Sad Balkan Bitch

I also distinctly remember the 4chan troll accounts pretending to be queer people, mostly trans people, with the explicit intent of causing discourse and infighting and recruiting people into hating other queer people.

Not only that the language itself sounds straight out of a marvel forcibly funny haha moment, but Menelaus? The Menelaus who all thoughout human history, from Homer, to Sappho, to Euripides, to Virgil, to Shakespeare, to Brooke, to Barth; from Classical vases to Medieval poetry to Reinessance art, has been known as the man whose sword fell from his hands at the sight of his wife after 10 years apart?

"What joy for me to hold my wife" Menelaus?

"He flung the sword away, and kissed her feet" Menelaus?

"I believe all. I understand nothing. I love you" Menelaus?

"I have no fault to find; my wife, he daughter of Zeus and Leda, is mine again, she whom her brothers on their snow-white steeds, whilst torches blazed, made my happy bride, but gods removed her from my home." Menelaus?

The Menelaus who was picked out of the suitors by Helen herself? The Menelaus who couldn't kill a begging Trojan so his brother had to do it for him? The Menelaus who rescued Odysseus and got out Patroclus' body? The Menelaus who volounteered to fight Paris one on one so everybody could go home? Who kept expressing his guilt about himself being the cause of war through every assembly he spoke at in the Iliad? Who after 10 years away at Troy, took his wife through a 7-year long journey at sea back home, where he reinstated her as the queen of Sparta? Who wept like a child in front of Telemachus recalling the war and his brother and all the friends he lost and the only consolation being his wife' gentle hand on his?

You want me to believe that man scarred Helen's face and called her only worth half the ships because of it?

It's just so fucking stupid.

And while Homer (or, you know, whatever collection of scribes wrote down the Epic Cycle whom we collectively call Homer) may have had a general concept of the Bronze Age Collapse (kind of. Archaic Greeks would know about palace ruins, and may have had a concept that many great civilizations had been lost in the recent past. Theres really only 1 mention of *writing* in the Iliad, and its...pretty amiguous. So its not even super clear is Homer realized that people in the Mycenean period had written language), the character of Odysseus definitely did not.

The homeric Odyssey isn't about the Bronze Age Collapse and its themes do not represent an anxiety about the degeneracy and decline of Greek Culture, and if we are going to assess Nolan's film on the rubric of "are concepts, themes, and terminology something that Homer would have used or recognized", we would be here all day. (Theres not even really an Archaic Greek word for "Veteran" in the same way we do, or in the same way its used in the film. Odysseus, a man still fit for battle, would never apply the term to himself) But I don't think thats a particularly fair way to assess the film.

As for my comparison to De Vinci, who died before Vasaris book- Vasari used the term "rebirth" to describe the shift in art styles, and it wouldn't be used to describe the entire cultural era until the 1850s. So, Michelangelo likely wouldn't have thought he was having a great day in the Italian Renaissance either, honestly. Though he might have felt like his art was part of the artistic revival at the time.

Yes, WE, modern people with modern concepts about history, talk about living in the Information Age. We are very used to dividing up history into discreet eras, often to the point of oversimplification, to compare eras to each other, to try to find cause and effect in our progression from one to the next. It's a concept clearly, Nolan finds very interesting.

It also nearly sent me into a fit in the movie because it's just Nolan breaking the forth wall and saying to the camera "This movie is actually about the decline of the American empire because of the loss of traditional values".

The movie is written for a modern audience, so it's in english, it uses the term greek instead of a more historically accurate term such as "aegean", bronze age instead of mycenaean period and a incorporates a lot of more contemporary beliefs about greek history. The trojan horse is not mentioned at all in the illiad and only has like 5 lines in the odyssey where it is only described as a siege engine which probably means a siege tower. The trojan horse being a specific ploy by the "greeks" to sneak in is an invention by Virgil in 1st century bc, 300-ish years after Homer. Sinon who was also used in the movie is another one by virgil. The armor is also more roman styled. The theme of odyssey's feeling sad because he broke laws of honor also very roman, romans had a tendencies of calling Odysseus a coward for not fighting head on and using to much trickery. Nolan should just have called the movie Ulysses to be honest. It would have been better.

