Beanscast: The Odyssey [TEASER]

That's a long time to spend on one beach.

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier.

• 0:04Kirk Hamilton?

  And I'm Kirk Hamilton, and hello.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 0:07Jason Schreier?

  Hello.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Hi.

• 0:08Jason Schreier?

  It's been a long journey, and we made it here.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  It's been 20, 21-ish years.

• 0:14Kirk Hamilton?

  10 of them just spent on a beach, apparently.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Our podcast child is grown up.

• 0:19Jason Schreier?

  Seven of them on a beach.

• 0:20Kirk Hamilton?

  No, 10 of them on a beach outside Troy, and then seven on a beach.

• 0:24Jason Schreier?

  Yes, seven on a different beach.

• 0:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Seven on a more hospitable beach with Charlize Theron.

• 0:29Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I think.

• 0:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Doing drugs and having sex.

• 0:32Jason Schreier?

  Given those two choices, I think I would go with the Charlize Theron one.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  At least, as depicted in this movie, definitely the Charlize Theron one, and maybe also as depicted in the original poem, but we'll get into it. We're, of course, talking about The Odyssey today, but before we even get into that, just want to say thank you. You are a member, and we appreciate you. And we watched The Odyssey, and probably so did you, or you just want to hear what we think about it, even if you didn't see it.

• 0:59Kirk Hamilton?

  Based on the numbers of people going to this movie, probably so did you.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  You probably saw it, but hey, if you just want to listen, that's fine, too. We do all know the story of The Odyssey, and that's something that I figured we'd start off talking about today is by talking about our history with The Odyssey as a poem and a cultural artifact, and then we can talk about what we each thought about the movie. So I'll start off with my Odyssey, the poem history. I'm an English major, so I had to read The Odyssey multiple times. And then, when I saw this movie, which I'll just go ahead and say I really enjoyed, I came home and was like, I just want to read The Odyssey again. And so I did that. I read The Odyssey again before we recorded this very episode,

• 1:44Speaker 00

  specifically the Emily Wilson translation, which is notable for being written in both iambic pentameter and also really plain language. So it's a real breezy read, which I would say recommends it a lot. So yeah, I love, I love The Odyssey. I love all versions of it. I think it's a really cool story, and we're going to talk about why it's so resonant today. Kirk, what's your history with The Odyssey, the poem?

• 2:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I studied it in high school, but didn't read the whole thing. And I believe that was before the Emily Wilson translation.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, that one's pretty recent.

• 2:16Kirk Hamilton?

  So I'm not sure what translation I would have been reading, and then just went to see the movie. So I've absorbed a lot of different scenes from it. I think I read some kind of illustrated version of it also when I was a kid. And then I'm just very familiar with the most famous sequences that are depicted in the movie, the Cyclops, the sirens, and I'm just aware of the Iliad in The Odyssey. Though I've never seen Troy, actually.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I've actually also seen Troy. I saw it in cinemas for some reason.

• 2:45Kirk Hamilton?

  Apparently, people are watching Troy a lot after seeing The Odyssey. And also, apparently, that movie isn't very good.

• 2:49Jason Schreier?

  No, not a great, not a great film.

• 2:51Kirk Hamilton?

  People are watching it after The Odyssey, being like, oh, this wasn't this good.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  It's not hitting at all.

• 2:56Jason Schreier?

  Well, but fun fact, Christopher Nolan was originally slated to direct that movie.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 3:02Jason Schreier?

  And then he got taken off of it for another director, and as a consolation, he was given a little old movie called Batman Begins.

• 3:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, and we all know how that.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  That went okay, I think, for him and his career. Jason, how about you? What's your Odyssey?

• 3:15Jason Schreier?

  So my, so are you guys familiar with this book that I'm holding up?

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:21Jason Schreier?

  This is Delores's Book of Greek Myths, a classic, a real classic, with some just incredible illustrations. I adored this book as a child, so much that I went and bought a more modern, like a modern version to give to my children. This is a book that has a lot of Greek mythology in it, most of the big ones, including the entire story of The Odyssey, just kind of summed up in a few pages, because it's more meant for kids. And so that was my main exposure to that story, is just reading this particular book of Greek myths over and over again. So I knew the whole story from that. But no, I never read the poem or anything. I find poems pretty difficult to enjoy. I'm a voracious reader,

• 4:05Jason Schreier?

  but I only have prose, I would say.

