Mere Fidelity
Mere Fidelity
Examining Nolan’s Odyssey
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In what may be a Mere Fidelity first, the guys discuss a current popular movie--The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan. It's said that art holds up a mirror to culture. What do Derek, Brad, and Alistair see when they look into this post-Christian, pre-pagan, ambiguous adaptation?
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Derek RishmawyHello
Why This Movie Became A Phenomenon
Derek Rishmawyand welcome to another episode of Mere Fidelity, a podcast by Mere Orthodoxy, where we think about the Word of God and the world we live in. My name is Derek Rushmali, and I'll be your host for the day. I am joined by regular cast and crew members Alistair Roberts and Brad East. Good to see you, fellas. So we we've had kind of a two-week break, hiatus, and we thought we'd come back with a bang by having a spicy, hot, really actually fairly cold and late take on the Odyssey, because uh you're really not a take uh a takehaver unless you've had a take on on uh on on the Odyssey. I think we're all professional takehavers. I don't know if that's like the technical term here, but we we all qualify. Um so yeah, Nolan's Odyssey, which is just as a first meta take. I'm not sure we've had a movie discussion yet. We we we we used to rally, we used to lobby Matt for years, and he manfully vetoed us constantly. But but Odyssey um broke the film embargo discussion here.
SPEAKER_01And I think that in the novel discussion.
Derek RishmawyI know, I know, right now.
SPEAKER_01Um, but that was not even on our show. It was hold on, guys.
Derek RishmawyI'm having a meta take. I'm having a meta take. The the thing that's fascinating, though, is um the fact that this film has provoked this amount of conversation like across the aisle, across all these different ways. What's fascinating because like Spider-Man, uh the new Spider-Man movie just came out um this last weekend, and it's set to take like 360 uh million or so some huge opening, right? The most ever. Yeah, one of the most ever. Like, you know, I don't know if in if injust if adjusted for inflation, that's true. But in terms of cultural discussion, I've seen zero, right? It's a Spider-Man movie, whatever. And I love Spider-Man. Spider-Man's the guy. But the fact that this film has generated so much discussion is in itself discussion worthy. Uh, before we even get to the film, that was that was one of the first things that stood out to me uh about the whole phenomenon. But um I want to hear you guys, you guys have seen it. What are your you know responses? Brad, you wrote up a long response. Um, but but if you guys want to kick it, uh how how did you feel about the movie? Give me your feelings, guys. Give me your raw emotions.
SPEAKER_01Alistair, you first. Well, I do think it's better to have a colder take on this movie than some of the hot takes that preceded the movie's release. One of the main impressions I had was that the movie really embarrassed many of the people who made premature judgments about it. And whatever your take on it, I think, um it was not what some people were setting it up to be.
SPEAKER_03Um Alistair, for those of us who don't have social media or know the discourse, could you say what you're talking about?
SPEAKER_01Well, a lot of it was down to casting decisions. Um Elliot Page, of course, but other situations, um the other details of the casting and um statements about the use of Wilson's translation. People were just saying this is going to be an extreme so-called woke um representation of the Odyssey, and that everything's going to be betrayed about it.
Derek RishmawyIt's going to be a cultural humiliation ritual. Um that was the generalized like kind of right-wing take. This is going to be like an this is going to be w-this is going to be a woke monstrosity, that sort of thing. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01And it's going to fail completely fail at the box.
Premature Backlash And Casting Discourse
Derek RishmawyWell, and and and what was I mean, that's a whole nother thing is, you know, Dark Knight Returns being one of the most one of the most prominent right-wing or at least small c conservative anti-Marxist uh films in the last 25 years. But but that whole phenomenon of like, we've we've got to s we've got to see things coming and we've we have to have a take before the thing even comes out. Um and sometimes you can see these things coming. You know, there's things that just inevitably are going to happen. But I I I I will admit I was worried about a couple of things. I was like, oh gosh, is this the is this the first time he's gonna fail me? But I'm not- No, no, he not not not yet. Not yet. And so I I withheld, I withheld judgment until I experienced it. But um but what about the film itself? Yeah, so yeah, I agree. I d I do not think it was I do not think it was that, but what about the film itself? Um Brad, Alistair, did you guys like it? What was it was it good actually, or was it an you know a disappointment on reflection or what?
