Hollywood’s Odyssey: The Historians' Verdict

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film Odyssey brings Homer’s epic roaring back to life and Tristan Hughes and Dr. Emily Hauser are here to unpack every storm, monster and star-making turn. From the brilliance of the adaptation to the ancient story beneath it, Tristan and Emily bring their expert historical knowledge to challenge what Nolan keeps, what he changes, and why Odysseus still captivates us after 2,500 years. MORE Zeus Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/zeus/id1520403988?i=1000639222196 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/60DZQj2T46b6QoCTWRkiok?si=7TFgRMOCRZaton1Gjg5T3A Cassandra: Priestess of Troy Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/cassandra-priestess-of-troy/id1520403988?i=1000703032459 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/54G7ppbgjnCfT9oRO5T3L1 We're going on *TOUR* to Australia and New Zealand! - tickets are selling fast, last few available here https://fane.com.au/whats-on/an-evening-with-tristan-hughes/. Presented by Tristan Hughes. The editor is Natasha Hughes. Studio manager is Hanif Hussain. The video producer is McKenna Fernandez, producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@TheAncientsPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 1:54Tristan Hughes?

  The Odyssey. For nearly 3,000 years, Homer and his epic poem have inspired countless artists, authors and filmmakers. And now, one of cinema's biggest directors, Christopher Nolan, has taken on the epic homecoming story of Odysseus, reimagining it for modern day audiences on the silver screen. I'm Tristan Hughes, this is The Ancients, and I'm once again joined by acclaimed classicist Dr. Emily Howser. Over the last two weeks, we've unpacked the story of Homer's Odyssey. But now, we are turning to Nolan's Odyssey. We're going to be exploring everything from his portrayal of the Greek gods to Agamemnon's striking Batman-esque armour, asking what the film gets right, where it takes creative licence

• 2:39Tristan Hughes?

  and whether it's worthy to be known as the best adaptation of Greek myth ever made. It's safe to say there are spoilers ahead, so if you're trying to avoid them, look away now. Otherwise, let's get into it.

• 3:03Tristan Hughes?

  Emily, it is great to have you back on the show.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  It's wonderful to be back.

• 3:06Tristan Hughes?

  It's been some time since we last chatted. I mean, last time we chatted, we hadn't seen Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. Now we have.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, last time we were on the edge of our seats.

• 3:15Tristan Hughes?

  Well, yeah, it's been quite a few weeks. And we were attending the premiere as well on Leicester Square. That was quite a surreal experience.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  It was absolutely surreal. I have been saying to friends, you know, you always kind of go to see a Christopher Nolan movie, but to go and see a Christopher Nolan movie with Christopher Nolan is pretty cool.

• 3:30Tristan Hughes?

  And they had the Trojan horse and the setup in Leicester Square. It was all very cool and glitzy, but now it's out and everyone is going to see it. And the reviews are already coming in thick and fast from all corners. Shall we get some overarching thoughts first of all? What did you think? What were your, when you left that theatre in Leicester Square? What were your overall thoughts first of all?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Well, it was a kind of combination and I suppose there's that split personality that I have because I was going there as an audience member, as someone who's familiar with these big epic cinematic movies that Nolan makes. And so coming out, there was this feel of having had an experience, having had a kind of emotion thrumming through me, you know, those action scenes, that kind of viscerality, the dynamism of it. That was definitely still kind of resonating with me on coming out. But I think already, and this was happening while I was watching it, there was also that kind of clicking in my mind of kind of like, oh, okay, this is what's happening. These choices have been made. And I think I was starting to get into that, right? I can understand that actually in generating this version of the Odyssey, here are all of the other things that have been left out and here is kind of what we're left with.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  And I was starting to kind of reason that through.

• 4:39Tristan Hughes?

  Because this is interesting, because our two kind of different angles on this is of course, you've, you've studied the texts so much, the classical texts in the Greek and in, well, in the ancient Greek as well. And I've kind of more approached it from very recently, looking at that kind of the Bronze Age world, that it's loosely based on that there are kernels of truth. So when I was watching it, you know, when there were those rogue mentions of kind of a Bronze Age world, which we'll no doubt delve into, that got, that piqued my interest more. Whereas when you're seeing it, you know, you are, you're very much analysing the story and seeing basically where, as you say, where Nolan was taking it, his, his adaption, his adaptation of the Odyssey.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that's the thing is every reworking of the Odyssey, or indeed any text, is going to be doing its own thing. And that's really what, as a scholar, part of what my work is, is looking at how people, writers, authors, dramatists, they take an old text and they make it into something new. The question is, what have they made of it? And I think that was kind of what was clicking away. So I suppose that's what we're going to be talking about today.

• 5:41Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. I mean, first of all, for me, I must admit, you know, in Gladiator, where he's like, are you entertained? Are you entertained? I was very much entertained by watching the movie and it's like, you know, it's some three hours long. And, but it didn't feel like I was sitting there for three hours. I mean, it was very much kind of from scene to scene. And although it was very Nolan in how you're jumping around from, from different place to different place. One, one time you're in Ithaca, then you're in Sparta, then you're with Odysseus on Calypso's island, then you've got a flashback of the Trojan War. Then you're back to Ithaca when Odysseus, before he's gone for the Trojan War. Then you're hearing about Mycenae. And yet, I think it kind of worked. Am I saying this from, as someone who knows the complexity of the Odyssey and that story

• 6:25Tristan Hughes?

  and the fact that it's not a linear narrative? Or am I speaking for the, for the wider public? That actually his narrative was easy to follow? And I'm not sure I know the answer to that yet.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Hmm, it's difficult, isn't it? Because I think that as someone who is familiar with the Odyssey, you come there and you're expecting that kind of nesting of stories, those parallel timelines. So we've got in the Odyssey, we've got these kind of three parallel timelines between what's happening to Odysseus. His, you know, he starts off on Calypso's island and he's trying to get back to Ithaca. We've got what's happening to Telemachus, he's journeying to look for Odysseus. And we've got what's happening on Ithaca and that's Penelope with the suitors. And the poet manages to kind of thread those really well. Now, I think actually the way that Nolan's cinema was working to incorporate those flashbacks, those parallel narratives actually worked so well as an Odyssey in analogue.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  And that said, I wonder if an audience member who's not kind of expecting that, as you say, would be like, okay, well, we're on Calypso's island. Why are we on Calypso's island when Telemachus is off in Pelos and Penelope's in Sparta? Penelope's in Ithaca, excuse me. So it just felt like maybe that could be disjointed for an audience member. But I think for me, it worked really well.

• 7:41Tristan Hughes?

  Did you know that the ancient world's greatest monster killer? Well, he was also a man who left death and destruction all around him wherever he went. From the snake-filled crib at Thebes to the impossible labours that took him across the ancient Greek world. Heracles or Hercules, if you prefer the Roman version. Well, he's one of the most extraordinary figures in myth. A hero whose life was as thrilling as it was brutal. I'm Tristan Hughes and I'm thrilled to be bringing Heracles's story to Australia this August on The Ancients Live Tour. I am going to be joined by the brilliant Alastair Blanchard, Professor of Classics and Ancient History.

• 8:21Tristan Hughes?

  And together, we're going to dig into the myths, the geography and the archaeology behind the labours. From the Nemean lion and the Hydra to Troy and the tragic end of Greece's greatest hero. Now, tickets are on sale. We are coming to Sydney on the 3rd, Brisbane on the 4th, Perth on the 6th and finishing in Melbourne on the 9th of August. It's going to be epic. Tickets are selling fast, so book yours now so you don't miss out at fein.com.au. I cannot wait to see you there. It also felt very much in that, you know, they very much had to pick which characters they were going to feature

• 9:00Tristan Hughes?

  because it, you could easily fall into the trap of adding too many of these big names and over complicating the story. The one I think of, for instance, is like Achilles or something like that, or getting Achilles into the story. Or there are certain episodes of the Odyssey that Nolan does omit, but I think I can understand that because then it just goes into, it gets too much. And yet, kind of reinforcing that point, the inclusion of Agamemnon, which I think we'll delve more into, you know, as someone who's a bit of a side character and yet in how he's portrayed as this larger than life figure. And then you hear from time to time, little bit of insights into what happens to him and his fate.