• 4:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Not into poetry.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. I will say, if you're going to read one, the Emily Wilson version, despite being an iambic pentameter, does not rhyme. And because it's in plain language, it just kind of, it's, it's a real breeze to read. But I also, the other versions of The Odyssey that I read were very ornately written, and that can be a tough hang. And I think that something we're going to get into today is Nolan's decision to also have a lot of the movie be in plain language, which is probably the only thing about the movie that I have some mixed feelings about. Otherwise, I thought it was really cool, and I enjoyed the heck

• 4:49Speaker 00

  out of it. And even though it was three hours, I did not notice the time for most of it, and truly was like, this is incredible, and I love this ride that I'm on. And even though it has a lot of really unusual differences from the original poem, I think those differences say a lot about the message that Nolan wanted to send and the themes that he wanted to include. And we can get into those as we talk about the film, but I think that the changes are also really cool. So Kirk, what did you think of the movie? You saw it twice. You're the only one of us who saw it twice, I think. Lucky.

• 5:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I loved it. And I loved it even more the second time. I saw this movie two times. My nieces were in town and really wanted to see it with us, so we found tickets for a morning IMAX screening. And I went and saw it the first time in IMAX, not IMAX 70 millimeter, just regular IMAX, because there are a variety of different formats for this movie, which is a little bit interesting.

• 5:53Jason Schreier?

  How many millimeters is regular IMAX?

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:55Kirk Hamilton?

  I can't remember, but it's not, it's a little bit cropped in some way. And so it is close to the ultimate way to see it. But there are only a handful of theaters in the world that can show it in the full, true IMAX 70 millimeter, which Nolan famously shot this entire movie in IMAX, which has never been done before, or he certainly has not done it, for a feature like this. He would add more and more IMAX sequences to his films. But, you know, like in Oppenheimer, for example, all of the sequences with the bomb going off, that was all shot in IMAX with IMAX cameras, but other parts of the movie were shot with regular cameras. This entire movie shot with IMAX cameras, apparently quite a technical feat. So first viewing was in IMAX. I really liked it. I was pretty

• 6:40Kirk Hamilton?

  overwhelmed by it. It's really overwhelming in IMAX. Did either of you see this movie in IMAX?

• 6:44Speaker 00

  No, just the regular way.

• 6:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay, so that was, it was, it's quite intense. It's huge. It's really loud in IMAX, and a pretty cool first way to see it. And then, I had already bought tickets to see it with some friends at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, which can show films in 70 millimeters, which is notably different from 35 millimeters. So yet another format for this movie that's somewhat rare. So I saw it in 70 millimeters at the Hollywood Theater the second time, and loved it. I was so happy to see it a second time. It really clarified the themes, the story, the narrative and the script for me, and made that all tie together better. The sound mix was much more intelligible. And it was also kind of

• 7:30Kirk Hamilton?

  a more fun theater experience. It was completely sold out. And the Hollywood is just a regular movie theater. So there are laugh lines in this movie that actually landed in that theater, where everyone would laugh. You know, there are some kind of yeah moments where everyone would get excited. I could feel the audience a lot more that second time. And then I was just following the story a lot better, and was very happy to have that second viewing. So I loved it both times, but in particular, the second time.

• 7:55Jason Schreier?

  Best yeah moment, when Odysseus shoots an arrow straight into the neck of Polypus, the seater.

• 8:02Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes. We've been waiting for that guy to get it the entire movie, and then he really, you're Odysseus.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  You're reminding me, Kirk, that when I saw it in the theater, the guy next to me was literally pumping his fists at various points in ways that I think were purely involuntary, and it was, it was very endearing. It definitely charged me up. He was, he was way, way into the movie. Seeing a movie in cinemas, you know, nothing like it.

• 8:24Kirk Hamilton?

  Turns out, people are really into it, based on a few different movies lately, but this one in particular.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  So Jason, what'd you think about the movie?

• 8:32Jason Schreier?

  I absolutely loved this movie, everything about it. I want to go see it again immediately.

• 8:39Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I recommend it.

• 8:40Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 8:41Kirk Hamilton?

  If you loved it the first time, you'll love it the second.

• 8:43Jason Schreier?

