The Odyssey (The Movie)

It has been a year since Christopher Nolan's new film version of The Odyssey was first advertized. It has been a long - if ultimately worthwhile - wait. 

I first read Homer's The Odyssey in high school. When I first read its companion epic, The Iliad, I had the striking experience of realizing that I knew much of the story already, because I had read the Classic Comics version of it years earlier as a boy sitting in the barbershop waiting for a haircut! (My mother wasn't a big fan of comics, and most of my childhood comic book reading was while waiting for haircuts at the neighborhood barbershop.) The Odyssey, however, when I first encountered it in high school, was completely new to me, and it seemed so completely unlike any of the heroic comics (e.g., Superman, Batman) I had earlier been accustomed to reading on haircut days.

The Odyssey is the putative sequel to The Iliad, that other great Greek epic set in the "Heroic" bronze age, what is sometimes called the "palace" culture of Mycenaean Greece, which came to an apparently abrupt end early in the 12th-century B.C. Together, The Iliad and The Odyssey are the foundational texts of our civilization and of western literature. Both were originally orally recited poems, dating from the much poorer "Archaic Age" (c. 800 B.C.), which looked back nostalgically to that much more glamorous heroic era, the familiar stories from which were well known to the audiences that listened to their recitation. 

In its 12,000+ lines,The Odyssey tells the story of the resourceful and cunning Greek hero Odysseus' prolonged, danger and adventure-filled journey home to Ithaca from the Greek victory in the Trojan War. As such, it is one of the world's oldest adventure stories, richer in many respects than the contemporary superhero adventure stories that typically clutter our modern movie screens. Indeed, as classicist (and Odyssey translator) Daniel Mendelsohn put it, The ‘Odyssey has "bequeathed to the West entire genres” - from science fiction to romantic comedy.

Odysseus is a "hero" in the ancient sense of someone with extraordinary physical and mental prowess who was successful in war.- not in the modern sense of a morally virtuous figure deserving of admiration and emulation. His epic journey highlights the uncertain character of life in an ancient world, which was harsh, unpredictable, and subject to the whims of gods who behave as badly as mortals but who possess so much more power. Odysseus was a relatively minor king among the Greek heroes, but he was not only a great warrior but also a "trickster," a clever, cunning and very shrewd schemer, author of the deceptive strategy remembered forever as the "Trojan Horse." 

Odysseus was favored by Athena (the only Olympian who appears personally in Nolan's film), but made a deadly enemy of Poseidon, the god of the sea and father of the Cyclops Polyphemus, whom he had blinded. The Greek gods are terrifying not only in their power but also in amoral arbitrariness toward mortals. (Unlike in The Iliad, where the gods are constantly active and involving themselves in the story, Odysseus is often on his own a lot of the time, which may make his story more relatably modern. On the other hand, whether Nolan's film may take that too far in diminishing the visible presence of gods other than Athena in the movie may be an argument worth having.) 

The Odyssey, however, is above all an epic story of longing for home (a Bronze-Age Wizard of Oz story). Odysseus - complex polytropos character that he is - does all sorts of things that imperil his eventual return. But, underneath it all, home is where he wants to be, with his long suffering faithful wife, Penelope (who serves as a sort of anti-type to her cousin, Helen, and Helen's sister, Clytemnestra), and the son he hardly knows (who, in his own coming-of-age story, embarks on a journey of his own, which helps fill us in on familiar stories of the Trojan War's aftermath). Along the way, he and his crew encounter some superficially pleasant obstacles like the land of the Lotus Eaters and lots of deadly obstacles like the Cyclops, the Sirens, and Scylla and Charybdis, . Even beautiful and powerful goddesses (like Circe with whom Odysseus willingly spends a year and Calypso with whom he somewhat less willingly spends seven more years) ultimately cannot compare with his wife, who faithfully awaits his return, skillfully manipulating the suitors who greedily compete to replace her husband, highlighting both the familial and the political character of the crisis caused by Odysseus' prolonged absence. Their final reunion is a romantic panegyric to marital love. His homecoming is in every way the opposite of Agamemnon's ill-fated return home, but both share the same overwhelming atmosphere of violent revenge.

Odysseus' complicated and problematic journey also expresses the anxieties that accompany the adventure of sailing on strange seas, something which would certainly have resonated with ancient Greeks sailing the Mediterranean Sea, setting out for far-flung parts of their known world. Odysseus also undertakes the most fearsome journey of all - to the house of Hades, the home of the dead, where the spirit of fallen warriors articulate a very Greek appreciation of the tragedy of human mortality. (Sadly, Nolan's movie version omits some of the most powerful scenes from this encounter - Odysseus' fleeting attempt to embrace his dead mother and his conversation with the dead Achilles.)

