Maaruin

In the broadest terms, it is about the idea of norms of civility - shared principles that regulate behavior, and specifically regulate it in such a way as to circumscribe the recourse to violence. (These are often called "the social contract" in popular discourse, but that's a mistake: social contract theory is concerned with the foundation of legitimate political, coercive authority, whereas the norms I'm talking about are precisely important because they regulate behavior in conditions where political authority isn't there to do so). Nolan's ultimate point is that what we call "civilization" (a fraught notion in itself, certainly, but not one to be entirely thrown out) is built upon these norms, and that a breach of these norms severe enough to be widely publicized will ultimately lead to their complete abandonment, and thereby unravel the whole tapestry of modes of coexistence that make "civilization" possible.

This core idea is represented in the movie by xenia, or "Zeus' law" - the strict set of norms regarding the treatment of guests by hosts and vice versa that Zeus was viewed as the guardian of, and that we know played a crucial role in Mycenaean society. While the movie does cut some corners to explain this pre-Christian notion to an audience primarily exposed to a Christian cultural substrate, it does do a fairly good job of getting the core of it across. You ought to welcome the stranger knocking at your door, provide them with room and board within your means, and conversely the guest ought to treat you with grace and not abuse your generosity. Crucially, this behavior can only be maintained under conditions of reciprocity: I can reasonably display xenia only if I myself can expect xenia in return. If that expectation disappears, xenia stops becoming a viable way to engage with strangers. It is self-sustaining, and therefore vulnerable to undermining.

Throughout the movie, we see repeated examples of xenia being violated. Odysseus' men are equal parts the victims and the perpetrators of this - they sack a village at the start of their journey, making themselves bad guests, and then are preyed upon by bad hosts like Polyphemus and the Laestrygonians. Odysseus' house is overrun by suitors who lord over it, disgracing their status as guests. Odysseus' response is to slaughter them, betraying his duties as host. The two wrongs do not make a right: Odysseus must go into exile for this crime, and crucially, Telemachus must keep his own hands clean to become the rightful king of Ithaca. But whatever hollow victory this represents, it's ultimately cold comfort: "our age of bronze is collapsing", as Nolan's too-cute-by-half writing puts it. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle. Civilization is collapsing because civility has broken down.

The movie ultimately suggests that the root cause of this breakdown of xenia lies in the deception Odysseus used to breach into Troy: the pretense of a gift to the gods being used as a weapon of war. Now, I've heard multiple takes on whether a false offering constitutes a violation of xenia as an ancient Greek would understand it. My hunch is that it does, but I'll admit I'm not an expert of the period and I might be wrong. Regardless, if we try to get on Nolan's level and analyze it as such, this is brilliant writing. It's brilliant because it underscores the movie's core theme on at least three levels:

First, on a religious level, we can view this as an offense to the gods (the most powerful of them, Zeus, the patron of xenia, as well as Athena, in whose name the false gift was made) and the gods in turn unleash their wrath upon the civilization that produced such wickedness. I've seen so many people say the gods are absent from this movie, but this is frankly a basic failure of analysis. The gods are everywhere in the movie, whether or not they appear in their physical form, their agency very much shapes the events of the story.

Second, on a more prosaic level. You have a whole bunch of soldiers who have just unleashed ten years' worth of frustration on a conquered city, committing the worst atrocities with shameless abandon. These soldiers are now coming home, but that experience has changed them - accustoming them to a level of brutality unknown to the world previously. They are seen sacking and burning a peaceful coastal village. They violently accost a lone woman demanding to be given food. In both cases, Odysseus' men are probably not even the first ones to victimize those people, but they fall into that pattern all the same. They are "the Sea People" everyone is now afraid of. The act of sacking Troy has permanently destroyed a part of their humanity.

And thirdly, the fear of the Sea People, or even just the awareness of their existence, is providing licence or even justification for further breaks of xenia. The villagers refuse to welcome Odysseus' men because they're afraid of being sacked. Circe turns them into pigs because in her experience, that's exactly what these sorts of men are. The suitors abuse Penelope's hospitality because it seems that's what everyone is doing these days. An initial breach of xenia reverberates over and over.

You can agree with the point Nolan is making here, or you can disagree. That's totally fine. I myself have points of contention with it (as a leftist, I can only take it so far with the idealization of norms). But surely we can agree this is an interesting point, one worth discussing and interrogating and engaging with? It's both an expansion of the themes in Oppenheimer, an interesting weaving of myth and actual history, and an insightful commentary on the breakdown of norms we see happening in international politics, which really does seem to be spiraling out of control at the moment.

But no, instead all I hear is that the movie is about how "Odysseus has PTSD" (as if the PTSD angle was unique to Nolan rather than something almost every modern adaptation does) or that it's just about him "feeling guilty" when his guilt is barely even touched on. Frankly, Nolan's Odysseus is not a very interesting character. He's not supposed to be particularly complex by himself, nor is any character in this movie. What he is, however, is an effective vehicle for conveying this theme. That is clearly where Nolan's focus was in this movie (as it usually is - Nolan isn't really a character-focused author).

So maybe actually try to engage with the themes Nolan was trying to convey? A little bit? Perhaps?