SPEAKER_03My my my two cents, which which as Derek alluded to, I I I finally had to write up uh as a takehaber, I had to give my take, at least to myself. Uh I figured if I was sending messages to friends, I could just collect those messages and put them into a blog post. You know, my my meta take on top of Derek and Alistair's both is that like it it is good, it is good to wait on these things and not to say what we think three seconds after a movie ends on Twitter or whatever. My my TLDR was I liked it, and in many respects um it was uh thrilling and the craftsmanship was extraordinary, the music was wonderful, many performances were great, many episodes were ten out of ten, uh not least among them Circe. But uh thematically, uh narratively, artistically, I suppose I don't want to call it a failure, but I think it I think he m missed his uh missed his shot. Um you can see what he was going for, and you can't it's not just that you can see it, he tells you in the final 15 minutes. He just has characters say out loud the take-home message verbatim that he wants you to have. And that is a that is a uh a temptation that Nolan has in some of his writing as the script as the screenwriter for all of his own films to to lay out the to make the subtext text. But even if he had uh shown rather than told at the end, I was I I thought he made two or three crucial mistakes that wouldn't have made it less Nolan but but
Craft, IMAX Spectacle, Standout Scenes
SPEAKER_03would have made it more successful. And I can say more about that in a moment, but I don't actually know where y'all where y'all landed. But we have it we have not pre-gamed this episode, so I literally don't know what y'all think.
SPEAKER_01I largely agree with that. But it was I mean, brilliantly executed in many respects, certainly technically. I think of the work and the filming, the use of IMAX throughout was remarkable. Certain scenes really stood out. The Cersei scene was amazing, the Cyclops scene was spectacular as well. As an Oland movie, I was expecting a thoughtful engagement with the source material. It's not my favorite um version of the Odyssey. That is still, Oh brother, where art thou? Yes, it's up there.
Derek RishmawyYeah. I I I'll say what when I went in, I I went in kind of apprehensive, but wanting like, hey, this is this is Nolan. I'm gonna go, I'm I'm not going in. We can talk about this adaptations versus adaptations, right? Um uh I went in not expecting Homer's Odyssey. I went in expecting Nolan's Odyssey. Yeah. I went in expecting a Christopher Nolan film. Christopher It's like it's like when you go to Batman, when you go to Batman Begins or The Dark Knight, you're like, okay, I'm expecting a Batman movie. Kind of. It was a Batman movie, but it's a Nolan movie.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Derek RishmawyIs Batman. And that's kind of how I felt about this going in. And so because I wasn't thinking uh we were gonna get, um, I was actually surprised because I had um I was under the impression, I was under the impression that he was going to um uh he was gonna dem kind of demythologize it even more. Kind of I I wasn't sure how supernatural he was gonna get. And so when the Cyclock shows up and starts ripping heads off, it's like, oh yeah, okay, we're doing this. We're doing this. Okay, oh wow. Uh an actual monster on an Olin film, instead of like, oh, the Batmobile is a Humvee, uh, you know, tactical vehicle, like, you know, there there's there's some of that. But but um so I was pleasantly surprised in certain ways. And as a film experience, um as a film experience, it was a 10 out of 10. Like, like that is a I want to go to the theater, I want to sit there and be immersed within this world that happened.
SPEAKER_01Um, but did not feel like one.
Derek RishmawyNo. No, no, no, no. The depth, there was depth there, there was I do think the you know, some of the misses for me. Um, you know, m actually Anderson talked about this online. He quoted Aristotle's Poetics, that the the the elevated style of diction was lacking. Um and I, you know, whatever, I get it, modernizing, updating, but you know, uh I think Tom Holland can say father instead of dad. Stuff like that.
SPEAKER_03People still use that word. It's not like that.
Derek RishmawyYeah, so so stuff like that. And that's a that's a fairly moderate take, I think. Overall, I enjoyed it. Overall, it's an Nolan film. It's not my favorite Nolan film. Um it's not my it's not my least. Uh actually, I think I think Tenet might be. I liked Tenet, but that was uh the sound experience was rough. But um so all that to say, fairly I'm I'm I'm squarely in the I liked it. It was a good Nolan film. I'm glad I saw it. I think it is worth going to see in the theaters. I'm really glad of what it's done for having people go buy and read the Odyssey and go and buy movie tickets and and experience them. And it really just highlights the importance of at this point in time as a meta movie comment, the importance of directors even over actors is determinative. So I'm like, I don't get excited about I occasionally get excited about Tom Kruisman because as crazy as he is, that guy knows how to pick fun fun movies. Uh but but for the most part, you're like, Vienneuve, Nolan, like, you know, whatever Edgers I can physically stand to watch. Um, you know, there's there's you're you're going in for a vision. And I that's an interesting shift, uh, I think over the years. So that's my that's my basic take. I have other thoughts on on the execution
Nolan’s Odyssey Versus Homer’s Odyssey
Derek Rishmawyand what's he try uh the question I think is what do you what do you guys think he's trying to do with this adaptation? Right? Um what do you think he's trying to do? What's he trying to say? I mean he's saying what he's trying to say, but I will say this as a comment to you, Brad. It is interesting he makes so much subtext text, right? But it is astonishing, given that he does that, how bad people still are at reading what he's doing. There's this level at which I can't remember, I was reading some article uh about how new about how certain kinds of readers, younger generation readers, have lost the capacity to read third person, um, like authorial intent and all that sort of thing. And just it's gotta all be first person, very clearly narrated and justified takes and so on and so forth. Um whereas the the the the capacity to interpret um more subtle texts and more subtle, subtle subtly thematic approaches to things is dissipating. And so you need him saying stuff like them saying stuff like our age of bronze is breaking.