  It's like, when you have source material this strong, you kind of have an unfair advantage. But Nolan is such a good filmmaker, and you can see so many of the tricks and techniques and styles that he's learned over the years, just playing into this. I mean, even just on a structural level, his playing with nonlinear storytelling over the years really pays off here. I think it's executed extremely well, and it's never confusing. I think, I never saw Memento, but from what I've heard, it can be a little bit confusing. And I think this is way, way, way more straightforward than nonlinear, like it's a very well-executed nonlinear storytelling. And also, just kind of like, he has this classic thing that he

• 9:24Jason Schreier?

  does the most in Inception, but he does this in a few movies, where there'll be one kind of like fulcrum point scene that we'll keep seeing little clips of over the course of the movie, and it's usually an emotional anchor in some way. And when we finally see the entire thing, it changes the nature of what we thought a certain character was doing or behaving or thinking about or whatever. And in this case, it's the Battle of Troy, which we keep getting clips of throughout the movie. And then it's finally revealed towards the end why Odysseus has gotten all this PTSD, and we see the whole thing, and we see that the Athena that he's been seeing is actually the manifestation of this priestess that they killed, that his men killed. And to me, that was extremely well done. And yeah, I mean, I loved every moment of it. The fact that it was three hours, and

• 10:09Jason Schreier?

  like, I didn't feel the need to, like, look at my phone or go to get a pre-break, or like, like, I never felt like three hours. I think that is such a triumph in and of itself, that he made a three-hour movie that never once felt like three hours.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally agree. I also really appreciated the use of music in that moment, and the tying together of the siren song with the sacking of Troy. That was a nice reveal. I see Kirk smiling, I'm sure.

• 10:38Kirk Hamilton?

  Can I talk about that a little bit?

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Please, please. Version of The Odyssey, like Zeus's Law. Is another thing that is like really present in this that's also in the original. And the concept of like being polite to people, to outsiders. And at many, many points, Odysseus and his men are not polite to polite house guests.

• 11:00Kirk Hamilton?

  And their hosts are not polite to them.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  True, very true.

• 11:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Because the world has kind of fallen before the point of this story. Like again and again, they arrive somewhere and are just immediately set upon turning into pigs, murdered. I mean, it's clear that like something is wrong. They just, they show up saying, hey, we're here. Maybe we're nice Greeks, you know, I'm Hymesh Patel, I seem nice, right? But then they're just, there's no time for them to even prove good intention. And then they just, they just are immediately treated with hostility.

• 11:28Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I mean, I guess the implication there is that they violated the law so badly in Troy. They violated this concept of Zeus's law so badly in their original sin that the world is punishing them accordingly.

• 11:43Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, to burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire to break Zeus's law forever.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Is that a quote from the movie?

• 11:51Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, which I, I think is probably the biggest change in this movie from the poem. And it is something-

• 11:59Kirk Hamilton?

  And the central idea as well.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Undergirds the entire story, which is the idea that the Trojan horse, rather than being Odysseus's genius moment and like kind of the thing that makes him like almost this superheroic character that is kind of described as such by, by people, is instead something that he sees as a big problem and like a violation of Zeus's law to a degree that he feels personal shame for it. And that is something that he carries with him for the entire story as opposed to it being like, kind of cool. Like this cool thing that he did.

• 12:36Jason Schreier?

  By the way, he can't be that much of a genius if it took him 10 years of sitting on a beach to figure this out. Like you would think it would take him a little less time.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, is Odysseus really that smart? Let's get into it.

• 12:47Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, come on, 10 years?

• 12:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Those 10 years are glossed over somewhat. And they, they kind of just say it at one point, we've been on this beach for 10 years. And you're like, 10 years? Like, really, that is a long time. That beach doesn't have a lot on it. What are you eating?

• 13:02Jason Schreier?

  That's a lot of sand.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  And like, they really could not even get inside Troy in this version of the story. Like they literally couldn't get in at all. And like, the battle is essentially a stalemate because they can't even get past the gates at all. So the only solution is-

• 13:17Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, you kind of have to just let that, let that part go. But, um, but yeah, that, I mean, that idea of, of a single man having one idea that's so great and terrible that it breaks the world is of course also the theme of Oppenheimer, which is explored very similarly. And I think that this movie, as much as it's in conversation with a lot of Nolan's work, there are echoes certainly of Inception in a lot of this movie, um, which has kind of come to be my favorite of Nolan's. Um, and I guess we should reference or mention here that we did an episode on Nolan's movies.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  We did.

• 13:50Kirk Hamilton?

  A little more of us talking about Chris Nolan from a year or two.

• 13:52Jason Schreier?

  We've watched a lot of Nolan.

• 13:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, so we're, you know, we've done some of the, some of the homework to get ready for this. So while this movie is in conversation with Inception, going to a beach with a beautiful woman and like living in a fantasy world that you eventually have to wake up for being one big part, and just a man trying to get home.

