What to do on an afternoon when going outside will sting your eyes and choke you on wildfire smoke? Go to a three-hour film, of course!
That's what we did yesterday, watching Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Oppenheimer is a hard act to follow and The Odyssey doesn't quite measure up but it is a powerful film. To be fair, how do you convey one of the great mythological stories of human history in just three hours. Nolan manages to fit in the big ticket moments including the Trojan Horse, The Cyclops, The Sirens, and a whole lot more. The encounter with the Cyclops is harrowing, as is Circe turning Odysseus' crew members into swine.
What I wasn't expecting was that in the first few minutes King Odysseus, powerful leader and sojourner, speaks of xenia, the Law of Zeus, which is essentially described as "do to others as you would have them do to you". If this sounds familiar, it is a version of the Golden Rule expounded in most religions and taught by Jesus.
After Odysseus returns from his epic journey after many years and reunites with his queen Penelope he muses again about this Law and concedes that he has failed to live up to it in many ways.
I really don't know if this is part of Homer's Odyssey or an addition by film-maker Nolan. Either way, it feels as though it is inserted into the narrative rather than enhancing it to any degree. And Odysseus does a fair amount of slaying after his epiphany.
In the film Odysseus visits Hades and encounters those he has known and have died, including members of his crew. I wonder if Homer meets Jesus in the afterlife? It may not be the same Homer in the image below.
We're glad we went to see The Odyssey, even though Ruth chose to close her eyes through some of the gore. I'll do some reflecting on it in the days ahead. It would have been spectacular in an Imax theatre.
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