Wave Celestial Intent

A second reading of The Odyssey

I think there is a second way of reading this version of The Odyssey - one that is more personal, more contemporary and, above all, much closer to us.

Behind Ulysses’ story, Nolan is not only talking about an ancient hero or a vanished civilization. In my opinion, he is mainly talking about human nature, our own society, and what our civilization is becoming, or what it may already have become.

This interpretation also echoes Homer’s original story, which is much more than a grand heroic epic or a simple tale of survival. The Odyssey is also a story about the human condition: identity, homecoming, temptation, hospitality, loyalty, violence, pride, and the way hardship transforms people.

At least, that is the idea that eventually helped me understand the movie.

For a large part of the film, I have to admit that I had absolutely no idea where Nolan was going with it. I genuinely found myself wondering, "What on earth is he doing with The Odyssey?" I was expecting a grand mythological epic, with very present gods, monsters, and imposing figures. Yet the further the film went, the more that entire dimension seemed to fade away.

After thinking about it a lot, I came to the conclusion that Nolan may not have been trying simply to adapt The Odyssey. Instead, he mainly uses Homer’s work as a starting point; a familiar framework through which he can talk about us, war, guilt, power, and everything human beings are capable of doing to one another.

Why use Homer’s work?

The Odyssey is not only the story of Ulysse and his adventures. It has become a universal symbol of travel, wandering, returning home, and transformation.

It is also a timeless and accessible work, known almost everywhere. Even without having read Homer, most people are at least familiar with Ulysse, Penelope, Circe, Calypso, the Cyclops, or the Sirens. Nolan is therefore working with an imaginary world that already feels familiar. He does not need to explain everything Ulysse represents to us: we enter the film with our own idea of the hero and his journey.

I also think the title is deliberately meant to create a certain expectation. We go into the theater expecting an enormous epic filled with gods, monsters, and heroic adventures. Then Nolan gradually strips away much of that mythological dimension, making us realize that the real monsters may actually be human beings themselves.

He takes a story we think we know and turns it around, forcing us to look at it differently. And yet, he is not truly rejecting The Odyssey. He is reinterpreting it. The story’s central ideas are still there: Ulysse's pride, his desire to return home, temptation, hospitality, loyalty, violence, and the loss of his companions. The difference is that the gods and creatures become symbols of guilt, fear, and human brutality.

By using such a universal work, Nolan can also bring his message to the widest possible audience. He uses a story that is several thousand years old to talk about issues that are ultimately not so far removed from our own time.

Ulysse, war and guilt

Ulysse is portrayed as a man who has been deeply broken by war. He is filled with remorse and guilt over what he did at Troy.

He says that he wants to return home, but I feel that part of him is unconsciously resisting that return. Going back to Ithaca means facing Penelope, Telemachus, and the man he was before the war. Above all, it means confronting what he has done and accepting that he will probably never be exactly the person he once was.

As long as he keeps travelling, he can keep running away. He can blame his wandering on the sea, on circumstances, or on the people he meets. But returning to Ithaca would force him to face the person he has become. His journey therefore begins to resemble a form of penance. He seems to be seeking redemption through each ordeal, as though suffering enough might one day make up for his actions. But his true enemy is not only the sea. It is also himself, and what the war has made of him.

Athena as the embodiment of his guilt

In the movie, Athena appears with the face of a young woman who was executed at Troy. To me, she therefore represents more than the goddess from Homer’s story. Above all, she embodies Ulysse’s conscience and guilt. She wears the face of a victim he cannot forget. Every appearance brings him back to Troy and to what he did there. Athena does not seem to guide him from the outside so much as constantly remind him of what he is trying to escape.

The fact that the gods are far less present in the movie also seems very important to me. Ulysse can no longer explain his misfortunes solely through Poseidon’s anger, Zeus’s will, or divine intervention. Human beings are responsible for their own decisions. They become their own obstacles, their own monsters, and sometimes even their own punishment.

Zeus’s Law and the loss of civilization

The famous "Law of Zeus" comes up repeatedly throughout the movie. Among other things, it represents hospitality, the protection of strangers, and the existence of rules that even the most powerful men should respect.

But the characters only truly follow those rules when it suits them. Ulysse and his men demand hospitality when they are vulnerable, lost, or starving. Yet when they are the ones with power, they are capable of pillaging, taking, and destroying. They want the law to protect them when they are weak, but stop respecting it as soon as it limits their own power.

Ultimately, it does not really matter whether these rules are human or divine. Their purpose remains the same: to prevent people from giving themselves over completely to pride, greed, vanity, and the obsession with power. By repeatedly ignoring their own laws and principles, people eventually lose themselves. Little by little, they forget what once made them civilized.

