i’m with you in rockland

part 1: technical aspects

i realize, after typing out the table of contents for what i want to talk about, that most of my review is quite critical. so i want to start off by saying that the odyssey is an epic. for thousands of years, the purpose of an epic has been to tell insanely long stories about extraordinary heroes who do extraordinary things. it’s supposedly to feel close to the gods, it’s supposed to be grand, and i think the technical aspects of this movie were able to do this better than any adaptation has so far. i truly think it was worth it to use IMAX cameras throughout, even though i have some issues with how pretentious it feels (the gods were pretentious!). i think it was worth it for the movie to be this long. the “epic” aspect of the poem was therefore captured quite well in my opinion, from a technical perspective. i know the movie stills tell a different picture, but it didn’t feel like a cheap medieval fantasy, and i think that’s something i appreciate a lot about the movie. 

i will say though…i do not like the horse. you can look up pictures of the horse. it barely looks like wood, it doesn’t look like its time period at all, i wish the horse didn’t look so manufactured and shiny. not a huge deal though, it’s fine.

part 2: what was zendaya doing?

okay, now i’m going to start getting a bit more critical. and i want to say this as an objective fact, a HUGE part of the odyssey is about the gods. and how the gods have the control in the end, how much wiser they are, because human mortality is NOTHING to the gods. odysseus’s life is but a blip. the gods’ morning show. athena’s entertainment. so where is their power in the movie? what exactly do they do?

there were no scenes with the gods conferring in the movie. it’s fine i guess. but what i REALLY wanted to see was athena, and how she (and hermes) help odysseus in his journey. odysseus doesn’t know how to survive circe on his own. he doesn’t know how to fight the suitors on his own. there are SO MANY instances of athena telling odysseus exactly what to do in the poem. and the movie removed ALL of it. 

zendaya (as athena) stood there for several scenes and did nothing, genuinely nothing. (it’s implied that she was mentor and was on the ship with telemachus to sparta, but that is ONE scene out of countless that she’s supposed to be in.) odysseus came up with every single one of his ideas by himself. and this movie decision is something that i really, really dislike. 

the epic was passed down orally, then in writing, for thousands of years. humanity has put in substantial effort to keep it alive, and one of the biggest reasons is that it reminds us of the power of the gods, the inevitability of fate, the futility of mortals to stand up to the lifeless gods. this—the weakness of humanity—is the main lesson of the epic. instead, the movie went the opposite direction. it made odysseus more capable, and is fundamentally a movie about the strength of humanity. 

part 3: the man of twists and turns?

i want to talk about odysseus next, and the definition of a hero. the epic hero, in classical literature, is a person who is admired for certain“heroic” traits, who is famous for their epic-worthy accomplishments, who has the support of the gods, and who has some kind of character flaw. this differs from our modern understanding of a hero, which is someone who is a role model for society. i think this movie tried to modernize what a hero is, and the character of odysseus we get as a result is very different.

first, odysseus’s wit is…overplayed. i talked about this in part 2, how he comes up with all his ideas by himself, with no input from the gods. this is NOT an accurate characterization of odysseus! 

secondly, odysseus is kind of a hypocrite in the epic. he weeps for penelope every day on calypso’s island, and then at night goes and has sex with calypso. i’ve always disliked him a little bit for playing up his misery this way. in the movie, odysseus eats these lotus flowers that make him forget about his wife and son. which to me just reads like they’re removing yet another “negative” aspect of his character. same with circe: odysseus happily and willingly chose to stay with circe for a months. in the movie, he doesn’t stay on her island at all??

third: odysseus’s cruelty towards the slave girls is 100% SO completely important to understanding his character. it’s a major part of who he is, someone capable of this brutality. we can have many discussions about whether the slave girls “had it coming”, but the fact is that odysseus’s decision to murder them all IS brutal and violent and shocking. and in yet another effort to cleanse odysseus’s character of faults, in another effort to make him fit the modern hero, this scene is…REMOVED. YES THAT’S RIGHT, ENTIRELY REMOVED FROM THE MOVIE. the girls are spared. the end.

odysseus is described as a man of twists and turns. as a complicated man. i believe the movie’s attempt to turn him into a hollywood hero has removed his complexity.

part 4: the slave girls

let me elaborate on the slaves. the truth is that they are barely in the movie. not only is one of the most vividly brutal scenes in the poem (their hanging) flat out removed, i would say that other than melantho (the one who “betrays” penelope), their whole characters are absent from the film. i blame odysseus for this actually; in an effort to keep the focus on our brave hollywood hero odysseus, the “unimportant” women are brushed aside. of course.

but most importantly, the hanging of the girls has a wider message in the poem, which is that the cycle of violence never ends.

in the movie, there is a long speech between odysseus (in disguise) and penelope about the futility and brutality of war. i actually found it the most memorable and emotional moment in the film. but. is war the only thing that terrorizes us? is war humanity’s only crime? is war the only time we face violence?

NO!!! it is not!!! the cycle of violence never ends, odysseus’s mind will never be at rest, do you really think 20 years of fighting for his life will have no effect on him?? of course the hanging of the girls makes sense in that context. but instead (spoilers for the plot twist ending)…odysseus and penelope QUITE LITERALLY SAIL OFF INTO THE SUNSET TOGETHER. i’m not just saying this metaphorically. no slave girls killed. no more blood. no more violence. odysseus and penelope are in love as ever, and sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after.

absolutely not i say!! there are so many possible end scene ideas better than this one!!

part 5: acting, pacing, additional changes and comments

this review is horribly long already, so i’m going to give some rapid-fire miscellaneous comments.

i do recognize that it’s extremely difficult to turn the odyssey into one (1) singular movie. i understand the cuts, i wouldn’t want it to be any longer. by the time we got to the sun cattle scene i remember thinking, oh my god, i’m so ready for him to go home, i can’t sit through 10+ minutes of nausicaa and every other little detail of odysseus’s journey. so thank GOD they cut out nausicaa and her entire island. thank GOD they cut out the bags of wind. thank GOD they cut out returning to circe and going through scylla/charybdis again. i know not everyone will be happy with these cuts…but let me tell you, if i had to sit in that theatre for 2 hours and odysseus still had not landed in ithaca, my experience of the movie would be 10 times worse. i KNOW people will complain about the cuts, but i was so infinitely thankful for them, i truly was.

however. cutting out “nobody is my name”?? colossal crime. unforgivable. such a memorable part of the epic, a great display of odysseus’s wit, gone. gone gone gone. THE OLIVE TREE BED???? they could have stuck that in idc idc they could have. and even if it was just for a second, i really wanted to see cassandra in the trojan horse scene.

circe. ughhhhh. i like what they did with her character, i like the witchcraft, but i wish they didn’t cut the visit to her island to, like, a day. i love circe too much for them move on from her so soon!

i wasn’t initially opposed to helen’s casting at all, and i think the actor is gorgeous and did a fantastic job. my issue is that with the way she was treated by the spartans, and the way she was the only black person in the room…it kinda felt like her race was actively being used to make her look…exotic, almost? like i think it actually did affect the interpretation of her character, which i did not really like.

telemachus reminds me of percy jackson. i’m sorry but his acting took me out of it at times.

one of the things i liked about the odyssey is how odysseus was CRYING all the time. where is the weeping in this film? let my man cry!!

anne hathaway is gorgeous. i have no issues with her penelope. i also liked the scenes with eumaeus, as well as argos (the dog).

conclusion