehicle, but myths also circulate a lot in other media, such as performance and art. I often have my students study pieces of jewelry at the MFA, because they represent so many myths. Myths were conveyed everywhere and that’s still the case today.
One of the best stories modeled after the Odyssey, sort of loosely, that I’ve ever seen is called Ulysses’ Gaze, with Harvey Keitel, and it’s from the 1995. It’s a very hard watch, so just be warned.
It’s about a filmmaker who travels to the former Yugoslavia, which at the time was at war, and he’s going through a country that’s devastated by war to look for an old movie, supposedly one of the first that was ever made in the Balkans. And in the process, he meets all sorts of people, but really, his goal is ultimately to come home. And it sounds simple, but it’s actually very complex, just as the Odyssey is.
Another great retelling is Margaret Atwood’s the The Penelopiad, where she thinks about what’s happening when Odysseus is not there, and when he does come back, the view from the women of the story. This is a question too, right? Where do women fit in all of this business?
What are your hopes for the film?
I was glad to hear that Helen is played by a Black actress [Lupita Nyong’o], because so many people imagine the ancient world just full of white people wearing white bedsheets. And that’s extremely problematic and false. It’s important to represent diversity, but also the fact that the ancient Mediterranean civilizations looked just like today; it was a cosmopolitan world.
But overall, I hope the film is an interpretation that lets free the creative spirit of the director, of the actors, of the craftspeople who are involved. I really dislike when people try to stick too close to the words on the page, especially with something as complex as the Odyssey. There were movies recently, like Troy, and they’re terrible, in my personal opinion, precisely because of that. It’s pretty impossible to do it justice if you try to stick to it, because a myth is a living thing, and the way they circulated in antiquity, as they do today, is precisely by being retold, reinterpreted, and reorganized.