• 9:39Tristan Hughes?

  I felt that was probably the extent that Nolan could get away with, with adding kind of an extra figure to the story to those three main plot points, but it worked, I think.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Well, absolutely. And again, that's very Odysseyan. And I suppose I'm not here to just be like, well, this is accurate to the Odyssey and therefore that's good. But I think what's worth pointing out is that that incorporation of Agamemnon as a parallel story is very much a feature of the Odyssey. And I think that it works in Nolan just as much as it works in the Odyssey. And the reason is that essentially Agamemnon is a parallel Greek. He is going on his own return back from Troy. However, when he gets back to Greece, his wife Clytemnestra has been unfaithful and she ends up murdering him. And so through the Odyssey, we get these reminders that Odysseus has to watch out

• 10:27Speaker 03

  that his fate is not like Agamemnon's. And that's exactly what I think is happening here as well, is that Agamemnon there is this kind of shadow in the background where you're sort of thinking, well, is the same thing going to happen to Odysseus or is Penelope going to be?

• 10:40Tristan Hughes?

  And that's how Agamemnon's story works in it, in the fact that it's applying it to Odysseus and his homecoming and how different it was.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  It's a warning.

• 10:46Tristan Hughes?

  And what I also found interesting, shall we talk about the gods first of all? There's only one deity that's shown on screen in Nolan's Odyssey, which is Athena, played by Zendaya. And, you know, the rest, they talk about, you know, Poseidon and the sea and Zeus and the castle of the sun god Helios, but they're never shown. And I also quite like that once again, because otherwise you could get too many characters, too much of mixing gods and goddesses with the heroes themselves and actually focusing on the humans. I really enjoyed that as well.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. So let me start with maybe what the Odyssey does. I can lay out kind of how that's similar or not to the Odyssey, and then we can think about what that does for Nolan. Because in the Odyssey, I think that's actually fairly close to what we see gods doing in the Odyssey. We're not seeing what we see in the Iliad, for example, where we've got massive councils of the gods, where we go up onto Olympus, we see Hera, we see Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares, you know, all of the main gods. We hear a story about the gods in the Odyssey, but we're not kind of going up to the gods as much as we do in the Iliad. The Odyssey actually begins with Zeus outlining the folly of mortals and how mortals are all responsible for their own mistakes. And then Athena is the one who becomes

• 11:58Speaker 03

  the driving force of the Odyssey, who really is an externalization of Odysseus's inner cunning, his ability to create a stratagem, because of course, she's the goddess of kind of craft and wisdom. So I think there are lots of reasons why that is looking back to the Odyssey. However, I think what I would say in the way that Nolan does it is that it's made quite clear, not only that Athena is the only goddess there, but that she is very specifically tied to Odysseus's psyche. And I think the effect of that, so just to give an example, we've got moments where Odysseus is walking along the shore and he'll be wrestling with some inner demon. And that's the point where Athena comes to him and she starts speaking with him. But she then always sort of vanishes in Nolan. And there's this

• 12:43Speaker 03

  sense of, was she even there at all? There is more of this sense of the unknowability of the god. And is she, is she really real or is she just Odysseus imagining?

• 12:52Tristan Hughes?

  Because you've got the eyes of Athena, right? And it's not just Odysseus, it's Telemachus who says that as well. And you're actually wondering, is this Athena or not? I think they do it with the beggar at the beginning, and it's actually not clear.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Well, this is the thing that's so interesting, because in the Odyssey, there is a mentor for Telemachus, whose name is Mentor, which is where we get that word from. But that is Athena in a human form, a male human form. And when she leaves, she will often leave in the form of a bird. And everyone will look up and will be like, oh, look, that was Athena. And they will realise that a god has been visiting them in human form. Here, Telemachus comments, and he says, oh, you've got the eyes of Athena, but that is never confirmed. So the question is, is it all within the minds of men? Or is it something that, yes, that is Athena, but only Telemachus can see?

• 13:41Tristan Hughes?

  I think, isn't it the character of Mentor who is actually killed in the ambush of the suitors near the end? So it's almost proving, actually, he was just a loyal ally of you, Telemachus. He wasn't actually a god in disguise.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so I think there is an inching towards the assumption that in fact, Athena is a figment of Odysseus's imagination. I think the clinching point to that is when Odysseus is having a kind of traumatic flashback. We'll, we'll talk about these, I'm sure. But he has a moment where he's remembering the fall of Troy, and he sees a woman being taken by the Greeks at the foot of a statue. Now, that seems to be quite an obvious reference to the rape of Cassandra, which we talked about in another of our episodes, actually, where Cassandra, and, you know, she's the prophet, the priestess of Troy, and she's raped by the Greeks. And that is a decisive turning moment in the fall of Troy. Now, Odysseus remembers that in Nolan's movie, but she is played by Zendaya. So she looks

• 14:37Speaker 03

  like Athena. Now, that cannot be Athena. But what's happening is clearly the representation of women in Odysseus's mind has taken on the form of Athena and has taken on the form of Cassandra.

• 14:48Tristan Hughes?

  Right, that's interesting. Because I remember, when I saw that part of the movie near the end, and actually, I think we might as well start with Odysseus's portrayal. I thought he was seeing the statue, and he was seeing his men go up to that statue of the goddess Athena and decapitating the statue. But he was portraying, he was visualizing that, like, that statue as a human being, as Athena herself. And it was actually almost as if they were decapitating the statue. I didn't think, when I watched it first of all, that it was a representation of Cassandra in the movie, but it, but it may well have been, right?

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Well, I think that's the beauty, isn't it, that we can sort of talk about this and think about that. So you're absolutely right, that is the layer that, you know, we, we see the decapitation of the statue of Athena. However, in the myth, Cassandra is raped at the foot of Athena's statue. So I think what we've got is we've got two layers. We've got the goddess being assaulted, and we've got the women being assaulted, and those emerging in Odysseus's memory as the figure of Athena.

• 15:44Tristan Hughes?

  And because in the Odyssey, it's not, they're at Poseidon's mercy straight away. I mean, Athena is angry with Odysseus and his crew at the beginning when they leave Troy. And she causes the, the initial troubles that Odysseus and the rest of the heroes have leaving Troy, right?

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, exactly. She's not angry specifically with Odysseus in the myth. She's angry with the Greeks generally, and particularly a man known as the lesser Ajax, who is the one who has initiated this rape on Cassandra in her temple, which she sees as a kind of sullying of her pure temple. So yes, that's what she brings that big storm down on the Greeks, and that's what initiates the problems with the returns in the myth. And it's only then later, once Odysseus gets to the cave of the Cyclops, that actually the real problem with Poseidon begins, which I think we've got so much to say about how the movie treats that.

• 16:32Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, absolutely. I mean, I'll let you decide. Shall we start with the Cyclops or shall we start with Odysseus's portrayal?

• 16:38Speaker 03

  I wonder if we should start with the Cyclops, because it's so pivotal in how Odysseus is portrayed. I think we can do them together.

• 16:45Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's do the Cyclops then, because first off, like, in regards to one of the epic episodes of the Nolan movie, I think the scenery is amazing, quite frankly, kind of especially when they follow that lone sheep up to the cave. The creation, the portrayal of the Cyclops is haunting. I've had one friend who's commented to me, so I'm going to have nightmares, you know, for weeks because of that portrayal of the Cyclops. But what did you think of the whole scene? Or shall we set the scene first of all? Shall we remind ourselves about what happens with Odysseus in the Cyclops?

