everybody leaving tags on my letterboxd roundup like "they didn't do the nobody scene??" we're so fucking past that i need you to catch up. i went into the movie knowing they wouldn't do the nobody scene and frankly i had made peace with it like okay if you don't want odysseus calling himself outis because you don't feel like the joke translates well enough WHATEVER you dont need to film every line of the poem. what i was NOT prepared for is that THEY DON'T SPEAK TO POLYPHEMUS AT ALL. they don't steal a giant wheel of cheese, they don't get him drunk, odysseus doesn't taunt him after their escape, AND he doesn't cry out to poseidon or the other cyclopes on the shore. it's "revealed" that he can speak in the cave before their escape as he prays to poseidon. someone asks odysseus "should we try to reason with him?" and ODYSSEUS says "we're past that." resulting in an adaptation where odysseus does not use wit or trickery to escape polyphemus at all-- which is the case with every single obstacle he meets. this guy does not lie and he does not play tricks. his intelligence is restricted to battlefield tactics, the administration and direction of his men as units. You have to poke polyphemus so he opens his eye before you can stab it! I am very smart. the only point at which he could be described as "tricking" polyphemus is when-- because the movie is allergic to making odysseus look stupid or silly in any way-- they tie straw to their backs to be mistaken for sheep instead of riding the undersides of the sheep, and we are presented with an action sequence of trousered and armored soldiers somersaulting and army crawling under polyphemus' gently dangling hand. which i hate because it is a less clever solution that only works if polyphemus is extremely stupid (shepherd who doesn't know how many sheep he has) -- and more importantly because it removes IMO the most emotionally efficient moment in the odyssey, which is polyphemus talking to the one sheep that's walking slow because it has odysseus on its belly like "oh no are you feeling okay today? you're moving so slow, maybe you're upset because i'm in pain? you're the best sheep in the world and i love all of you my sheeps" like that scene is supposed to instantly retroactively humanize polyphemus and make you realize odysseus has been torturing a person with feelings who basically just wants to be left alone with his pet sheep and it's extremely good at that in every translation i've ever read. but not one of odysseus' enemies are allowed an inch of humanity in this entire adaptation which seems to be a veiled metaphor for the vietnam war so what can you expect. and yes because odysseus never does anything wrong or stupid or silly, OF COURSE he would never reveal his name and allow polyphemus to curse him, and his crew only "believes" that he's been cursed by poseidon thereafter, which removes the ENTIRE MAIN ANTAGONIST of the story and changes the central conflict from man vs. god to man vs. ????
With all due respect, this is a really confusing post that misses several key aspects of the film and how it’s recontextualized the story. I’m gonna go ahead and use a bullet point format so I can format things easier.
Polyphemus is largely presented as a lonely, simple minded giant leading an isolated existence tending to his flock. His movements and mannerisms are even presented as child like in nature, something which is obviously meant to be seen as humanizing to the audience. Especially with that awful pained scream he gave while curling up into the fetal position, something the sound design is explicitly trying to horrify the audience with. Saying he’s not humanized is kinda just wrong when the film takes great pains to make the audience understand how traumatic it was in the moment for Polyphemus to lose his eye.
Not only does Polyphemus still have humanity, *all* of the people Odysseus faces are shown to have humanity. That’s literally a major focus of act 3. Odysseus’s entire monologue to Penelope before he kills the suitors is about how him and his men were evil monsters in Troy and that Athena literally took on the image of a girl he watched die in a temple. The fact all the people he raided and killed had humanity, and that he was the true monster, is a major thesis of the film, it’s why he doesn’t feel worthy of coming back to Ithica.
The reason Poseidon isn’t in the film is because this adaptation isn’t about man vs gods, it’s about man vs guilt/violence/collapsing trust/themselves. I understand that’s a big change from the poem, and disliking that’s just a personal opinion thing that I won’t argue with. But pretending that it’s not clear is very confusing.