• 14:10Jason Schreier?

  Even a talisman, even his little talisman that he's always-

• 14:12Kirk Hamilton?

  A man trying to get home to his family and, and being, you know, trapped in exile, of course. Also a very common theme, I mean, also in Interstellar, something that comes up again and again. Clearly it's something that Nolan worries about or-

• 14:24Jason Schreier?

  It's wife guys.

• 14:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Fascinates him.

• 14:25Jason Schreier?

  Wife guys all love her.

• 14:27Kirk Hamilton?

  Wife, yeah, he's a family man for sure. And he does love his family, which is something I find very endearing about him. But I think that this movie thematically is very in conversation with Oppenheimer. Another, I think, just excellent movie that I want to re-watch. Another very long movie that did not feel long to me when I was watching it. And another movie that just is fascinated by this idea that one man can have an idea so, that can win, an idea that wins a war too, like an idea that leads to violence that's so outside of what he thought he was doing, that his cleverness becomes a curse and he damns a whole civilization. I mean, that this is really a tragedy. I find the ending of this movie to be so sad and so, it's so tragic.

• 15:10Kirk Hamilton?

  And it really makes you, me, I mean, I think that this is very much about the world we live in today and what's happening in our world today. And it's, you know, it's, it's so interesting that it became a culture war flashpoint for very superficial reasons, when in fact it's such a strong condemnation of so much of what the right wing in America and all these people in political power are doing.

• 15:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, man, it's so funny. The culture war stuff is, I, I don't really want to talk about that, but it's just so funny because it was controversy over these characters that have like two lines in the entire movie, which is just so funny.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, funny thing, I was sad that Lupita Nyong'o didn't get more to do in the movie because I think she's so good is Helen and Clyde Jimnester in the very, very brief scenes that she gets to play those two characters.

• 15:59Jason Schreier?

  So Kirk, to your point about the ending, when he's talking about how like the bards will sing these songs because no one will remember how to write, I immediately thought of ChatGPT.

• 16:10Jason Schreier?

  How, how, how that just felt like the, like a subtle condemnation of this world where like, nobody knows how to write because the machines do it for them.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  It's in keeping with Nolan's politics. Famously, he has not owned a smartphone. He does not use text or email. Like he's really a true Luddite in so many respects and has so much, uh, kind of intense feeling about that. Like people can look that up and find that to be true of him and how he feels about technology.

• 16:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, I do think that's true about his views of technology. I certainly, I mean, I read this story to be a lot about immigration and about how we treat immigrants and people coming to our country, because that is the big theme of this, you know, of this movie is that when someone comes to you and they need something, you treat them as though they're a god in disguise. You have to open your house to them and take care of them. And then throughout the movie, nobody does that. And that's what's happening in America right now. Like that's what's happening in the world. Not only we, and then we're also, of course, we're like waging war in Iran and attacking people for like literally no reason. And so like, we're both waging war abroad and not welcoming people to our home. And that, that kind of is how a civilization begins to fall.

• 17:22Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, there is this, like the end of the Bronze Age and the like 400 odd years of darkness that came afterward. That's a real thing that Nolan is fascinated with. And I think he, he almost feels as though he found in history, one of those little Nolan, those little Nolan keys that you mentioned, Jason. This is just reading interviews with him. In this discussion of the people from the sea and how the people from the sea are a phenomenon that is in history of like, something happened and there were just like raiders coming from the sea that just caused various, you know, kingdoms to fall and this kind of, you know, interlocking, sort of not globalist, but a similar kind of like broader order to collapse because, you know, just someone was attacking.

• 18:07Kirk Hamilton?

  And he's like, it's actually a pretty credible theory that the people from the sea were just kind of themselves because there probably wasn't some external force. It was just a series of different things that led this society to collapse and lose written language and to take so long to come back. And then he is, he's basically saying, this has happened before and this can happen again. I mean, the final line of this movie, right, is a new dawn will break over the darkened world and our mistakes will once again be forgotten. It's incredibly chilling. Like it is, yeah, it's funny, you know, Matty, you wrote restoration fantasy in the themes. I see this movie as an anti-restation fantasy. This is a movie about breaking a civilization and not being able to fix it.

• 18:49Kirk Hamilton?

  And as triumphant as that homecoming at the end is, it's truly tragic in the end. And Telemachus is not going to be able to like return Ithaca to glory. The world is falling into darkness and the Bronze Age is over.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I also think that this movie does-