• 17:17Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So let's give the context of the myth and as we hear it in Homer. Essentially, in Homer, Odysseus and his men come to this beautiful lush island that is kind of riddled with goats and sheep. And there are clearly farmers, shepherds, goat herds there. They come to this abandoned cave. They think that's the cave of one of the local shepherds. This person has been making cheeses. They come in, they help themselves to the cheese. And then who should come back? But not a kind of peace-loving shepherd, but a monstrous cyclops with one eye, who comes into the cave, realises that Odysseus and his men are there, and then ends up eating several of them. Odysseus, however, being

• 17:59Speaker 03

  a kind of cunning trickster, manages to get his way out of this in several different stratagems. So there are kind of several layers to this. The first layer is that they have a conversation. And when the Cyclops asks, as you always do of someone who has come into your house, you know, who are you? Where do you come from? Odysseus says, my name is nobody. And the second layer of the trick is then that he has brought wine with him. And so he offers wine, and that's a kind of very typical guest gift. He gets the Cyclops drunk. And then when he's drunk and asleep, he then drives a steak into his eye. And then the third is that they need to get out of the cave, because the Cyclops keeps rolling a stone in front of the door to the cave. So they cling underneath the sheep. And as the Cyclops lets the sheep out in the morning, he feels the backs of the

• 18:44Speaker 03

  sheep. By now, he's blind, so he can't see. And the men are clinging underneath. And so that's how Odysseus and his men escape. Now, the next bit is really the kind of most important bit in the Odyssey, because it's at that point that Odysseus looks like he has managed to trick his way out of this almost impossible situation. He's shown his smarts, he's shown how clever he is. The Cyclops wails to his brothers, and he says, brothers, nobody has blinded me, you know? So obviously, Odysseus has really got away with this. However, he then gets on his ship, and he turns around, and he is incapable of not taking the glory for this deed. And he shouts back, I want you to know that the person who has done this to you is Odysseus, son of Laertes, from Ithaca.

• 19:29Tristan Hughes?

  This is, this is the overconfidence. This is the arrogance. This is, as we mentioned in a previous episode, this is the hubris.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  It is indeed.

• 19:35Tristan Hughes?

  That damns his crew, quite frankly.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Indeed. And that is such an important moment, because that is the point, because he's given the Cyclops his name. The Cyclops can now curse him. And the Cyclops, of course, is the son of Poseidon. So wrong person to give your name for a curse. What's really interesting about what Nolan has done here is, yes, you're right, the visual imagery is very striking. The focus, as I felt throughout the fantasy travels, is on generating monsters that will kind of haunt the imagination. Is that really what the Odyssey and Cyclops is doing? No, he's not. What he's doing is he's setting up a way for Odysseus to prove how clever and cunning he is. The Odysseus in Nolan's Odyssey does not come up with calling himself nobody.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  He helps his men to do the steak into the eye. Yes, but he doesn't get him drunk first.

• 20:27Tristan Hughes?

  No.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  So there's no trickery. And then, when he leaves, he doesn't turn around and he doesn't shout back his name. The fundamental thing for me, I think, was that the Cyclops also isn't enabled to speak. They are sort of surprised when he's suddenly muttering at some point. He's gutturally muttering.

• 20:47Tristan Hughes?

  And I couldn't hear the muttering. I couldn't quite understand what he was saying. They were saying he was saying Poseidon or something like that, weren't they?

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, they interpreted it for us essentially, which is also interesting, isn't it? Because it was sort of making this monster sound sort of other and barbaric, not speaking in a way that we can understand. In the Odyssey, the Cyclops speaks perfectly to Odysseus. So they have a very kind of civilized, cultured conversation. In fact, that's the problem because Odysseus has actually been a very bad guest. He's come in, he's eaten all of the Cyclops' food. Cyclops has asked him who he is. He's given him the wrong name. So all of these, in fact, in the Odyssey are presenting the Cyclops as not a monster, but in fact, potentially more civilized than Odysseus. And what's happened here is we've gone back to sort of the stereotypes where we've got this kind of grotesque monster who can't speak, who is kind of this formless shape.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  And then we've got Odysseus, who also does not converse with him and does not give his name. And therefore, crucially, does not cause the downfall of the return, which he does in the Odyssey.

• 21:48Tristan Hughes?

  It's interesting how Nolan approaches it because you're mentioning kind of one of those parts early on is Odysseus' men entering the cave and then eating the cheese. And you do see that in the movie. And so you don't see them bringing in wine and then almost kind of that monstrous aspect of the Cyclops again. How they do it with the lighting, the kind of, the Cyclops disappears almost in the cave. And then this hand comes down and picks two up and eats them. And you can hear the kind of the crunching of the, the human bones as, as they're devouring. And you said that kind of that monstrous aspect. And rather than that conversation part, as you say, which is a key part of the text. So he doesn't go for the story of, I am nobody. Then later, the hubris being him saying, I'm Odysseus.

• 22:32Tristan Hughes?

  Instead, it's him almost trying to, well, deliberately trying to annoy the Cyclops by saying, I'm just going to shoot an arrow in his face or in his body, which his men just look at him just like, dude, why the hell have you done this?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:46Tristan Hughes?

  And so, yeah, it's interesting. Rather than going for the conversation, rather than going for the speech, it's just Odysseus deciding, I'm going to shoot an arrow in him and see what, how, how angry I can make this monster.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  Exactly, which is such a different thing. And one wonders whether, you know, that is Nolan saying, well, do you know what? Cinema is a different medium and therefore I'm going to make, instead of my Odysseus, who reviles the Cyclops in words, I'm going to make him revile him with an arrow and physical action. However, that has an automatic consequence for how Odysseus' character then is built. Because then his character is not one of cunning and hubris. It's one of force against the Cyclops. And then again, a force and perhaps a slightly, as you say, stupid decision, rather than one that is of overweening arrogance. So it's a very different, perhaps more mental depiction of the hero. And importantly, I think what the function of that is, is to make him less culpable

• 23:42Speaker 03

  for the fact that in fact, he is the one who then brings down the curse that destroys them all. There was a lot of attempt to kind of excuse Odysseus as the leader of his men. And I think that's the beginning of it.

• 23:53Tristan Hughes?

  And then we get to the Lysdragonians. The, this race of giants, which you will almost certainly have seen visual depictions of before you even go to watch the Odyssey. Because it's the image that is shown on many, many posters for the Odyssey at this very moment. And first of all, once again, like the Cyclops, how they're portrayed, how they're dressed, the kind of the medieval, plaitish slash futuristic armour that they wear.

• 24:23Tristan Hughes?

  It is meant just to once again, give that horrific alien and alien almost kind of portrayal, right?

• 24:29Speaker 03

  I find it really interesting that they're on so many of the posters because there's obviously, they're having a vis, they have a visual appeal. That's clearly why they're there. In Homer, there isn't really that much of a visuality to the Lysdragonians. In fact, they're quite an easy episode to skate over. In a lot of ways, they replicate the Cyclops in being giants, in being eaters of humans and in throwing massive boulders at the ships. All of those things the Cyclops does as well in the Odyssey. What Nolan has done clearly is to kind of really lean into that, okay, I want my monsters to be as monstrous as possible, as strange, as alien, as you say. And then has really kind of let his imagination go to town with them.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  And I think it really speaks to the fact that this is a movie that wants to entertain, that wants to generate action. You know, there is a huge threat to these. You know, you get that feeling in, in the movie that you are constantly having Odysseus and his men beaching their ships, going inland, engaging with some monster and then running back. And I had this sort of sense almost of deja vu when we were watching the Lysdragonians. Oh my gosh, it's happened again. I think that's what Nolan is going for, this endless array of terrors ahead of them.

• 25:43Tristan Hughes?

  But also I think what you're seeing is that kind of, I think there's a lot of focus on the crew themselves, isn't there? And how they're slowly getting really, oh, what's the word? They are not liking Odysseus' leadership, right? They are very much laying the blame at his feet. And they're the ones who think that actually Odysseus is angering the gods from going back to the Cyclops. And it's really disillusioned is the word. They gain more and more disillusioned. With the Lysdragonians thing, I think I watched that. And then you see the kind of, what is quite frankly a slaughter. And they, and that's when most of his ships are destroyed and he only has one ship left after they leaves that, that part of the, the story. That I noticed in that kind of the bloodshed and the brutality of the Lysdragonians attacking,

• 26:28Tristan Hughes?

