‘The Odyssey’ and Baptizing Myth

To quote Director Christopher Nolan’s greatest film, The Dark Knight, “Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.” On Saturday evening, mine was when I viewed his adaptation of The Odyssey.

But many on the Right, especially the hyper online Right, came in believing (and hoping) they would dislike what they predetermined to be woke denial of western culture, and to further quote The Dark Knight‘s Bruce Wayne, “Sometimes the truth isn’t good enough… Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”

It has provided them many a hot take on social media, but it has also deprived them an opportunity of seeing that, rather than jettisoning the western tradition, Nolan has done the most western thing possible, following a long line of western storytellers, he baptized the myth he loved. Understanding that allows the viewer to understand the beauty of what Nolan has done and our own birth right as inheritors of the western cannon.

The chief critiques have been that Nolan radically changes the story not just in casting choices that critics find distressing but with the direction of the tale itself. They dislike Odysseus feeling guilt and shame over the Trojan Horse because they feel it makes him weak. They claim that he is now just a man with PTSD. There have also been complaints about Nolan equating Zeus’s Law (xenia) with the golden rule. Also, Odysseus’s affairs on his way home have been stripped from the story.

These themes are present only if a person insists on reading the least charitable take possible into the movie.

In college, I fell in love with Anglo-Saxon literature as a window into a past exceedingly different from our present culture and yet preparing to become our culture through the introduction of Christianity. That is what King Arthur is about, the waning of the Celts and the glory of the dawning Christian Britain ruled by a king, who, as time went on, began to more and more resemble Christ. Beowulf, too, preceded the introduction of Christianity, and yet, the tale we are left with blends the two, with characters tracing their lineage back to the biblical Cain. Their literature shows us their desire to root their history in the biblical epic. It also demonstrates what they found compatible between their old culture and the new faith. Even more fascinating, it shows us why the faith was compelling to them. We see a culture come face to face with the gospel for the first time and find it enchanted them. It’s an encounter that we, who have the blessing of living in a time that is saturated with the vestiges of faith, can’t fully comprehend.

Interestingly, great literature of the past also provides commentary on The Odyssey. For those complaining that Nolan is destroying Odysseus, who they are discussing as a model of masculinity, cunning, and virtue, I would remind them that the poet Dante Alighieri places him within the 8^th circle of Hell for possessing precisely the qualities that The Odyssey treats as virtues. Notably, it is the Roman poet Virgil that guides Dante through the different levels of Hell. His Aeneid paints a less charming picture of Odysseus.

Nolan, then, doesn’t seem to be making his updates out of whole cloth. Rather, he has taken in voices weighing in throughout the western tradition and added his.

The weariness towards directors distorting beloved intellectual property is understandable, but this is not the Star Wars sequels — and not only because it is within the public domain. There is no evidence that Nolan hates the source material with which he is working. On the contrary, he has taken the time to understand how the broader western tradition has seen the story before adding his own mark. That is acceptable, respectful, and in accord with the tradition.

Also, when is the last time our cultural discourse has been elevated to debating The Odyssey? For that alone, Nolan deserves our gratitude.

More present to us, both British authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien baptized their favorite myths. They were not destroyers of the old epic poems, but rightful inheritors, and their work honored this inheritance.

As for the specific changes, it is wrong to say that Nolan makes Odysseus a bitter man with post-traumatic stress. He shows a man who carries great weight and remorse for violating the natural law (Zeus’s Law). At one point, Nolan, a lapsed Catholic, even has Odysseus dressed as a beggar confessing his failings through a screen. The imagery is that of contrition for an action that, as Odysseus explains, has caused such a great rupture of the natural law that it has resulted in the corruption and downfall of his culture.

There is a far greater emphasis on the value of human persons than the original tale would allow. Nolan’s The Odyssey is clear that Odysseus is wrong for not burying the dead, for sacrificing young Greek warrior Sinon, and for use of the Trojan Horse because it was unjust. In the end, Nolan’s Odysseus must leave Ithaca not for Dante’s adventure, but because sin requires atonement. These are Christian virtues brought into the Odyssey, and that is good. It is also striking that Nolan’s Odysseus doesn’t have affairs and engage in casual sex. Apparently, we want our epic heroes to be better than our current moral standards.

The newly Christianized Anglo-Saxons wrote to show why they embraced the gospel. Nolan’s The Odyssey tells us why our increasingly secularized world is unwilling to fully reject the gospel.

If the sanctimonious self-appointed lone guardians of the western tradition can’t get their act together long enough to take the win, then they will not only lose elections, they will miss the moment, and forfeit the culture, and with it the tradition they claim to love. That is a tragedy worthy of the Greeks.

More from IRD:

Nolan’s “Odyssey” Is a Defense of Western Civilization