i tend to find nolan, or at least the discourse around him, quite tiresome. there's all this focus on practical effects and imax cameras but i rarely find the actual images that arresting. (a notable exception in this movie was circe transforming odysseus' men into pigs, moulding them like clay.) i'm rarely going to be disappointed by a puppet and i think the perspective trickery in the laestrygonian scene is clever but it would be nice to see a fight scene with good blocking

it might be interesting that a story characterised in large by the wiliness of its central and multiple side characters has been adapted by nolan in such a way that he as the director is the cleverest figure of the movie, relying on technical proficiency to 'trick' his audience. except that his own reliance on repetitive expository dialogue undercuts this. it's hard to know whether this indicates a lack of confidence in himself as a visual storyteller or in his audience. his odysseus' lack of hubris is interesting in light of this ─ odysseus cannot outright lay claim to the blinding of polyphemus, his declaration of which sets off poseidon's vengeance against him in homer's text, because he's already taken on too much responsibility for the sack of troy and the falling of civilisation

all this is not to say that nolan's choices in adapting between two eras and moral landscapes as different as homer's and our own aren't interesting. i like the role of the trojan horse and odysseus' guilt over his betrayal of xenia in the sack of troy. there is something compelling about an odysseus so overwhelmed by trauma that he is no longer himself. the audience's assumed knowledge of damon's ability to play witty and duplicitous characters like tom ripley and the lack of such a portrayal here allows for this sense of something missing or thwarted in his odysseus

likewise the opaqueness of zendaya's athena, goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, who here seems so representative of his interiority, adds to this. but athena is thus denuded as a character in her own right. there are many lacunae of characterisation in this film, especially when it comes to the female characters, because this gender neutral trait of cleverness is largely dulled or excised in nolan's iteration. there is no sense that penelope and odysseus might be drawn together as equals in intelligence ─ she doesn't ask him to move their marriage bed; she doesn't trick him as he does her ─ and the years they spend apart are meant to stand in as proof of a relationship and love of which we otherwise get little insight

penelope still unpicks her weaving but that's about it. circe no longer persuades or seduces odyssey and his men while turning the latter into pigs. they eat her magic stew simply because they are hungry and haven't eaten in days, and thus her speech about the excessive hunger, greed and lust of men is blunted, especially because the threat of sexual violence is far more oblique than in homer's text

having said this, there is one notable addition of female trickery. whereas nolan's odysseus doesn't get polyphemus drunk before blinding him, his calypso does drug odysseus, merging her storyline with that of the lotus eaters. but theron's performance is so devoid of intrigue and internal conflict (she seemingly has very few qualms about odysseus leaving, despite going to such lengths to keep him in the state she'd like) that it's hard to read much into what that implies for her character, especially because the aforementioned eradication of sexuality removes one of the textual motives for her character. it also leads to a loss in odysseus' own characterisation, no longer a man who deliberately chooses life with penelope over immortality with calypso