  I think there's only one Lysdragonian who is killed by one of Odysseus' crew. And I think it's by Odysseus himself. The rest is just Odysseus' crew who are getting killed left, right and centre. So I think there's a real emphasis there on, on, at that moment in the story, you know, Odysseus being, growing anger towards Odysseus amongst his comrades, which I don't know is shown so much in the Odyssey itself.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  No, not at all. And I think it is a really interesting interpretation because I think you can think about it from the men's perspective and think what on earth is happening here. So in the Odyssey, with the episode of the Lysdragonians, Odysseus mores his own ship off from the harbour. And all of the others put their ships up in the harbour. And that's why they all get destroyed, whereas he's the guy. Again, it's this sort of cunning, this ability to foresee what's going to happen. And that's why he and his crew with that one ship get away. So I think Nolan is definitely pointing something out here. I think what's interesting is that, and as that mutiny was sort of progressing and the men's sense of that growing disillusionment, I found that really interesting.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  However, Odysseus' response in Nolan is instead to say, oh, yes, I'm really sorry. I'm going to learn. I repent. I, you know, and he spends so much time doing that. Instead of what we see in the Odyssey, where we have a much more complicated hero, who essentially, you know, you'll have these, like after the Lysdragonians or after the Cyclops, you'll have these one liners in Homer where it says, and this is Odysseus telling the tale at this point. He says, and then we sailed away and we were happy because we'd survived, but we were sad for the comrades that we'd lost. And that's the kind of Homeric summation. Now here, we're going deep into the psychology of the crew, yes, but also of the leader.

• 28:15Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, and I mean, that you get the climax there almost in the next scene, which is where you actually have, you have a mutiny described. And we'll explore that right after this.

• 28:33Speaker 02

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• 30:07Tristan Hughes?

  But of course, the next big place is Circe's Island, and this does play a big part in Nolen's story. And as mentioned before the break, following on for the Lysgogonians, you see the disillusionment of his crew come to a head, and this repentive portrayal of Odysseus in the fact that there is a mutiny when they reach dry land.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. And this is something that we're not seeing in the Homeric Odyssey. So this is absolutely a Nolen introduction. Here, we've got this mutiny in Nolen on the shores of Circe's Island, where they essentially have lost confidence in Odysseus's leadership, and they all decide that they are going to be the ones to go up to Circe's palace. Now, in the Odyssey, it's Odysseus who decides cautiously to send a party because he's not quite sure what's going on. So very much a kind of different leadership here. However, of course, in Nolen's version, that does Odysseus very well, because the troops, the comrades who have mutinied, now go up to Circe's palace, and they are the ones who get turned into pigs. So we end up with the same end result. It's just a different reason for that party going up by themselves.

• 31:12Tristan Hughes?

  And the portrayal of Circe, first off, it looks like somewhere like St. Kilda, some part of the Highlands, and, you know, in this kind of pebble bay, and then climbing up this slope, and then, very much from the Odyssey, seeing all these strange animals going up to Circe's hut. But the portrayal of Circe itself, it's, dare I say, it is almost, to a sense, an old hag in a hut on her own, and then the transformation into pigs themselves. I've still got that picture in my mind, the kind of the, how Circe, and I've forgotten the actress's name.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Samantha Morton.

• 31:50Tristan Hughes?

  How Samantha Morton does it, where she kind of puts her hands and moulds their faces into the pigs, and you can almost see the bone structure changing. That sends chills down my spine in that portrayal of Circe and her magic and how she did it.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. They really leant in there to the kind of witch imagery, which, you know, you've got the raven in the cage there, and you've got, as you say, this kind of lone, older woman. I think that was an interesting choice. In Homer, of course, Circe is an ageless, immortal goddess, and she's not, in fact, described as a witch. She's described as someone who has a lot of knowledge about plants. So it is her ability to draw on the power of herbs and plants to generate magic.

• 32:40Tristan Hughes?

  Many-drugged Circe.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Many-drugged Circe, that's the one, exactly. So it's fascinating to see this more witchy version of Circe. On the other hand, as you say, that transformation, the physicality of that transformation, I really felt that she was almost being connected to a potter, because she was sort of moulding the clay of their flesh into pigs. And I think there was something really, sort of, drawing a dynamic about the way that she did that. I also think what I liked about Circe's portrayal was that it was really the only time that we had any discussion, really, of the possibility of sexual assault, the possibility of violence

• 33:25Speaker 03

  that this male crew would enact on a lone female. Now, she talks about their hunger, so we get the connection between their physical hunger and then them turning into pigs, but also there is a deeper hunger than that. And she's very frightened when they first come in. And I think my first feeling when I saw that was that this looks to me like this is a response to Madeleine Miller's Circe novel, where Circe transforms the men into pigs in Madeleine Miller's version, because she is aware that she is a woman on her own, and this is what she does to protect herself. Now, I find that fascinating, because then we've got not just the Odyssey being responded to, but we've actually got one of these modern Greek myth re-imaginings also kind of making its way into the tapestry.

• 34:09Tristan Hughes?

  And what do you think? Because I remember when we chatted about this in the past, you mentioned how in the Odyssey, when Odysseus foils Circe's plan almost, you know, he then stays on the island for a year, and they have a sexual relationship. This, in Nolen, there's none of that at all. There's very much clear that that's not the case. What did you think of that? I mean, I can understand it, it's in that wider portrayal of how Nolen wants to portray Odysseus, and kind of putting aside the more infamous parts of his story. But I'm keen to think, I'm keen to hear what you thought of it.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, absolutely. It's a sort of flattening, I think, of the complexity of Odysseus's character and the kind of multiple mistakes he makes in the Odyssey. And he's allowed to make those mistakes, right? So we've talked about the mistake with the Cyclops. This is another one, where he stays with Circe. I mean, mistake, I'm going to put that in quotation marks, but you know, if we're believing the narrative that he wants to get back to Ithaca and to Penelope, he ends up staying with Circe for a whole year, having sexual relations with her, and it is his men who have to remind him that now would be a good time to get going, you know? Otherwise, one wonders, how long would he have stayed there? And that, again, really importantly, is his decision in the Odyssey.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  So here, we've got an Odysseus in Nolen, who is very much being, obstacles are being thrown in his way, he is outsmarting them, and then he just very quickly moves on. And the only time where he actually sort of gets trapped or waylaid is when he spends time with Calypso in this version. But again, we're told it wasn't his fault.

• 35:49Tristan Hughes?

  And yes, Calypso, and Calypso is such an interesting figure in Nolen, because she appears right at the beginning, and then interspersed throughout, and there's almost, she is the key, the mechanism through which Odysseus is remembering his story, is remembering his crew. And once again, the crew come back to the front and form, to, well, right front and centre, you know, with Odysseus and his remembering of everything else. It's not just the traumatic events of the Trojan War, it's not just the monsters, it's remembering the many faces of his crewmen, quite frankly.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And there is this sense of a deep trauma here, that he doesn't want to, he's sort of shielding in his psyche, he's shielding himself from remembering those crew members, because he can't deal with their loss. You've got that really strong sense. Yes, Calypso in Nolen is a vehicle for memory, but she's also a vehicle for forgetfulness. And I think that's really important, because in the Odyssey, one of the very first episodes that they encounter on their adventures are the lotus eaters, where they come ashore, and there is this amazing lotus blossom, and you eat it, and you completely forget everything around you, you forget what you needed to do. And it's Odysseus there who drags his men back and takes them back to the ships. Now, we don't

• 37:03Speaker 03

  get that in Nolen, but instead, we get Calypso as a kind of purveyor of the lotus, who is deliberately drugging Odysseus. And there is a kind of ambivalence about whether she's drugging him because she wants him to forget Penelope and stay with her, or because she's trying to help him, because he cannot deal with all of his trauma. I think probably what Nolen's suggesting is it's a bit of both. To me, that's quite troubling as a kind of frame to the narrative, because again, instead of Odysseus being on her island for seven years, as he is in the narrative of the Odyssey, because, for whatever reason, he doesn't have a ship, he can't get home or whatever, now it is quite explicitly Calypso who has made him forget Penelope. We have this moment where he suddenly remembers her, and at the

• 37:47Speaker 03

  moment that he remembers, he just jumps up and he decides he's going, now is the time to head home in Nolen. So it's very much, sort of, the blame is put at Calypso's door for why he takes so long to get home.

