Homer for Modern Man
With the threat, looming over our heads, that a film version of the Odyssey is soon to be released, a number of people (at least two or three of them) have persuaded me to sift through my numerous lectures--some of them never delivered--on Homer, to provide some background and perhaps a needed anecdote to the Hollywood movie.
The movie, we are informed, is to be directed by Christopher Nolan, who declares he will be absolutely faithful to the work. How that statement is consistent with casting Mat Damon as Odysseus is anybody's guess. Since I've never seen any of Nolan's films--the enthusiastic accounts of film reviewers repelled me--I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Once upon a time his schooling--Westminster School and University College London--might have beaten a little Greek into him, but those days are gone.
Nonetheless, I promise to watch the film as soon as it is available for home viewing, The last film we saw in a theater, apart from old movies shown in the afternoon when no one was in the theater, was The Sixth Sense. It has been decades since American moviegoers knew how to behave in public places.
As the pieces on Homer are posted, please let me know if there is too little or--what is likely--too much information. For the next three weeks, I shall have to slack off from participation, since we shall be in Rome, Arezzo, Pisa, and again Rome.
Christopher Nolan is a genre hack, although nowadays what used to be B movies and drive-in fodder have become grossly expensive Oscar-bait stuff. I’ve seen just one of Sir Christopher’s flickers, Dunkirk (2017), which could have been worse but not louder, rivaling Blade Runner(1982) at aural bludgeoning.
Ray, I couldn’t enjoy Dunkirk, either. Partly it is an audio bludgeoning, but also he turned an epic logistical miracle of the rescue of thousands of soldiers into an isolated affair of what looked like a couple dozen soldiers on a handful of boats. Apart from Nolan’s Batman movies, I think the only other movie of his that I remember seeing was “Memento” which was clever in a sordid kind of way. I haven’t seen it in decades, though.
And as far as this new movie goes – Zendaya as Athena is either one of the worst casting choices in history or absolutely hilarious. Or maybe both. My kids and I have less than zero hope that the movie will be anything other than abysmal.
I’m betting that Nolan does for the Odyssey what he did for Dunkirk. I found Dunkirk to be almost unwatchable (we persevered). We did watch the special features because we wanted to find out what in the world (I am trying to avoid the more colorful phrases that come to mind, which seem to be to be more appropriate) the creators were thinking of when they spent so much time and money on something so little worth both. In them it became abundantly obvious that Nolan & co. got so caught up in “authenticity”, which they apparently equated with the look of the thing, that they completely jumbled the narrative so as to make it almost impossible to follow. It’s a shame because Nolan’s movie will forever be the artistic monument to a series of events that deserved much better treatment.
I look forward to the series on Homer.