They do not become monstrous through one single dramatic decision. They become monstrous gradually, justifying each new transgression through hunger, fear, war, survival, or their own suffering.

Each time, they grant themselves one more exception. And one day, they discover that there are no limits left.

The People from the Sea

The famous "People from the Sea" are probably one of the ideas I found most powerful in the movie.

No one seems to have actually seen them. They are known only by their reputation. They are described as a mysterious threat, a violent people from somewhere else, yet no one knows exactly where they come from. They represent a faceless, distant, almost mythological enemy.

Until Penelope realizes that the People from the Sea are actually Ulysse and his men.

They are the foreign threat. They are her own king, her own people, and the men who will be welcomed back to Ithaca as heroes.

To the people of Ithaca, Ulysse is a glorious warrior trying to find his way home. But to the people he attacks along the way, he is simply an armed man arriving from the sea with his soldiers to pillage their land. The hero and the monster are therefore the same person. Only the point of view changes.

I also think it is very important that these people do not really have a face. It is far easier to blame violence on an unknown outside threat than to admit that it comes from our own men, our own soldiers, our own king, or ourselves. Giving that violence another name creates a reassuring distance. It is no longer "us"; it is "The People from the Sea".

Yet by losing their way and ceasing to respect any rules, Ulysse and his men forget what made them human. They become exactly what they fear.

Humanity becomes its own enemy.

They claim that they want to return home, but they carry the war with them wherever they go. Their real difficulty in finding Ithaca may therefore come from more than the sea alone. It may also come from the fact that, somewhere along the way, they lost the part of themselves that still knew how to recognize a home, a host, or an innocent person.

Circe, Calypso, and the power of women

Circe and Calypso seem less imposing and less majestic than they do in Homer’s story. But I do not think that necessarily means they are weaker.

Instead, I felt that they were deliberately portrayed as quieter and more withdrawn in order to show what violence, war, and male domination have done to them. They live in a world shaped by men’s decisions and among the ruins men have left behind. Their withdrawal does not necessarily mean an absence of power. It may also be the result of everything they have had to endure and learn to survive.

The scene in which Circe turns Ulysse’s men into pigs is, in my opinion, especially powerful. She does it with her bare hands, without any grand spectacular spell or theatrical magic. Her power becomes physical, dark, visceral, and almost brutal. I feel that she is not truly turning them into monsters, but rather revealing what they have already become. After Troy, they pillage, take whatever they want, and behave as though they are entitled to everything. By giving them the appearance of pigs, she makes their greed and dehumanization visible. For a few moments, she is also the one taking control of the bodies of men who are used to imposing their strength on others. This is where Nolan chooses to place Circe’s power: not in a permanent divine aura or spectacular domination, but in this incredibly concrete and visceral act.

Her quietness is therefore not necessarily a sign of weakness. A single scene is enough to show that her silence was not submission.

Nolan and time

We all know how much Nolan loves playing with time. He likes to make it an important part of his storytelling.

Here, though, I think he was actually pretty restrained with it.

He mainly uses time to create ellipses and condense an enormous story. Without them, the film would probably have lasted six hours. This allows him to move quickly from one important stage to another without recounting every day or every month of the journey. But these ellipses also reflect Ulysse’s state of mind. A great deal of time passes and he travels an immense distance, yet internally he remains trapped at Troy. His journey moves forward, but his guilt keeps bringing him back to the same place.

Ulysse’s experience of time is fragmented by battles, shipwrecks, and memories, while Penelope’s is defined by endless waiting. They are both prisoners of time, but in two completely different ways.

Conclusion

In my opinion, Nolan ultimately uses The Odyssey as a mirror held up to our own time.

He takes a work that is several thousand years old, universal, and accessible, and uses it to talk about what humanity is becoming, or what it may already have become.

The gods and monsters gradually fade away, leaving human beings alone with their actions. In doing so, the film shows just how fragile the boundary between civilization and barbarity really is.

The real monster is not necessarily a mythological creature or a people from somewhere else. It is the human being who convinces himself that his suffering, his victory, his fear, or his power gives him the right to do anything.

By constantly searching for the enemy outside himself, he eventually fails to see that he has become the very thing he feared.

It reminds me of a very old Latin expression: Homo homini lupus, "man is a wolf to man." I think it takes on its full meaning here. When the rules that allow us to live together disappear - or when we simply decide that they no longer apply to us - human beings become capable of destroying one another. In the end, they become their own enemies.

Thank you for reading this far! I know this post is fairly long, even though I have already tried to summarize some ideas that I explored in much greater detail in my notes in French.

I am also aware that there are probably many things I have not discussed. So please feel free to share your impressions, interpretations, or your own opinion, whether you agree with me or not.