• 37:58Tristan Hughes?

  That's interesting. So in the original Odyssey story, there is no feeding of the lotus to Odysseus by Calypso. That is a completely different episode in the story.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely, completely different. What we do hear about Calypso is that she wants Odysseus to be her husband, that's what we're told, that she wishes that he would stay with her. He also doesn't have a ship, because he got very badly shipwrecked onto her island with a huge storm before he washed up alone, all of his crew gone. So those are his problems, those are his obstacles. But in the Odyssey, the poet and the narrator Odysseus both have strong reasons for saying that Calypso kept him captive, because of course, they are relaying whether that is to the people that they want to give a ship. You know, Odysseus is asking, please give me a ship home. He's not going to say, I just dallied for seven years with a nymph. Then he's saying the story to Penelope, he's

• 38:49Speaker 03

  not going to say that that was his fault. So I think we've got to interrogate that more deeply. And I think what this version does is it doesn't interrogate that, it just makes Calypso the captor of Odysseus. He can't get away because he's drugged, and as soon as the drugs stop, that's when he goes home.

• 39:05Tristan Hughes?

  And also, her story for the retelling, for Odysseus remembering those previous episodes that are then shown in the Odyssey, that is also put on Calypso's island from actually, an event that happens a bit later, isn't it? It was with the Phaeacians that we've mentioned in our chat before. And then there's the princess Nausicaä, and the queen, I've forgotten her name, what's the?

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Areti.

• 39:26Tristan Hughes?

  Areti. And they're not in the Odyssey movie. And once again, I understand why, because otherwise you'd be introducing them as well, and it's a few more extra characters. Instead, that part of the story is also melded into Calypso to kind of...

• 39:42Tristan Hughes?

  Oversimplifies the wrong word, but I guess to streamline the narrative to not include too many episodes and then kind of focus in on the episodes that you've got.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  And narratively, as you say, that makes sense because what we've got is in this theme that Nolan introduces of forgetting and remembering again, we've got Odysseus processing the stories of his past and he tells those stories to Calypso. Now, that is quite a close analogue to what happens in the Odyssey when he visits the Phaeacians.

• 40:08Tristan Hughes?

  Right after this.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Right after, exactly. That is the moment where he then narrates all of the travels that happened to him. So actually, you can see why that works. I think as a Homerist, when you're looking at this, I think the reason that that seems a loss is that Nausicaä and Areti are both two very powerful, unusually powerful and important female figures. They are also the key to Odysseus getting home. So yes, we might have Calypso, who Odysseus might see as the obstacle, but Nausicaä and Areti are the positive ones, the helpers, the ones who give Odysseus what he needs. And it's interesting that we get the obstacle left in and we get the helpers taken out.

• 40:46Tristan Hughes?

  It's interesting when I think about it because I always think about these kind of these epic stories from ancient history, whether it's mythical stories like the Odyssey or let's say the story of Alexander the Great, that if it wasn't a movie of three hours long, if it was something like a seven part series, you know, like each episode is an hour long or an hour and a half long, where you have more leeway to introduce more characters and give them more space, then I think, yeah, you have to do it that way with Nausicaä and Areti and highlight their key importance in the Odyssey as being the people who give Odysseus the ship and to make that last journey home. But I, yes, it's just the restraints of the type of film that is to making that sacrifice.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Perhaps that's true, although I think one would say that I don't think you're ever going to be looking, or at least I would hope that an intelligent audience of Homer would never be looking for a complete replication of Homer in a movie because that's not doing something new or interesting creatively. So we're not asking for a complete redo, but I think the point is when you decide to lose someone like Nausicaä and Areti because of the constraints, not only of the three hours, which, you know, is pretty long, but also because of the constraints of the narrative you are trying to tell, that tells us something about the narrative you are telling. It tells us about what you're choosing to keep in and what you're choosing to take out. And I think for me, it was the fact that women

• 42:12Speaker 03

  in the Odyssey are very much seen as either aiders or as obstacles. And it's really interesting to have the aiders out and the obstacles in. There is a choice there that has been made. That is the narrative that Nolan has curated and that's interesting.

• 42:26Tristan Hughes?

  Well, shall we kind of keep on that theme and explore two other key women in Nolan's Odyssey? And this is back on Ithaca. And first and foremost, the prominent character of Penelope, Odysseus's wife, played by Anne Hathaway. But the other key figure, and you mentioned that you really liked to talk about this before we started, and I completely agree, is the servant girl of Melantho. And can you first of all, explain who Melantho is and her association, her relationship with Penelope and the house of Odysseus?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So we mentioned we've got in the Odyssey and Homer's Odyssey, we've got these different strands. And when we're back home on Ithaca, the problem that we're dealing with there are the suitors who have come in from islands around and who want to marry Penelope. And the issue Penelope is having is she has to keep them at bay. Now, Penelope is there, she's got a small crowd around her, she's got the nurse Eurydice, she's got the swineherd Eumaeus, she's got her son Telemachus.

• 43:20Tristan Hughes?

  The loyal three almost, isn't it?

• 43:22Speaker 03

  The loyal band, exactly. And then we've got her enslaved women. And of those enslaved women, only one of them is given a name in Homer's Odyssey, and that is Melantho. She is the only one who, when Odysseus comes back to the island disguised as a beggar, she speaks up against him and she vilifies him and she says, you know, you're a dirty beggar, you need to get out, kind of thing. So she's clearly villainised in that version of it. Then we get to the point where Odysseus comes back, he kills all of the suitors, and he then wants to basically regain control over those enslaved women like Melantho, who not only spoke out against him, but who, he says, actually had sexual relations with

• 44:03Speaker 03

  the suitors. Now, interestingly, at one point, he says that that was assault and that was not consensual, when he's talking to the suitors. However, after the suitors have died, he then pivots and he tells his son Telemachus that he needs to hang these 12 enslaved women who consorted with the suitors. So there's a real sense of Odysseus, when it suits him, he says to the suitors, you have basically been violating my property. However, when the suitors are out of the way, he makes them mop up the bodies of the suitors and then they get strung up in the courtyard by Telemachus. And it's this sense of, I am the master, I have come home, I need to regain control of my property and they were not loyal to me. So it's a really chilling moment in the Odyssey and it is a scene that

• 44:45Speaker 03

  really highlights for us not only how Odysseus is envisioning his leadership and his return to kingship of Ithaca, but also how he is bringing Telemachus into the fold by forcing him to that act of violence.

• 44:58Tristan Hughes?

  And in, and in the movie, as you see though, it's very much portrayed as if it's Penelope and it is the fact that Melantho has betrayed Penelope's trust, that she has decided to side of Antinous being Antinous's agent. And then you see when you get to the slaughter of the suitors, that it is Penelope's character when Melantho tries to seek refuge from what's happening, when Anne Hathaway is just like, you've chosen your side, you've chosen your fate, you've chosen where you're going to lie down, where you're going to sleep, now you've got to sleep there, kind of thing, isn't it?

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Exactly. So instead of becoming what we see in Homer, where we've got Melantho, perhaps, yes, she's slightly painted in this negative light, but then there is this awareness of the fact that in fact, maybe she didn't have that much choice. Instead, in Nolan, what we're seeing is a quite sexualised Melantho, someone who is definitely kind of making her own choices to side with Antinous, who is passing information to him. We see her secretly whispering to him. And then, as you say, instead of Telemachus and Odysseus being the executors of the enslaved women when they get hanged, it actually is Penelope who is made to make that decision. Now, that completely changes, I think, that sense of these women as the victims of Odysseus's return. And it also makes it, as you say,

• 46:18Speaker 03

  much more about that relationship with Penelope, the betrayal of Penelope, and it essentially makes Melantho, along with Antinous, the chief suitor, the ones who are really to blame for what's happening in Ithaca.