Here is my opinion i did not like either the original illiad or the odyssey. Why? Everyone is a slave owner and glorified for it. There are like 3 scenes in the original odyssey where a slave comments about how good a master Odysseus is. The specific themes of getting glory and honor in the illiad also does not appeal to my more modern pacifist opinions. So honestly Nolan's version is better than Homer's. We will never have a true adaptation of either though. Unless it becomes morally acceptable within my life time to have a full 10 min rape scene of a minor onscreen we will never have a true adaptation. (which is fine by me). We barely get one scene where Matt Damon nicely ask a man for some supplies while if we were trying to be accurate he should have been pillaging, burning and enslaving that random village. If you truly were hoping for a true adaptation keep dreaming of electric sheep. Lastly i'm not american so it was very interesting to me that you interpreted the movie to be about american imperialism. Here cultural context matters more which is always somewhat fascinating. I understood the film to be more about breaking the social contract both on a national and international level. That we have slowly eroded away the ideas of democracy and human rights too the point where we have returned to the more imperialist idea of "might makes right". Odysseus doesn't take Troy by proper warfare but instead commits a war-crime by disguising himself as the ancient equivalent of a peace offering. The entire Sinon subplot was also about how we send young men to die, while the rich stay at home and drink the country out of house and bed. In the end Odysseus has a revelation, kills all of the bad people and then leaves himself because society can't function when you break Zeus's law.

But a few thoughts-

1. If you're put off the homeric texts because everyone owns slaves...Odysseus owns slaves in Nolans movie too.

Eumaeus is literally a slave and Nolans movie keeps all the scenes where he talks about what a good master Odysseus is, specifically in contrast to Melantho snd Melanthius who are bad disloyal slaves and get brutally murdered as punishment.

So....I mean. That's not something Nolan actually...changed at all. If anything, he just doesn't use the actual word "slave" as much so you don't think about it. But Odysseus in Nolan's movie is very much a slave owner too.

2. Yeah, being an American watching an American film by a well known American studio does give some context here. Also having seen Nolans other films. Nolan, without fail, has vague conservative themes and is weird about women, and this film is no exception at all. (Batman and Oppenheimer were particularly on the nose.)

But even if we use your interpretation, the ending is still nihilistic doomerism that basically just says that you have no responsibility to try to FIX societies problems- the next generation can worry about that, I guess. It's Telemachus' problem now.

But yeah, there's some pretty unsubtle subtext in the idea that the light of civilization and literacy will blaze again "in the West" that has....specific political implications here.

As well as some very familiar tropes about a LOT of our post-Vietnam and post- Afghanistan war media- how you went to war, did a war crime, and suffer with the guilt of it. It's why he needs Penelopes forgiveness for his sins at the end (rather than the homeric ending, which centers on Penelopes cleverness and wise nature, establishing them as equals as the final restoration of Odysseus on Ithaca.)

3. I wasn't asking for a line by line Homeric-accurate adaptation (though, Im...curious about what rape of a minor you think would NEED to be included). All adaptations adapt, and I'm generally more interested in how any new adaptation will work with the homeric poem to tell a cohesive and interesting story.

But I do think that a movie which has marketed itself *so hard* on this idea of authenticity and research should be a little more thoughtful about what period in history the movie is...theoretically styled to and how that informs the characters.

But my "This Age of Bronze" critique isn't even a historical accuracy issue so much as a "Why in the World would this thought even occur to this character? Other than to just be a clunky vehicle for Nolans theme statement?"

2. Over the last few days, I've seen a lot of people try to come at the movie from a more centrist or even left lens. I think...there's ways, especially on how we interpret what "Zeus' Law" represents, which make sense. I think those are valid readings. Is "Zeus' Law" traditional values, or societal institutions? Is it piety or social decorum? But its....clunky. it's clunky regardless. I think the issue is that all the pieces that make this recognizably the Odyssey are...ill fitted for the kind of story Nolan wanted to tell. The bits which can be used to convey his theme (mostly, the reasons behind and conduct during the war) are so outweighed by the bulk of the plot and contradicted by other pieces, that it ends up very muddled.

3. I'm not sure why we are assuming that Chryseis and Briseis are minors. I mean, the concept of a 'minor' didn't exist until very recently historically, but both are typically referred to as 'women'. But, you know, I think the 'captured as a war trophy' thing is probably a bigger issue morally than whether or not they are legally over the modern....age of consent?

But also, again, I wasn't asking for a line accurate adaptation, the Odyssey doesn't include the Iliad, and the Iliad doesn't have smut scenes where this would need to be depicted.

Yes. The characters in the Iliad and the Odyssey do terrible things. Especially by any modern moral standard. Part of engaging with a story that is 3,000 years old is grappling with the fact that customs and culture and morals are different. We are so used to this very Renaissance idea that Hero = Saintly Knight that older stories which depict amoral characters or characters with very different moral structures can read as alien to us.

And I think it's interesting that Nolan wants a story where Odysseus is haunted by his war guilt, haunted by acts of brutality he committed, but....has to change what those acts ARE - burning a city and killing civilians (a Relatable war crime, something that all the Vietnam and Afghanistan vets can relate to), but not murdering Hectors infant son, or taking 'war trophies' of his own (many sources say he takes Hecuba, queen of Troy), or owning slaves back home, or killing all the slave girls who slept with the suitors to cleanse his household. Nolan wants to add in modern guilt, but then has to also make sure that the things he's guilty about are Relatable. Which is...a little boring, but mostly just very clunky.

.also, scale reference! just the wheel is 70 feet in diameter