SPEAKER_03It's over.
Derek RishmawyIt's over. Um that was so bad.
SPEAKER_03Uh but they'll read again one day.
Derek RishmawyYeah, they'll read again one day. Yeah, that was just a medic. That was funny. Um But that that's actually I don't I don't know if that's just a whole a nolen thing or like a will these will these people get it if I don't tell them um uh thing.
SPEAKER_03So I think it's a nolen thing. Just think of the monologue that closes the dark night, you know. But or or or the number of times in David Goyer's script in Batman Begins in the first 30 minutes that someone says fear, fear or afraid. You just just it's like a you know, just count it. See if you see how quickly you get to 10. Uh well, I want to add one more thing before we get to some of the thematic stuff, which is I think all of us are tempted to um meta-comment on the phenomenon of the movie. And Dou Dalfit, uh uh much belated ex-New York Times writer Ross Daltit, right? His his take on the movie, I thought was maybe slightly too harsh in its negativity, but his meta take was basically that the movie itself is a meta movie in that it underdetermines it it's it's a text that everybody wants to claim and gets to claim. And uh right wingers and left wingers, MAGA and woke, um uh I I I I would just encourage listeners to go read it because on one hand, he was disappointed, but in seeing the phenomenon of everyone trying to not just claim but interpret and understand the movie in light of their own views of the world, he actually thinks that Nolan, in a sense, is a director for our time because he gives these like it's like we get every three years, like a three-week period of the monoculture that existed 70 years ago, and Nolan gives it to us, and we're all just like, this is amazing. We're all just like, I was on a walk in my neighborhood last night, just seeing people who I do not talk to movies about, and they were like, Oh my gosh, did you see the Odyssey? And one it's old young, it's male-female, um, it's all the generations. The Instagram reels. There really is something like to celebrate, as you were saying, Derek. I mean, I'm a movie guy. I I I was a movie guy since I was I've always been. I mean, if I hadn't, if if I had not cared about like having a family or paying the bills, I I wanted to go into film. Uh, I was a teen, you know, checking movies off AFI's 100 list and and you know, all the dark, the dark the dark corners of the of the early like film internet. And I just I just love, I genuinely like uh sincerely no irony or asterisk. Like I just love that every once in a while this guy drops a cultural bomb on us and we all and we all get to share it together. And even if he comes up short in certain respects, it's I think it's a it's a genuine model of what the form, the aesthetic form of film can do, because I think film was built for popular art more than any other um. Yeah, you talked about it. That is worth celebrating.
Derek RishmawyYou you talked about that in your piece, you talked about it not being actually a highbrow art form, but uh uh an upper middle brow. Yeah. And I thought that was actually perceptive. You can have really smart films. The truly highbrow films, though, are uh I I get why they work. I understand why they're good. I don't enjoy them oftentimes. It's just it's like it's it's a thing. But but this kind of thing, uh my upper register is Witt Stillman, but um the this kind of we're gonna make you think enough um, you know, an interstellar or an inception or whatever, but it it's still you've still got big explosions, you know. Uh and it's it's it's uh what's what is it? What did you say? Michael Bay with a master's degree? Is that like a bad way of it?
SPEAKER_03I didn't say that, but that's I would call that.
Derek RishmawyWould you say no? But but my point is that but no, that there's a sense that's not a dig. I'm just trying to think of like but he's still trying to do he's he's dealing with elevated he's dealing with elevated themes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
Derek RishmawyRight? Um uh that wasn't meant to be a mean comment, but I'm saying is that.
SPEAKER_03Let's say let's say let's say Ridley Scott with a master's degree.
Derek RishmawyI like Ridley Scott as is. Sure. Right? Dude, man, Man on Fire, Gladiator. Sure. They're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_03But he has he has he he doesn't have the master's degree. See Napoleon, not not successful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Alistair, what about you?