• 46:29Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's keep on that that homecoming part now because in the Odyssey, it is absolutely brutal. No mercy, no weapons of the suitors. It is a slaughter by Odysseus of all of those who had been abusing the hospitality, had been abusing his food and wine, the servants and so on in his palace for so many years. In Nolan's Odyssey, and I guess this is more aligning with trying to make Odysseus better than he actually is, have better quality traits. The suitors are not shown completely defenceless. There's a big part of that narrative where you have one of the suitors goes up to the armoury above and then, and there's

• 47:13Tristan Hughes?

  this long fight between him and Telemachus and he's throwing down spears after spears and shields and dropping them down below. And so you see some of the suitors getting some weapons to try and fight Odysseus. And it, once again, it's almost this act of, yes, making it less of a slaughter and more of a fight.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Which is fascinating, right? That attempt to kind of make it more palatable. Because yes, exactly, in Homer's version, we've got this, in fact, Odysseus orders all of the arms, the weapons to be taken out of the hall. He orders Eurydice to the nurse to lock all of the doors. So the suitors are locked into the courtyard in the centre of the palace. And then he, of course, with the contest of the bow, which is what he uses to demonstrate himself to Penelope, he then has a weapon and he can basically just slaughter all of the suitors. And here, as you say, like there is this, in fact, it's the goat herd Melanthius, who's the one who goes up, who in Homer is the one who does side with the suitors, but

• 48:08Speaker 03

  gets very, very brutally sort of hanged and then sort of mutilated by Odysseus afterwards. We don't get any of that here. But he's, in Nolan's version, he escapes and he manages to give them the weapon. So I think the question is, you know, can a modern audience not deal with the kind of lack of palatability of an Odysseus who is just slaughtering, you know, tens of men in front of him?

• 48:31Tristan Hughes?

  It would leave a bad taste in the mouth of a modern audience if it was just kind of slaughter, slaughter, slaughter, no resistance, no resistance. And that bigging up of Odysseus's character as a more modern hero, right?

• 48:42Speaker 03

  As someone who cares about his men and who cares then, one would assume about the men of Ithaca and the surrounding islands. Right? That's what Nolan is trying to create. And so we can't have an Odysseus who is just slaughtering defenceless men in Nolan's version.

• 48:54Tristan Hughes?

  And it also shows that he doesn't slaughter everyone, does he? Because at the end, there's a bit, sorry, I'm doing all the spoilers, but we're presuming people see, you know, there's kind of the bowing down and that's the end. And then he goes on his pilgrimage in honour of his men right at the end, which is also a bit different to how it ends in the Odyssey, right?

• 49:08Speaker 03

  That was, that was such a surprise to me, honestly. And I feel like I'm very, always very tuned to endings. I feel like endings tell us so much. We've been talking about how when you change a narrative, what you're doing is you're changing the arc, you're changing the kernel. But the end tells you a lot about where that journey is going. And in the Odyssey, the end of the Odyssey, one would very easily assume from kind of when you read the Odyssey in popular tales, that it is the reunion of Penelope and Odysseus. It actually isn't. We go past that in Homer's Odyssey and we go to a burgeoning, erupting civil war, where all of the families of Ithaca rise up and say, you know, not only did you not bring our sons home from the Trojan War, but also you've just slaughtered all of

• 49:51Speaker 03

  the noblemen. And it is about to start. You know, you've got Odysseus, you've got Telemachus, you've got his father Laertes, they are all getting ready for battle. And it is Athena who comes down and basically just says, no, this is enough. And there is a pause. And that is where Homer's Odyssey ends. So different from in Nolan's Odyssey, where it is this, as you say, pilgrimage of forgiveness to the men that he has lost. And it's this happy family voyage with Penelope and Telemachus, you know, not the three men lining up for battle. This is a voyage towards almost a sort of second honeymoon.

• 50:24Tristan Hughes?

  Second honeymoon to Nolan's Odyssey. Does it very much feel, I mean, it does to me then, that one of the big drives of Nolan's Odyssey is to portray Odysseus, is to create Odysseus's character as a more modern hero compared to the more destructive ancient Greek hero that he is in the original text.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's a, it's a sort of great man movie. And the hero, as we discussed when we talked about this, the Odyssey.

• 50:53Tristan Hughes?

  But please remind us as well.

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Oh, of course. Yeah. So a hero in the ancient world is someone who, yes, they use the same word, heros is the Greek word for hero, but it's someone who is much larger than life, who's often quite destructive, who's in search of something greater than himself, whether that is immortality or an impossible return home. And in so doing, he often destroys all of those around him in the pursuit of that incredible goal. And so we see someone like Achilles, for instance, who's seeking immortality. And in the search for immortality, he actually ends up, you know, causing the deaths of many, many Greeks and his own. You see Odysseus, who seeking this impossible return across the Mediterranean, across fantasy

• 51:34Speaker 03

  worlds, monsters, witches, and so on. And he ends up losing all of his men and then creating slaughter on Ithaca when he returns. So that is an ancient hero. That is the great man narrative of the ancient world. That is not the great man modern narrative, which is, yes, you might have a flawed and complex hero, but they nevertheless care for their community. Right? That's what we're seeing with him caring for his crew. They do not slaughter defenseless men. There is a line that does not get crossed for that modern great man. And those lines have continuously been put in by Nolan. And I think for audiences who are not aware of the difference between this and the Odyssey, they will not see the

• 52:15Speaker 03

  curation that has gone into that narrative to generate that modern hero version of Odysseus as opposed to that quite brutal, quite harsh, quite destructive ancient version, which we're not seeing as much here.

• 52:27Tristan Hughes?

  Rather than destructive Odysseus, it's traumatized Odysseus, quite frankly. And we'll revisit that by exploring kind of the Trojan War part and the kind of the Bronze Age stuff, which I'm very excited to do right after this.

• 52:48Speaker 02

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• 54:15Tristan Hughes?

  So let's get to the portrayal of the Trojan War, shall we? Because it all kicks off with the Trojan Horse. And I actually very much liked how they did it with Sinon, with Elliot Page's character, and then how he comes back once in a while, as you know, this young soldier who was evidently very, very close to Odysseus, was very much devoted to him. And then there's that whole other storyline with him and Antinous as well, and him going out. And going back to that traumatized part of Odysseus's story, the fact from very early on, you know, he is devastated by the fact he has to trick this very loyal soldier to him, Sinon, to stick with the Trojan Horse and quite frankly, sacrifice him to

• 54:57Tristan Hughes?

  win the Trojan War. And I actually very much liked that character and Elliot Page's portrayal of him.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  I think it was very good. Again, that is an innovation, an introduction that is intended to tie together the Trojan Horse episode, which in the ancient myth is Odysseus's stratagem, it is his idea. But here in Nolan, we're getting this addition of this kind of immediate sense of his conscience, his immediate sense of, yes, he's come up with this idea, but also he's uncomfortable with it. And I think it is that unraveling of that sense of discomfort with the destruction that he caused, that is really the engine of much of Nolan's movie, that you get to the end and he really feels, I can't believe that I did all of that. Sinon is the start of that. And in fact, that scene where they're inside the Trojan Horse and Sinon gets murdered right through, just outside, the weapon actually

• 55:46Speaker 03

  kind of goes into just where Odysseus is, crouching inside the Trojan Horse, is very, very impactful. But all of that, again, is part of this construction of this hero who is beginning to have regrets for what he did.

• 55:58Tristan Hughes?

  Because, yeah, because it feels like you are sacrificing what feels like the youngest, most devoted member of your crew for this car, you know, for this key moment in the story from, from straight away. And then throughout the movie, you get more and more flashbacks as the Trojan War goes on. And from, from rolling, well, from pulling the Trojan Horse into the city itself, I found that interesting with the use of rollers. It just made me think of something like Stonehenge and the great stones of Stonehenge, how they're kind of bringing it up, quite Stone Age in its idea, to the whole portrayal of Troy itself and the soldiers, to very slowly the revealing of the trap itself, and then them opening

• 56:40Tristan Hughes?

  the gates. And the kind of how it was spread throughout the story as more and more of the Trojan War, of the fall of Troy is revealed in Nolan's Odyssey. And I must admit, that final climactic part of it, the real devastation of Troy is only revealed right at the end of the movie. And for a time, I wasn't sure if they were going to show it. But they did go back to it in, it's almost kind of, they were finishing off that part of the flashbacks. They got building up to that kind of, what almost felt like for Odysseus, the ancient version of PTSD that he gets from that very moment.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Which is certainly kind of that feeling that he can't access that part of the archive of his memory, because it is too traumatic. And it is only as he goes through the process of the movie of the Odyssey, that by the end, he can access that. And of course, Athena, who we talked about already, is part of that kind of healing for him, as well as that realization of the damage that was done. Yeah, no, it is incredibly powerful. And that moment, I found the, the kind of opening of the gates of Troy, that feeling of that incredible betrayal that they had done to the Trojans, I think is very, very clear. And I think you have the sense of just how, you know, we've been talking about how much Odysseus is trying to kind of make reparation, but you do get a very

• 58:02Speaker 03

  strong sense of all of the damage that he caused in that war and the darkness that is there.