Christopher Nolan's unsurprisingly very long movie version of the ancient epic effectively captures the extreme expansiveness of this universal adventure story and homecoming tale in modern form, filled with the high-tech special effects that successively make this ancient adventure story a visually extravagant modern summer blockbuster. Nolan's film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus,  Anne Hathaway as his wife, Penelope, and Tom Holland as his son, Telemachus. These are familiar actors, and so their casting creates familiar expectations.

Thus, one expects a Matt Damon Odysseus to be a somewhat relatable everyman, and for the most part so he is. To the extent that this is a story saturated with universal themes - loss, longing for home, marital love, growing up, the ravages of war - that may be a legitimate way to go, one which may make the ancient epic more relatable to modern audiences. But it remains an ancient epic about a mythic ancient hero, about people very different from ourselves, about their gods, and about a pre-Christian culture imbued with a very different psychology and moral sensibility from ours. Some of that may inevitably be lost when Odysseus becomes too relatable. Thus, the translator Daniel Mandelson recently remarked that, while more colloquial translations' styles may be legitimate, he personally prefers a slightly more formal style, highlighting the fact that this was in fact a grand formal poem, filled with ancient emotions and rituals that ought not to be made to seem too familiar. (One thinks of the Jacobean translators of the King James Bible who deliberately used understandable but slightly archaic-sounding Elizabethan English to convey a sense of the special sacrality of their text.). In this regard, perhaps, Nolan's effort would have benefited from more appearances by the gods - not just for authenticity's sake of fidelity tot he text but also to remind us that Odysseus and his interlocutors, however universally human we may imagine them, were not exactly people just like us. 

It is perhaps inevitable that a modern audience (or more to the point, perhaps, a modern director) demands a modern sensibility on a modern movie screen. Throughout the film, Nolan's Odysseus is just a tad more modern in his feelings and attitudes and responses to what happens than the ancient Odysseus would have been (or could have been). There is also a strange undercurrent of premonition that the heroic age is ending, that the ancient Mycenaean palace culture is about to be destroyed and give way to a "dark age." Homeric bards who sang this saga obviously knew that, but it is anachronistic in the extreme to attribute such an expectation to the era itself!

Homer looked back nostalgically to that great age of "Heroes." We judge that age by different standards, some of which inevitably creep into Nolan's portrayal of Odysseus. The epic itself ends on a triumphant note of vengeance and restoration. The movie, however, has a more morally ambivalent ending. Odysseus' gets his vengeance, and Telemachus gets his throne, but Odysseus seems anguished and repentant about his warrior life. He and Penelope, happily reunited, leave Ithaca together for some sort of voluntary expiatory exile. It is certainly a satisfactory ending, but undeniably a modern one.

L.P. Hartley's famous observation, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," remains relevant. We learn about ourselves from ancient classics - both from what is universal that we share with ancient people, and also from what was very different from us about those same ancient people.

World War II (with Tom Hanks)

 

It requires no special insight to observe that our appetite for World War II stories seems insatiable. That may be a good thing. World War II was, after all, the defining conflict (the "Trojan War," so to speak) of the 20th century, although itself part of a larger "war" which began with World War I in 1914 and ended - sort of - with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991). World War II created the world I grew up in - and more specifically the America I grew up in. It created an international order that lasted more or less for some 80 years. It created the most prosperous period in human history. It offered a focus for national identity and patriotism for second and third generation heirs of immigrants, like my own relatives and a whole generation of postwar political national leaders (including Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush I), who fought in that war and learned some of their most fundamental lessons from that experience.

The series spans 20 episodes. They are only loosely chronological, as each episode focuses on a specific aspect of the war (e.g., Italy). This approach allows for added attention to aspects of the war's story that seldom get as much attention in a strictly chronological account, especially accounts which frame the war almost entirely in terms of an American victory story. For example, episode 15 is devoted entirely to the very different ways in which Germany and Japan related to their own citizens on the domestic front. Episode 16 is devoted entirely to the resistance movements in occupied countries, in France (with a largely very successful outcome) and in Poland (with a totally tragic outcome).

With the passage of time and the decline in the quality in American education, it must be assumed that actual knowledge of World War II has diminished and will continue to do so. Hence, the civic value of programs like this that can remedy some of our increasing collective ignorance. We need to remember World War II - how it happened, the colossal mistakes that led up to it, the terrible damage it did as largely a war against civilians, and the leating impact of the Holocaust and other World War II genocidal actions.

Of course it is likely those who already know something about World War II in the first place that will tune in to watch a program like this! That said the History Channel and Tom Hanks are to be commended for this very valuable effort!