SPEAKER_01I think the larger cultural phenomenon, getting back to that point. It's amazing the difference between you mentioned the Spider-Man movie, you might think of the Avatar movies that just sold so much in the way of tickets, and just no cultural impact. Hardly anyone remember movies. And yet something like this does have that monoculture effect. And there's also something about this movie that I I don't think I don't think Nolan was going for Homer's Odyssey so much as Nolan's Odyssey. And this is a story that's been told in many forms over many centuries, and he gives us his take upon it. And for that reason I don't think it's fairly compared to the original, as if that's exactly what he was going for. At many points I think he gives a divergence from the what we would think of as the source material, but he's
Time Jumps, Memory, Apparent Magic
SPEAKER_01giving us his own telling of it. One thing I do find interesting is watching it, the use of time within an Oland movie, it's often a common feature. The um jumping around in time in something like Memento or Dunkirk, it's very common with the different timelines that are overlapping or inception. And this was like that with all the reminiscences and the nested uh narratives within the larger narrative and the various retrospectives and reminiscences, it's not always entirely clear where they fit in, nor whether the things that are being recounted are reliable because many of them are happening on Calypso's Island, but it's not entirely clear. Are these actual memories of things that actually happened or are is this being imagined back into the past? You might also think about the beginning where it's introduces in a time of apparent magic. Yeah. Is it as clear as all that that just because we've seen the Cyclops in one scene, that this is in fact actually intended to be magic?
Derek RishmawyNo, this is what I was gonna ask you because I initially went in with I was I assumed we were gonna get a a a Nolan uh you know, a disenchantment Nolan in the same way that Batman was disenchanted, and so so and so on and so forth. We're gonna get some version of that. Um but then I guess we're gonnap Nolan instead. But we got that, and I wasn't I I wasn't initially as convinced. I thought I was like, dude, the the the the the cyclops is there, how are how's it real? There's a lot of stuff where I'm looking at it, it's like everybody being dead, um, he's eaten the lotus flowers, like he's gone for there there's a lot of that stuff where this feels like some some big some big catastrophes that I mean happened. Uh and I I was going for a more hey, this is the my initial take was I I think he went for a like a like a supernatural realism. Like what would the what would what would experiencing the gods feel like to an ancient person who actually they thought the gods were real, right? They thought the gods were real. They thought they were in in in in in the in the oceans and in the seas and in the in the in the in the fields and all these sorts of things. And nevertheless, uh they're there and they're not, right? You you see them and you don't. So I thought he was going for realism. I I I do see the spinning top interpretation a little bit more uh than I did before, especially just because of the opening quote, which I'd forgotten for most of it, which in a time in a time of apparent magic, that sort of thing. Um so I don't know. I go back and forth. I I still think this felt like a more supernatural realism thing. But and I and in some interviews he kind of said it when it came to the interpretation of the gods, it it's also hard to not do it without it looking goofy.
unknownRight?
Derek RishmawyYou end up in like Moses can't be Moses and the gods of Egypt territory or or or the whatever the whatever the yeah the Flash of the Titans, yeah. It's hard to avoid that. And Zendaya was about the only way you could do that sort of thing. And even that, I don't even think it was a it was a I don't even think that interpretation, spoiler guys, was the was just a uh was just uh oh man, he's traumatized and so he's you know, he he's he's projecting that girl's face. It's also it it's it's very it's very possible to read that as a hey, you know, Athena is adopting the face of one of her priestesses specifically to speak to him and and do that in a way that's driving home the point. That that's that's that fits really nicely within the super within a supernaturalist frame. It doesn't have to be a disenchanted, traumatic take. So that's kind of where I am at. I'm like probably 75, 80 percent supernatural realism, but I can see the I can see the apparent uh take. I can see the spinning top, so to speak. What about you guys?
SPEAKER_03I I I have two thoughts there. One is that one is that I think the apparent magic thing is basically Nolan's narrative cover for displaying things that may or may not be real, and then he does that via mem the memories of a traumatized soldier. I i i I understand why he does it. I don't think he needed to because people are coming to this story primed for Cersei and the Cyclops and the Giants and so on. And uh I I think that to me, that is Nolan uh when he's at his when he's being too clever by half. Like he just doesn't need he just doesn't need it. Like, does is the movie changed by by dropping that card? No, it's not changed. And we don't we don't need the possibility that it's only his memories rationalizing the loss of all of his men. It had to have been magic and the gods, right? I that I think he has made the text uh admit of that interpretation, but that interpretation uh is a lesser film, and it it's not, and by and large, it's not the movie that he made. And second,
Christianized Themes And The Violence Problem
SPEAKER_03I completely agree with you, Derek, and maybe this can lead us into talking about some of the themes. Uh I think Zendea is best interpreted as actually Athena, and Athena is taking the face of a victim. Yeah. That's that's where, like this movie, it's as if Christopher Nolan read Tom Holland's Dominion and then decided to Christianize the Odyssey. Uh, so who are the gods? Well, all the other gods are faceless and nameless and distant, and you never hear their voice. But the one god you see is the innocent woman you slaughtered in the rage of Achilles. You slaughtered uh this innocent woman for no reason other than this random, wicked, despotic king's lust and and bloodlust. That's it, that's it. Like, that's a powerful take in 2026 on one of the great founding texts of the West and of Greco-Roman civilization. My complaint is not that he Christianized it, and I reject approaches to criticizing the film that begin and end by saying it departs from Homer's original, right? Like, well, of course it does. It's an adaptation. Uh to me, um the the the question is how well does he do it? What what what is what is he after, and what is the artistic result? And one of my two major criticisms is that he wants to have his cake and eat it too. And I just don't know if you can do that with this story. He keeps the catharsis of the homecoming slaughter, which we are all itching for in the seats, right? It was pretty fun, too.