• 58:08Tristan Hughes?

  We're talking about that darkness. When they open the gate, and like you have the rest of the Greeks waiting outside, but they really do, and I love that we're going to talk about this now, they make a big fact of Agamemnon and the armor, the black, the dark armor that he is wearing. And when people first saw the images in the trailer, you know, everyone's talking about this is Bronze Age Batman, or this is Bronze Age Bane, right? Because the armor looked so ridiculous to some. And yet, I guess it was, it reinforces Agamemnon as this larger than life figure, at least in Odysseus's memory. And when they open the gates, you see his shadow, and then all of the other warriors pouring in. It's almost like he is the man in charge and he is leading them through.

• 58:51Tristan Hughes?

  But he is also just as much, if not more than Odysseus. He is the cause, he is the creator of Troy's suffering and Troy's destruction.

• 58:59Speaker 03

  And yet, of course, we never actually see him. And I think that's really interesting.

• 59:03Tristan Hughes?

  You never see him take off the helmet, do you?

• 59:05Speaker 03

  No. So he is sort of almost a disembodied suit of armor. So yes, I mean, we're not going to get into the accuracy, because look, this is obviously not accurate.

• 59:16Tristan Hughes?

  Just put the dendropanoply on him.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let's get the dendro armor on, then we'll be okay. But look, this is a creative choice. It is a choice that, as you say, I think says a lot about how Odysseus remembers him, as well as about the emotions that he evokes. And that, to me, does slightly speak of how we hear of Agamemnon. If you think about the beginning of the Iliad, you've got a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. And Achilles says that Agamemnon has a black heart. So I feel like there is this sense of that darkness around him, irrespective of perhaps whether that doesn't look like a Bronze Age warrior. However, for Odysseus, I think it is that, that memory, isn't it, of this is, he almost

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  represents the Greeks and the pouring of the Greeks into Troy, we just sort of see Agamemnon, and we remember all of the lives that were led to Troy and bled out of Troy because of him.

• 1:00:13Tristan Hughes?

  Shall we explore, and I've been very much looking forward to getting this part. I've labelled them the Bronze Age Easter eggs.

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:00:19Tristan Hughes?

  In Nolan's Odyssey. And let's start with Troy first of all, because of course in the story, it's very much, you know, Helen of Sparta, Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, or maybe we should say just over a thousand ships.

• 1:00:35Tristan Hughes?

  But of course, when you watch Nolan's Odyssey, if you listen closely enough, you'll hear little mentions of Troy, and I think this goes back actually to Odysseus's cleverness and a clear nod to whoever's influencing Nolan and the creators of getting once in a while that little mention of the Bronze Age world in which it's set. Because I believe, I remember there's one line when Odysseus, I can't remember if he's talking to Penelope, or he's talking to someone before he goes to Troy, and he's received the message from Agamemnon that they've all got to go supposedly to rescue Helen, to take back Menelaus's wife. And then Odysseus just says, that's an excuse.

• 1:01:17Tristan Hughes?

  The real reason they're doing that is that Troy is this key trading port, you know, and it's rich. And this is the real reason that Agamemnon is so keen to take so many people to fight in Troy and to launch the Trojan War. It's the prize of controlling Troy itself. It's the wealth of Troy. And we did an episode of Eric Klein not too long ago, and you know, when you look at Troy's position, when you look at the archaeology, first off, yes, it is one of those key ports for all those ships at that time that were sailing up towards the Dardanelles today, the Hellespont, the ancient Hellespont into the Black Sea. Secondly, we know from archaeology that it is sandwiched between these two great powers of the late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans in Greece, the Achaemenids, the Danaeans, and

• 1:02:01Tristan Hughes?

  the Hittites further east. And you've got, you know, Hittite records that mention fighting around the area of Troy, the mention of Willusa, potentially the mention of Paris as well, Alexander.

• 1:02:13Tristan Hughes?

  Like, that's a fun little nerdy payoff, right? To actually realise that they are addressing the fact that Troy was an important place that was desired by a king in late Bronze Age Greece, like the figure of Agamemnon in the story of the Iliad, and in here, Nolan's Odyssey.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And that's really quite an interesting choice, because when you think about looking at the Iliad or the Odyssey, Troy isn't talked about in those what we might call historical terms. So, you know, Agamemnon isn't saying, I'm doing this because of access to trade routes across the Black Sea, or something like that. That is what historians then look at Troy, and you know, historians like Eric Klein and say, well, actually, look how strategic that is. That actually does make sense in terms of the workings of history. So what's happening here, and why I found that really fascinating, is you've got Nolan attempting to sort of clash together myth and history. You've got the myth of the Odyssey, the myth of the Trojan War, but then you've got this

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  very real reference to trade and strategy that is a reference to history and is a reference to the real site of Troy, which we do have, we do know where it is. So a really interesting kind of attempt to bring a historical layer into it.

• 1:03:25Tristan Hughes?

  And then the historical mystery layer.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:03:28Tristan Hughes?

  Which is dotted throughout, you know where I'm going with this, because everyone's fascinated by this. The peoples of the sea.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Tristan Hughes?

  We know them as the sea peoples, but I do love the fact in Nolan's Odyssey, they're called the people of the sea.

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:03:40Tristan Hughes?

  Coming from the west.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Tristan Hughes?

  And they're portrayed as this kind of invisible force on the horizon that people are hearing about, but no one quite knows who they are, but they are destroying the world as they know it. And that is very much a link to, to an old theory, isn't it, around the Bronze Age collapse?

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  Well, absolutely. It's really interesting, because it is a term that isn't an ancient term. So the sea peoples term is something that modern scholars came up with as a theory for how to describe what happens around 1200 BCE, where we get a major civilizational collapse across the Mediterranean world and beyond. So we get not only the Mycenaean civilization collapsing, but also, as you mentioned, the Hittites in Anatolia, we get the city of Troy falling right about this time.

• 1:04:33Tristan Hughes?

  Ugarit as well.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Ugarit, exactly. In the eastern Mediterranean, we get attacks in Egypt. And in Egypt, that's where we get records of the people who are doing this. But they're not called the sea peoples, they're given the individual names of their tribes. So what's interesting is that Nolan is kind of hooking on to this scholarship that has collected these different tribes together that have been attributed to this collapse, and is calling them the sea peoples. Now, in fact, the latest scholarship is suggesting it's much more complicated than that. It is not just kind of invasions of this mysterious brigade of people, but rather it is a combination of climate factors, drought, famine, earthquakes, and then, given that, we've got the movement of peoples, we've got rebellions, and then we get armies moving around.

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  So we've got perhaps, shall we say, a simplified version of a historical event here.

• 1:05:24Tristan Hughes?

  And it's interesting as well, because I think it's, there are conversations between Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway, so like Telemachus and his mum, and they're saying, look, we need a ruler of Ithaca, because there's this, this, this strong rumour that the sea peoples are coming soon, the peoples of the sea, and they've left destruction in their way. So Ithaca needs to be strong to fight off this thing. And are we going to wait for Odysseus, or are you going to let me become the new king? Or are you going to marry someone else? And, and when I was watching the movie, I was thinking, are they then going to, like I was thinking with Nausicaä and Areti, like whether they were going to introduce him or not, and as time went on, I felt they can't introduce him now, it feels now too late. I was feeling like they've mentioned the peoples of the sea here, there and everywhere, and now we're getting near the end of the movie and they haven't shown, and I feel

• 1:06:09Tristan Hughes?

  it's too late to then introduce a giant new fleet on the horizon that we haven't seen.

