By Rieley McDonnell, Staff Writer
Chirstopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is not perfectly faithful to the source material which has caused discussion online about what was changed for the adaptation.
Nolan’s film is based on the ancient Greek epic poem “The Odyssey” by Homer. The movie reportedly used the Emily Wilson, a classic’s Phd translation of the work, which is notable for using modern English wording and rhyme schemes.
Wilson was interviewed for her thoughts about the film and was caustic in her remarks. She thought that Nolan’s version of Odysseus was lacking desire during his journey home from the battle-torn shores of Troy.
However, she still believes that the film is worth seeing, which is a sentiment Dr. Thomas Strunk, Xavier Associate Professor of Classics, agrees with.
“I would say, on the whole, I think it’s an honest attempt to do a faithful adaptation. I’m not the director but I think that they are trying to give someone who sees this movie a sense that they see Homer’s Odyssey in it pretty well,” Dr. Strunk said. “The movie did make changes, but overall it does give the audience a new take on the ancient work.”
A miniature replica of the Trojan Horse from Troy, one of the framing narrative devices for Nolan’s film.
Some of these changes took out elements from the poem like Odysseus narrating his journey home to kings of surrounding Greek nations. In the movie, Odysseus, rather, is relaying lost memories to Calypso, an immortal being who acted as a nurse figure to him in the film version.
“The scene that is the real loss is when Odysseus leaves Calypso’s Island, he doesn’t wash up on the shores of Ithaca. He washes up on the shores of the Phaeacians and he has nothing” Dr. Strunk said. The loss is referring to a female character in Homer’s poem named Nausicaa who Odysseus meets as he washes up on the shores of Phoenicia. Nausicaa is a young princess and maiden, a woman looking for a husband, whose archetype is in opposition to a character like Calypso who has a more seductive quality.
“We lose another image of a woman on screen, and a very interesting one. They’re different ages, different people, and he tells her – and this is one line I feel loss of in the movie – ‘May the gods give you a husband, and may the two of you be of like mind’,” Dr. Strunk said.
He believes that this scene draws a parallel between the like-mindedness that Odysseus and Penelope have; Odysseus is wishing for Nausicaa to have a similar love to his own with his wife.
Another change audiences noticed was the removal of the wedding bed. In Homer’s poem the wedding bed scene is a way for Penelope to show her cunning to both the audience and her husband.
She asks her husband to move their wedding bed from their bedchamber, which is impossible because it is carved into a tree. Readers have seen many examples of Odysseus’s trickery throughout the epic, but this scene allows Penelope to challenge that spirit and demonstrate her like-mindedness to Odysseus.
“The bed part is a nice little side story,” Dr. Strunk said. “It shows Penelope’s cleverness. Like I’m not just gonna rush back and accept you, I’m so happy my husband’s back. It’s like are you the guy I’m married to? I’ve got a challenge for you.”
Though Dr. Strunk believes the change is justifiable for the means of making the movie, which sits at almost three hours without this potential scene, shorter. The movie replaces this motif with a pin of Athena that Penelope gives Odysseus to wear so she can ask travelers if they saw the pin to give her hope of his homecoming.
The movie was a box office hit and though there are critiques, from average viewers and classic experts, the film makes a good faith attempt to adapt the historic poem.
“What is so neat about the story of the Odyssey is that we can find ourselves in the three main family members,” Dr. Strunk said. “There are times in our lives when we’re waiting desperately for someone to return to us. There are times when we want to set out and become our own person. And there are times when we desperately want to get back home.”