Derek RishmawyIt was a good one.
SPEAKER_03At the two-hour mark, two hour 20 minutes, like we're ready for it. But he also, with his other what he gives with one hand, he takes away. And he says, he says, but actually, this kind of violence commits the one who deals it out to self-exile because when a civilization is built on this kind of violence, and this is very much a theme of the second and third Batman films as well, the the the um the scapegoat, the executioner of the violence has to be excluded. And that's a very interesting thought, but narratively, I think it fails for this story because you need for Odysseus's story to work without major further restructuring or subversion. You can't have the violent catharsis cheering it on father and son restored to the wife, and then we have to go into the West because this is no longer a land fit for a man such as I, even though you all needed me yesterday to wield the sword. So that was one of two things, or maybe three things, but that was the one of the three misses for me that didn't work, although I appreciate as a Christian that he really was consciously or unconsciously Christianizing a fundamentally pagan story.
Derek RishmawyYeah, I mean that's one of the one of the comments over and over you've seen this is a post-Christian film. It there's there's you you this is the thing that happens after 2,000 years of Christian history and ethics. And when you start to think about pre-Christian Odysseus, like had he just kept it, you know, killing the twelve servant uh the servant women and and uh and then, you know, sleeping, you know, willingly, joyfully sleeping with Calypso and Circe, etc. And you know, m while while Penelope herself chaste and pure for 20 straight years, it's and all that sort of thing. Uh all people with fairly Christian sensibilities are looking like, d you're she's there faithful to you, and you're just kind of doing this thing while they're waiting for you. You know, that there's we can't help but judge the ancient Greek texts by Christian standards.
SPEAKER_03But Derek, wouldn't it have been interesting, culturally speaking, for for someone to make that movie and then to see how people reacted? Like that is an interesting proposition that would actually give us the counterfactual. Could people handle that? Or are they so post-Christian that everybody would just hate Odysseus?
Derek RishmawyWait, that that that I I would actually, and I saw somebody posts about that. Like, I I want people to make an absolutely true Odyssey or Iliad or whatever it is, and then just see see people react and uh recognize the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, the ancient people, they are foreign. They're in a like they're foreign. You are no longer fully pagan, although we're paganizing again. You are a different kind of pagan now. And um Yeah.
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Derek RishmawyAlright,
Odysseus As PTSD Soldier Critique
Derek Rishmawywhile we're talking about things that didn't work, Brad, you seem like you're pulling your punches on something. Go for the uh just just go for the juggler here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'll go for the juggler. Here, I'll list both. One of them's a bit awkward to talk about, one is not at all. Um, and these are again, I think broadly speaking, although people are tussling over the movie, um I do think that in many ways what Nolan was up to and some of these weaknesses are are pretty well uh I wouldn't call it a consensus, but I'm just wanted to make clear these are not these are not original or unique to me. Uh one is one is the character of Odysseus, and one is the presence or rather the complete absence of sex or even the hint of sex in the movie. So regarding Odysseus, like uh when when they when um when Matt Damon was hired, I thought we were getting the talented Mr. Ripley or the informant. I thought we were getting a twisty wordsmith who could talk his way out of any situation, who thought up the trick of the Trojan horse. And we would see the fun Matt Damon, like the Martian Matt Damon, the one who always has a smirk and always, you know, you know, a version of Rounder's Matt Damon, where uh you're not quite sure you can trust him. And that actually makes his journey back to Penelope interesting because she is so fundamentally faithful. And like you're not sure you can trust this guy. Does he even, like, what's he gonna do when he gets back? Does he even want to stay married to this woman? Right, like the homecoming is ambiguous on both sides. He's testing her, and then she tests him. And Matt Damon would have been up for that job. And and Christopher Nolan has had characters like that. He wrote the Joker, right? Like he can write complex people or or right, Robert Oppenheimer, like is in some respects this terrible, terrible human being, and in other respects this person with a deep moral conscience who regrets what he's done. And instead, we got effectively an unsmiling, one-note, traumatized soldier with PTSD, um, who does who, even when he makes it home and exacts vengeance, doesn't, doesn't even have like light in his eyes for his wife. Like he just is like so lost in the clouds of his own abstract reflection on like the the a lost civilization um and all the crimes he's committed. And on paper, it's it, I mean, people have written books about the Odyssey and the Iliad, about the nature of war and trauma. Those those that that's interesting as a scholarly endeavor. For me, it just reduced Odysseus to a single note. And for one of the most interesting and complex characters in literature, that like if I'm his best friend or his wife, who produces all his movies, I tell him, keep like keep everything you're doing. You're gonna, it's gonna be a Nolan film, but just just make him more like the Odysseus we know. Make him more like George Clooney, a no brother. Uh make him a little more mischievous, a little bit more like Loki, a little bit more trickster, and every keep it all else. Even let him learn lessons by the end. And and I think that that also was that that that was a mistake. That it he didn't have to he doesn't have to be a different filmmaker to get Odysseus right. And I don't think he got Odysseus right.