• 1:06:15Tristan Hughes?

  And so they do something, I think it's quite clever, but at the same time.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:06:19Tristan Hughes?

  It's quite meta.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Tristan Hughes?

  At the same time.

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Tristan Hughes?

  Which is Odysseus revealing that he and his crew and the rest of the Greeks were actually the sea peoples.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think it is really actually quite clever. I think it also gestures to the fact that the legend of the Trojan War, as it was remembered hundreds of years later into Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, was a memory of this great disruption, this great civilizational collapse, at least in part. And that that memory was something that the Greeks, we think, were probably a part of, those historical late Bronze Age Greeks, that that historical war in Troy, if it happened, it probably didn't happen the way that Homer says it, but probably a sequence of different wars, but that the Mycenaeans probably were involved around that city. That devastation, that expansionism that we are seeing in the Mycenaean late Bronze

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  Age civilization, that is something that the legend of the Trojan War remembers. So I think it is quite a clever gesture to the fact that that is part of where Homeric Epic comes from. Now, again, I think it's worth saying, that is not something that the poetry does. The poetry tells the legend of the Trojan War, it doesn't situate Troy as a historical city, and it doesn't situate this as part of a wider conflict. That is something that is more of a historical project. And so almost what you've got with Nolan is you've got the myth, you've got the kind of the fantasy adventures, you've got what happens on Ithaca, that's the kind of core. But then outside it and around it, you've got this historical layer that he's kind of added on to try and contextualise it.

• 1:07:49Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, and Odysseus trying to, it's almost like he's repenting, he's remembering their bad actions, their, their bad style of warfare, quite frankly, their abuse of hospitality, their bad treatment of the gods, the statues, and you mentioned like, you know, the brutality of the sack of Troy.

• 1:08:09Tristan Hughes?

  In a weird kind of way, I guess it's like, we've become barbarians in what he's thinking. And so that's how he says, we've become the sea peoples, because we are now just pillaging and destroying and not the type of warfare, it seems, in Nolan's, you know, that he was used to, that he was expecting almost, right?

• 1:08:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but again, that circles back to what we said about this repenting Odysseus, right? Because this is an Odysseus who now sees the, the kind of horror that he's left in his wake, and it's also an Odysseus who is now trying to generate through that final voyage, some kind of penance for everything that he's done. So yes, we're seeing the destruction of civilizations, yes, we're seeing the Greeks taking some responsibility for that, but we are also seeing him saying, oh, I'm deeply sorry, and kind of I wouldn't do it again, which is very different from how we see it in the Odyssey, where the sack of Troy is done. We do get these moments, perhaps where, you know, there's that wonderful moment we talked about, about Achilles in the underworld, where he says, you know, I, I wouldn't do that again, if I could live again.

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  But we don't end up there. What Nolan is essentially doing is showing an Odysseus who is seeking the forgiveness of his men, but he's also seeking reparation for the fact that he has caused the downfall of a civilization.

• 1:09:27Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  He's not saying, this is what I've done and we've got to live with it, he's trying to fix it. And that is a really interesting change.

• 1:09:33Tristan Hughes?

  It's always interesting, we could talk for hours about this. I feel that the Trojans are portrayed, and I understand it because they're not, well, at the same time, they are a main part of the story because it's very much the roots of Odysseus' repentance in many ways, alongside the homecoming. I feel the Trojans are quite faceless in the movie. You don't get any of the figures. There's no Prime, there's no Cassandra, there's no Hecuba, there's none of that. It's just the soldiers themselves, really, and then the brutality of the slaughter of the people that you see dotted throughout. And the soldiers are all kind of with their kind of Corinthian-like helmets of much later time on. And yeah, there's kind of no particularly named Trojans in this movie at all.

• 1:10:15Tristan Hughes?

  It is just kind of the destruction of that people, which maybe is also kind of aligning with what we've talked about as well.

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  Yes, and also perhaps suggests that that people could stand for multiple other peoples and other civilizations that could be destroyed. And I think the other side to it is that actually, if you think about the Odyssey and Homer's Odyssey and what that's doing is it is very much a post-Trojan war epic. It is not the place where we get figures like Hector and Priam and Hecuba and so on. That is in the Iliad. So when we do get memories of the Trojan War, even in Homer's Odyssey, it's quite generalised. So perhaps that is a function of the fact that we are moving out of Troy and into the return home.

• 1:10:55Tristan Hughes?

  Very much so. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Glad to get the sea peoples in there at the end.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Absolutely. We couldn't do it without the sea peoples.

• 1:11:02Tristan Hughes?

  It's always nice because Tony Terry Klein, who's saying how with the records that survive in Egypt, they mention like the Ekuesh and the Danuna and probably likely the Ekuesh is Akian, Danuna, Danaians, other word for the Greeks. So just wants to say that at the end.

• 1:11:18Tristan Hughes?

  But it's been fun to kind of dissect Nolan's Odyssey. I will go back to what I said at the beginning. I was entertained. When I look at all of these big movies, I think as long as it's a gateway into people wanting to learn more, then it's brilliant. You know, it's the way to get more and more people interested. This is why we're doing all of these podcast episodes today. This is why we're exploring the real story and then these Bronze Age kernels of truth behind it. It is the first rung on a ladder for, you know, people today to get interested in these stories and then to find out, okay, what does Homer say in the Odyssey? How is Odysseus portrayed? What do we actually know about these characters? What other characters were omitted that had their own amazing stories that we now need to explore further?

• 1:12:02Tristan Hughes?

  So I was entertained.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, that's absolutely, I think that for me, it is the start of a conversation. It's not the end. So I think that's in a way how this conversation gets borne out of that and hopefully many more. I think as a classicist, as someone who loves these texts, you can keep coming back to them again and again, and you can see something new. It's about questioning what new has been created out of it. And I think that's what we've been trying to flesh out here.

• 1:12:29Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. Emily, this has been absolutely fantastic. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book which explores many of these characters that also feature in both Homer's and Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. It is called.

• 1:12:40Speaker 03

  Yes, so it's Mythica, A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It. So that perhaps informs some of the discussion we've been having today. But yeah, I'm really interested in thinking about, I suppose it crosses over with what we've been saying about the sea peoples, really. It's how we can put myth and history together, archaeology epic, all of those into the kind of cauldron of Homer. And then we can use that as a way to actually start thinking about the real peoples of the late Bronze Age, the real women, and then almost kind of check how that makes us read the myths differently. And for me, that's been really fun because obviously Homer's epic, it covers so many different experiences, so many different figures, but at the end of the day, it is myth, it is legend.

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  And Nolan is kind of perpetuating that myth, it's changing that myth. But what can we do to use the real archaeology, the real bones of history to uncover the experiences of women? To me, that's been a fascinating story to start with them and then read the myths after that.

• 1:13:36Tristan Hughes?

  And the book is called Mythica, very good one. So you've been on the show in the past, talk all about Cassandra, who also features heavily in this episode, and I'm no doubt we'll get you back on again to talk about other aspects of that world. Emily, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show.

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  Thank you so much, Tristan. I've really enjoyed it.

• 1:13:53Tristan Hughes?

  Thanks so much for joining us on The Ancients and thanks to our guest, Dr. Emily Howser. It has been such a joy to journey with her through the Odyssey for the last three episodes. And I'm sure it won't be long before she is back on The Ancients again. Now, if you have enjoyed this series on the Odyssey, then why don't you take a listen to our series on Greek gods and goddesses, beginning with Zeus, King of the Gods? Also go and listen to our previous episode with Emily all about Cassandra, daughter of King Priam and priestess of Troy, who was destined to have all of her prophecies ignored. And listen up if you are a listener in Australia and New Zealand, go and buy tickets to our live tour where we'll be delving into this Bronze Age again, this time to unpack the story of Hercules. We can't wait.

• 1:14:38Tristan Hughes?

  Finally, if you are enjoying The Ancients, then why not become a History Hit subscriber? You could have access to hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week, plus early access and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

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