World Cup Summer in the Land of More

There is a telling scene in The Americans (the 2013-2018 FX series about two Soviet KGB agents, posing as an American married couple, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, living in a Virginia suburb of Washington. DC, while spying for the U.S.S.R. and raising their American-born children), in which Elizabeth struggles with Washington's heat, while her husband cones to the rescue by turning on the air-conditioner. Air-conditioning is but one of many benefits of American prosperity that Philip (more than Elizabeth) would come to appreciate during the series. It is but one of many benefits of American prosperity and our consumer-oriented culture that we Americans increasingly just take for granted - like large portions and free refills for drinks in restaurants.

Given the ubiquity of American popular culture abroad, one might have assumed that foreign visitors to America would already know a lot about American life - certainly more than most modern Americans know about life elsewhere. And yet, if media reports are to be believed, for the legions of 21st-century de Tocquevilles experiencing the U.S, for the first time this World Cup summer and posting about it on social media, the many material benefits of American prosperity and our consumer-oriented culture have been something of a revelation - a happy one, apparently.

That many foreign tourists coming to America for the World Cup like what they see and experience here is a good thing. Our country can use all the good press it can get these days!

Before the World Cup began there was some anxiety that tourists and soccer fans would experience "sticker shock" at the price of everything - especially World Cup tickets and train tickets to the New Jersey stadium. If so, that has been more than counterbalanced apparently by the sheer consumerist joy of shopping in American big box stores and eating in American restaurant and fast-food outlets. It is not necessarily the quality of the products being consumed that has been making such an impression. It is the sheer amount of stuff available for purchase and the size of the portions to be consumed.

A friend of mine likes to observe that, in the lottery of life, the luckiest outcome is to be born in the U.S. Never perhaps has that been more true. That is not to deny that there have been other periods, such as the 20 years after World War II, when the material benefits of our living in this country were more equally shared and there was a greater sense of unity, more shared prosperity, and a more commonly shared popular and civic culture. There is much more malaise - material and spiritual - now than there was then. And, for many Americans right now, their material situation is genuinely precarious, despite the wider picture of prosperity.

If tourists stayed long enough they might well pick up on more of that malaise. but the first image of America in every age has always been its abundance - from its amber waves of grain and its purple mountain majesties to its skyscrapers and highways to its supermarkets and department stores.

Of course, living in our air-conditioned comfort and consumerist gluttony, we may ask ourselves whether this is all there is, whether this is all we want to be about. Such concerns have likewise plagued us throughout our history. Religion used to offer answers to such questions. As fewer people respond to religion's answers, fewer may even be able to formulate the right questions. These are real problems, which sensitive souls still struggle with.

When communism collapsed in eastern Europe, there was a brief hope in some quarters that there would be a widespread spiritual revival and renewal of European Christianity. It quickly became clear, however, that prosperity proved more popular than virtue.

So it certainly seems here, this World Cup Summer, living in this abundant land of More.

As Maine Goes

 

For Democrats this midterm election year, retaking majority control of the U.S. Senate has suddenly seemed a real possibility - not yet a probability, but at least a possibility. But any path to Democratic control of the Senate almost certainly has to go through Maine, the only "Blue" state which voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 but which still has a Republican Senator. Susan Collins, Maine's formidable Republican Senator, has served five terms in the U.S. Senate, representing that state since having first been elected in 1996 and regularly reelected in 2002, 2008, 2014, and 2020. There was a time when states routinely voted for presidents from one party and senators from another - and even two senators from different parties. In our present polarized politics, however, when all politics is increasingly nationalized, such situations are increasingly anomalous, and so Susan Collins has become an outlier.

In Graham Platner, Maine's Democrats thought they had found a populist "outsider," who appealed to progressive voters alienated from Collins but also alienated from the Democratic "establishment." Despite considerable personal baggage, Platner easily won the June 9 Democratic party primary. Since then, however, subsequent revelations regarding his alleged personal behavior have cost him his endorsements and financial support, and his campaign has collapsed. 

How did this happen? American politics has long had an affinity for "outsiders." (The most notorious example, perhaps, was Jimmy Carter, who ran as an outsider, never having previously met a Democratic president. Carter won in 1976, but his presidency was a failure, in large part precisely because of his having been such an outsider.)

There is no doubt that many Democrats are alienated from their party's established leadership  - for having lost to Trump in 2024, for their anemic opposition to Trump, for their association with moneyed interests, etc. Hence, the appeal of Platner (an "outsider" who had never been a politician) and other putatively "populist" candidates to the young, college-educated progressives who inhabit the party's left wing. But there is also no doubt that those who promoted Platner's candidacy starting a year ago somehow failed to vet him adequately, which - whether progressives like it or not - is one indispensable task that the traditional establishments do relatively well. There may be some populist wisdom in the widespread distrust of elites, but the gatekeeping function of elites is not to be too casually dismissed either. If, for example, the Republican party's establishment elites had been more powerful, Donald Trump would likely never have gotten his party's nomination. 