Derek RishmawyI don't know. I I feel like the whole it's interesting. Yes, that would be a fun movie to watch in some ways. There's a sense in which the the sweep of the whole movie is he'd also just have to change the underlying themes. So I think Od Odysseus has to be that guy. If the the that central theme of Zeus's Law and Xenia and all that sort of thing, if that's there, then the like, you know, kind of bouncy, playful, um uh Odysseus can't be. You know what?
SPEAKER_03It has to be in that telling he learns his lesson on the first night of the sack of Troy. Maybe you have him learn his lesson with Nolan's calypso, because by then every he's lost everyone. But but up until then, on all of the episodes uh when they're journeying uh uh inland, he like there's no banter with the Cyclops. Like he doesn't talk his way out of it, he just jabs his eye. Like, well, that's actually dramatically less interesting. He becomes a kind of blunt force object rather than someone who always somehow wows his way out of a situation and in the and in the book, of course, in the in the poem, into women's beds. Uh you just don't get the charisma, and and I think the something of the charisma needed to come through at some point in the film.
Derek RishmawyYeah. And that that's that's a whole Yeah, I it he is Christianized in that way too, in the sense of like, you even you forgive the calypso interlude because like, well, man, that guy's blitzed out of his mind on on uh on Lotus Flowers. Like guy's not guy didn't.
SPEAKER_03It's all her fault. He's not a willing to be able to do it.
Derek RishmawyYeah. And and and there's a sense that way you can be sympathetic for him uh and happy for the ri reunion because in a sense, he has been intentionally as faithful as Penelope has been. And it's not that there was no sex, actually. The only sex though that's dip that's depicted, it's not really depicted it, but it's it's implied, is him with his wife. So, I mean, if you put my woo youth pastor hat on, college pasture, I think this is a moral improvement for Odysseus. Of course. Okay. Of course it is. Um he is far more worthy of emulation here.
SPEAKER_03Um But come on, we needed the tree bedroom. We needed at least like get no one. You have $200 million, at least build it.
Derek RishmawyBut again, I I yeah, it's there's this level at which the you're once you start going into the more romantic, playful, etc., etc. Odysseus, this again goes back to whether or not is this is a what we're really wanting is just Homer's Odysseus. Uh a Homer's Odysseus movie, which is what it is, or a Nolan Odysseus movie, which is what we got. And I I just don't think I don't think the sobriety or the severity or the moral um weight, all that's compromised to some degree if you've got if you've got a playful um seducer, uh Odysseus. It just doesn't it just doesn't happen. Sure. Um So I don't know, that that's it just then turns into fundamentally, did you want Homer's Odyssey or did you want Nolan's Odyssey? Because Nolan's Odyssey Nolan's Odysseus cannot be um that guy. I just I know he he can write certain guys, but like thinking about the heroes thinking about the heroes Batman is is not that even uh whatchamacallit um DiCaprio's character in in uh Inception dead serious traumatized lives lost wives. Traumatized, dead serious, but uh but but and and like emotionally kind of still locked into her. Like it and even even even uh Oppenheimer, that yeah that romantic in you know, whatever. You ski I ski we skip stuff and and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
Derek RishmawyBut it it's intrusive and weird. It doesn't make sense. Yeah and I and because his characters I I don't know if this is a weird thing. His characters are fundamentally monogamous people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they are. Outside of the prestige, uh which which in many respects, you know, Samuel D. James on his Substack compared uh this film to the depiction of both um both some of the same themes, but especially like the treatment of gender and the moral losses or harms incurred by men seeking power. And I think that's his movie that by far, because none of his movies ever even
Eros Missing And Nolan’s Blind Spot
SPEAKER_03touch it, like this is a man in many ways, if he's obsessed with time, he's also obsessed with Mars, but he doesn't know what to do with Venus. And no one on this podcast wants gratuitous sexual scenes in in movies, much less Nolan. So I'm I'm taking that as brand. I'm stipulating that. None of us want that. But you can depict, just like in literature, you can depict like romantic legalism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An entire cinematic oeuvre, like an entire world that he has built for us for two and a half decades that basically ignores one fundamental aspect of the human condition, does at uh after after like the umpteenth film, does like leave a part of the human condition unanalyzed. And the awkwardness and blatency of it in Oppenheimer because he could not depict a philandering uh historical character without actually depicting that, like actually shows that I just think Nolan is squeamish about sex and he doesn't know what to say about it. And even and bracketing quote unquote sex scenes on film, the prestige is his one movie where he shows two men treating a woman, um, Scarlett Johansson's character, as an object and passing her back and forth. And and in their lust for power, they subordinate this woman to their own wills. And uh, and I think and I think, again, I'm granting, Derek, your point, it stands, that it would not be this version of Nolan's Odyssey. What I want to say is it could have been a Nolan's, a Nolan film had he given us a twistier um and at least at first less morally upright Odysseus. Because by the time we meet him on the island, by the because by the time of the first night of the sack of Troy, he's already had his revelation. He's already realized that for 10 years, right? Nine, 10 years, like this was an error. And then for the next 10 years, he's he's the sad sack PTSD soldier, and then we get the catharsis at the end. And I think he could have, I think he could have done his shtick and not just been s you know uh slavishly beholden to Homer, um, while giving us a somewhat different um Odysseus and and a depiction of a world that includes the sexual, the the sexual aspects of the pagan world or even the sexual aspects of just human beings, men and women, when it basically like it almost it's like the thing you can't say on screen between him and Penelope, which is a very odd thing for the Odyssey.
