jar

i dont think its bad to adapt the story to our modern knowledge of the period the story took place, but its apparent to me that nolan either did not expect the audience to be able to understand, or did not himself understand, the relationship betweeen the bronze age collapse and the homeric poems. he included historical context in a way that oversimplified and mischaracterized this relationship, while at the same time condescending to the audience, essentially repeating buzzwords one might remember from their world history class in high school.

so here are my complaints just so i can get them off my chest; spoilers ahead!

1) i don’t actually hate that odysseus is aware of the bronze age collapse, as the level to which ancient people were aware of the impending collapse is debated, and odysseus is a worldly, intelligent character. What i do take issue with was him calling his own time period an “age of bronze.” while bronze was a significant aspect of life in the bronze age (duh) the idea of “the bronze age” didn’t come about until the 19th century; him directly saying “this age of bronze is about to collapse” was deeply anachronistic and fourth wall breaking to me.

2) the way that the sea people are characterized is so weird to me. you can tell nolan wants to include the theory that the “trojan war” written about in the iliad and odyssey was a city destruction carried out by the greeks, which are agreed to be one of the many tribes that made up “the sea people,” who are often identified as the perpetrators of a multitude of city destructions leading up to the bronze age collapse. the way the film addresses this, though, makes it seem like ancient people understood the sea people to be a unified group, or that the greeks were the only ones doing this, which is just untrue. not only that, but the bronze age collapse was likely caused more by environmental conditions like drought, earthquakes, and famine, which subsequently spurred people from across the mediterranean to cross the sea in search of better living conditions, or perhaps taking advantage of the chaos, thus creating the sea people. if you’re going to mention the sea people so many times, you may as well reference the other causes of the collapse. and again “the sea people” is a 19th century term, and saying “the people of the sea” doesn’t make the label any less anachronistic.

3) at the end penelope asks odysseus why poets will have to sing their story, and odysseus responds with something like “to remember those of us who knew how to write,” which i understand is a nod to the writing loss that would occur during the collapse, and to the oral origins of homeric poetry. but i still laughed out loud in the theater when i heard this. while the mycenaean greeks had a writing system, which was lost during the collapse, they did not use writing for storytelling, and penelope would not have thought of writing as being used for any kind of literary tradition. linear b was only used by a very small number of scribes, and really only for trade and inventory. neither penelope or odysseus would have known how to write, and they wouldn’t be familiar with any written stories. the movie literally opens with a scene taken directly from the original poem, of a poet performing the story of the trojan war. oral storytelling was already the norm in mycenaean greece!!!