The Democratic party establishment is also to blame, however, for the Platner fiasco. Instead of encouraging more plausible candidates to challenge Platner in the party's primary, the Washington-based Democratic party establishment threw its support to the incumbent 78-year old Governor, Janet Mills, whose age alone made her an avatar of the gerontocratic establishment many Democrats, especially young progressive Democrats, rightly or wrongly believe to be increasingly out of touch with their interests. Mills' campaign went nowhere; and so, with no serious opposition, Platner achieved an impressive victory in the primary.

The irony is, of course, that any reasonably good Democratic candidate should in theory be able to win in Maine. All he or she would have to do would be to convince those who voted for Harris in 2024 to vote "blue" again in 2026. There was no real need, therefore, to find an "outsider" to appeal to non-Democratic voters. Platner's oysterman persona and troubled past with PTSD were for some reason expected to appeal to "working-class" voters, who have been culturally alienated from the Democratic party. In fact, however, his support was always strongest among college-educated progressives. Indeed, it seems somewhat condescending if not outright insulting, to so-called "working-class" voters to assume that they would somehow see themselves in Platner's problems or would necessarily want to be represented by someone like him.

Moreover, the more extreme Democratic candidates who have won in primaries against incumbents in New York and elsewhere have almost all won in very safe "blue" seats. The Democratic left's populist insurgency has been almost entirely directed at defeating other Democrats, not at defeating Republicans. In this, it mirrors Trump's apparent prioritizing his internal control over the Republican party more than maintaining Republican control of Congress in the midterm elections. 

That said, Platner's support in Maine was very high. He had energized significant support, which the Maine Democratic party cannot afford to alienate - lest an internal party conflict cause Susan Collins to win and guarantee continued Republican control of the U.S. Senate. A lot will depend on the process the Maine Democrats employ to choose Platner's replacement and whether he or she can retain the support of most Maine Democrats and make the Senate race what it really should be - a referendum on Trump and Susan Collins' empowerment of Trumpism.

Image: Norman Rockwell Paints America at the Polls (November 4, 1944).

Young Washington (The Movie)

 

In theaters just in time for July 4, Young Washington is a new historical drama, released by Angel Studios, about the early life and preliminary military career of our future Revolutionary War commander and then first President of the U.S., George Washington (played by William Franklyn-Miller). It focuses especially on Washington's military experiences in the French and Indian War.

The film highlights the young George Washington's ambition and his frustration at the limitations of his social status in Virginia society and his consequent lack of prospects for advancement in the British army's officer corps because of his colonial origins and lack of English education. It has often been observed that, had Washington received the commission he had originally sought in the British Army, history would likely have been very different. Instead, Washington had to settle for becoming a Colonel in the Virginia militia, in recognition of his heroism in the French and Indian War after the death of General Braddock. The film focuses on his heroism and steadfastness, but also emphasizes his resentment at the British, a resentment which only grows as he experiences repeated slights because of his provincial origin and colonial status.

The film is heavy on battle scenes, which ought to cure anyone watching of any romanticized images of 18th-century warfare! In addition to highlighting his growing military prowess, however, the film portrays young Washington's personal growth, intellectually, morally, and relationally. The important part played by his older half-brother Lawrence (who teaches him that "even a pawn can take a king") in Washington's development is emphasized, as is that of his mother who teaches him to learn from failure rather than repeat it.

The film also illustrates the complexity and moral ambiguity of rival claims in colonial America. Washington's big break becomes possible because of British colonial ambitions in the Ohio territory. His military blunders on the Ohio frontier follow from the competition between the British and the French for the same land. The two great European empires were in constant conflict over territory which, of course, had until then belonged to the native Indian tribes, whose complex relationship with the settler communities is also an important part of the history and well portrayed in the film.

That Washington wanted a commission as a British officer, was denied it, and resented that is beyond question. How long-standing and deep-seated were his other feelings and expressions of colonial identity and assertiveness may be more debatable historically. Young Washington repeatedly refers to the new situation created by America and especially by the frontier (the Ohio Valley) where anyone can become someone. Ironically, Washington's greatest social advance, which is not portrayed in the film (having come after the point at which the movie's story stops) will be his advantageous marriage to a rich widow - an instance of his advancing according to the established norms of society's set patterns.

The British and American victory in the French and Indian War would create the wider world context that would make the American Revolution possible. Alongside that, the film emphasizes Washington's internal war with the stratified structures of the British Empire and his awakening to the fact that his real country was Virginia more than Great Britain, a realization that would also transform colonial American history and help create a new country.