Derek RishmawyYeah. I mean, so that that and I think when we sing sexual sorry, this is this is a family podcast. We're talking about romance.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Derek RishmawyFundamentally, right. Yeah. In the the the romantic dimension. Yeah, or just arose.
SPEAKER_03Eros as an aspect of human life. Yeah.
Derek RishmawyTrevor Burrus, Jr.: Eros. So we're not we're not just talking bodies in motion, we're talking generative tension and attraction and those sorts of things that I mean, plenty of old movies had a lot of Eros and a lot of romance with zero depictions of with you know with zero amounts of skin, so to speak. Yeah. Um, right? Yeah. No, and I I I get that. And that's a whole that's a whole butt yeah, I again within the film, within the the the basic moral framework that he's creating, you can't have it because he has to be a fundamentally faithful man who's fundamentally committed and monogamous and all those sorts of things because, again, we are if for all the talk about Polly, for all the talk about all those sorts of things that happen in our culture right now, we are we've been fundamentally changed in that way overall, about what what we think constitutes a faithful man who you know perseveres to the end. Um But that's what I think.
SPEAKER_01What do we make of the on the subject of a sort of Christianization of the imagination? What do we make of the scene where he's talking to Penelope through the screen? Some have compared that to a confessional, um, but it's very similar in its immediate appearance to a confessional screen. Is that intended to be an illusion, um visual illusion to a confessional screen? It's where many of the deep psychological issues, the um relationship with Athena as well, but these things are played out as from the goddess.
Derek RishmawyI mean if somebody if if if there was an interview that said, Hey, I was doing a confessional scene, I like it. Okay, yeah, it totally attracts, makes sense. Um I do think some of these things I did read one interview where some of the stuff he was doing does not seem to have been conscious, right? I I don't like I don't know that he was actually reflectively like, hey, I'm gonna make a post-Christian film or something like that. I think he just is that and I think that comes out in other films. Um so I I I actually think he's a thoughtful person who wrestles with these issues, but I don't necessarily know that it's conscious invocation all the time.
SPEAKER_03I I didn't know until recently that he was raised Catholic. Um and that that so he's got that in his he's got that in his childhood and his and his background. I mean he's lapsed, but um I I I think both of both of you are right, and it it would be he's so he's so enigmatic in the sense that like his films invite all this discussion and then he does interviews and stuff. He's not a recluse, he's not Terence Malik, but but um he doesn't want to answer every question. And I think sometimes he he does have the master's degree and he and he is thinking about these things. But I think but I also think, yeah, he's a little bit of an like the reason why he likes to explore time is because he also likes to explore the unconscious, unconscious. And I think in a way he he is a director of the unconscious. And if he if he ends up depicting the confessional screen without even realizing what he's doing, then all the better, right? He's he's drawing on this rich cultural heritage without always even meaning to. Now, he's on set with production designers, and someone's gonna think of this, right? So it's hard to it's hard to imagine he wasn't thinking it. But either way, it of course can be interpreted that way. Um I mean, speaking of uh connecting absolution to to forgiveness of sin, I mean, uh going back on your language earlier, Derek, and to homecoming yeah, yeah, and to homecoming. Good. Uh I think Nolan is fun is is at the end of the day
Nolan’s Moral Vision On Violence
SPEAKER_03a chaste filmmaker. Um and for all that he rightly is celebrated or at least acknowledged as a director of spectacle, one of the things I wrote about that this this film um um distilled for me is Nolan hates violence. He doesn't, he doesn't, if you compare a war, a depiction of war, a scene of war from Ridley Scott's films, he wants you to see the knife touch the flesh and he wants spurts of blood like Tarantino's kill Bill. Like Ridley Scott, ever since Gladiator at least, he lives for that. Um, he is not criticizing Mel Gibson. He is not criticizing these things. In a sense, he's glorying in it in a pagan way. And Nolan loves to cut before the knife gets to the throat. He he he he has some blood. I mean, you can't not have it in the sack of Troy, but he he wants to show the big wide-angle David Lean shot. He doesn't want to zoom in like Ridley Scott or Mel Gibson. He doesn't want Braveheart or Gladiator because he's worried that you will like the very thing that he is trying to criticize and hold up as bad. And in the same way that his characters and heroes realize that they may have been necessary blunt instruments, but what they did, what they did, they have to repent of. And the the shape of their repentance is either exile or death. In the same way, Nolan, like, I think has a guilty conscience. Like he doesn't in the same way that Oppenheimer has a guilty conscience about building the bomb. And the reason why Nolan never shows, I mean, I think wisely at an artistic level, never shows the dropping of the bombs uh on Hiroshima, etc., is that he's squeamish about it. He doesn't actually love the blood and guts, and he doesn't want you to like it too much. Um and I think and I think that's an interesting moral perspective to bring on uh to br to bring to Homer. I mean, especially the of course the Iliad, right? Uh it's just it's just one it's just one uh bloods, you know, bloodlust scene after another, glorying over the corpse of someone else. And certainly that's interesting morally, but I I for me it ultimately his version of that didn't quite work.
SPEAKER_01And certainly that final scene where you have oh the final partners the movie where you have the suitors and the fight, it would seem it's a sort of time where you have the cathartic once upon a time in Hollywood or in Glorious Bastards sort of Tarantino cathartic display of brutal violence against the adversaries. And he doesn't that he does not want that.
Derek RishmawyThere there's still there the it's it's the irony of of him nevertheless being one of the best action directors of the last 20 years in terms of just I think of some of the sequences in in the Batman movies and and and even this film and so on and so forth, they're not the crazy stylized, you know, we're not talking John Wick character territory. No. Um nevertheless, uh I don't know how many reels I've seen with guys making jokes about, you know, making the the making the the the bowstring um, you know, thrum and saying, oh shoot, he's back, right? Like when you're ready and it finally But that he he actually knows how to depict that. That moment actually is not just a really cool throwaway thing. There there is a there is a pr uh uh uh a presentiment of judgment that righteous vengeance is going to fall, that that truth will be revealed, that things will be like he actually gets that impulse really well uh across uh several of the films. And it it it's that it and I you know, you're trying to think about that the the wrestling of it, like how does a Christian who sees plenty in the Bible about God being a warrior and there being like a right time for judgment, a right time but nevertheless delighting in bloodshed. Um that I think there's a I think there's actually really Christian tension. I think you're right.
SPEAKER_03I mean, Derek, think about his only war movie is the tale of his country's defeat at Dunkirk, right? It's a rescue operation because they're cornered and they can't fight anymore. And the and the classic image at the end of Tom Hardy's ship in flames, like that's the lasting image of the movie. It's good news because our boys got away, but like at that moment in time, it sure seems like Hitler's foot is on our neck. Like, that's the story. He could have made any war movie, any tr and it was about it was about a kind of loss that turned into a victory, but that has little to none, little to know of the um of the kind of it's not saving private Ryan. It's not the opening scene, it's not Normandy with blood and guts and b and good guys and bad guys. Um the the good guys are cornered and they think that they're about to be humiliated when they come home, but the the what what is felt as a loss turns out to be, in a sense, the great victory and turning point of the war. Like I think there is something deeply, as you say, Christian about that tension that he doesn't want to tell ordinary stories. Again, he takes, right, he takes the development of the bomb, which ends the war with Japan as a kind of moral failure, right? Like he wants viewers to fe to feel that and not to glory in what might be told
Ambiguous Ending And Closing Requests
SPEAKER_03as a kind of triumph.
Derek RishmawyUm, guys, I think that kind of ambiguity is a good note to end our reflections on this ambiguous Odysseus and and Nolan's work as a whole. Um Thanks for listening.
SPEAKER_01Is he ambiguous enough?
Derek RishmawyOr is he ambiguous enough? Who knows? We'll leave that top spinning for you. Um uh as we close, as we close the show here. But thanks for thanks for the conversation, guys. And if you've listened thus far, thanks for continuing to listen. And uh please feel free to rate review us on iTunes, uh, Spotify. We we just to let you know, we have um we have a number of shows lined up we're really excited about in the coming week. So uh stay tuned. But for now, this has been your fidelity.