The Odyssey - What Does Nolan Bring to This Epic? [TEASER]

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome back to Reader Tangents. I literally almost forgot that right before that, I forgot what my own podcast was called. It came to me in that millisecond. Welcome back to Reader Tangents. This is a subscriber exclusive episode, or you are hearing the teaser that might be public. And I am doing a bit of a bit of something different for my book podcast. And we're talking about a movie. Today we are going to be talking about the Odyssey. Ostensibly, we're reviewing it, but we're just going to see what happens. And I am joined again by Shay, who you've heard on this show before. Hello. Hello. When did you see it? You saw it a week ago, I think. [00:00:39] Speaker A: I saw it the day it came out. [00:00:40] Speaker B: Okay, so it's been a minute. And then I saw it two days ago. So we're both relatively fresh on this. [00:00:46] Speaker A: I also didn't see it in the intended experience. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Yes, of course, as almost nobody can. Gonna toot my own horn. I'm almost nobody. I got to see it in the intended experience. The. The 70 millimeter IMAX thing. I've tried to explain it to other friends of mine who are like, oh, I'm going to see it in imax. And, like, there's like, a part where you don't want to be, like, an elitist weirdo. But also I'm like, it's like. Like it's not really imax. Like, you're not seeing it in the IMAX that I'm seeing it in. And then, like, I sent you guys the picture of the theater. Like, it's massive. [00:01:19] Speaker A: It felt like I was on soaring California. [00:01:22] Speaker B: Yes, it feels like that when you're in it, too. I really almost wanted. When the credits were rolling, I ended up going up to the projection room, but I. Part of me wanted to go sit in, like, the very front row. Just be like, what does it look like from here? It's crazy. [00:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah. That's an impossible experience. I think I, like, have, like, sensory issues, for sure. It's. [00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a lot. When I had to get a. I had to get an 11am weekday ticket by myself to get a ticket to the movie because, like, there's no way. They started selling seats. And I think the first four showings went on sale a year ago when they announced that the movie would be coming out. And then they sold out in, like, 10 minutes. And so I. For reference, for everybody listening, I live in Sacramento. We have one of these theaters where I live, and it was a big deal. So I Guess we've. We're just going to get into it. Just going to. I'm assuming everybody that's listening to this knows about the Odyssey, Christopher Nolan's newest movie. The bit that we're talking about here, the format of it, he filmed it entirely in 70 millimeter film and shot on IMAX cameras. I will say I would kind of love a like behind the scenes documentary just on the filmmaking. It seems so cool. [00:02:31] Speaker A: I think I saw some sort of like, I want like a whole movie on the making of the movie, but I think I saw like an episode on Amazon prime or something about the making of the movie. You might. I didn't watch it, but I, I saw the Odyssey and I was like, why is it on Amazon Prime? But it was, it was the movie making that I would. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that I would actually watch because I know the cameras are like £700 and like they're so large that the actors couldn't look at each other past the camera. So he like developed this system with mirrors so they could see into the other person's eye anyway. Which we'll talk about, I'm sure. I don't really know how to structure this without immediately saying that neither of us particularly liked this movie. [00:03:12] Speaker A: Right. It is the elephant in the room. We already know kind of generally what each other thinks of it. But I guess like I'm always a compliment sandwich sort of critiquer, which I learned to placate the sort of hearts of my fellow workshoppers in academic spaces. My natural state of being is not to compliment Sandwich, but I feel as though most people prefer receive criticism that way. I don't think you can look this movie and not be like, wow, that's incredible how he made it. [00:03:43] Speaker B: Right? [00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah. I think if you say that you're actually just a dumb like hater and want to be controversial for no reason. I don't think it's a hot take to say that the spectacle of it and the, the artistry of the filmmaking was spectacular. [00:03:57] Speaker B: That was like 110% of the reason I wanted to see it. Like I texted you and Zoran the day before and I was like, here's my expectation. I, I think it's going to be pretty middling, but I think it'll be cool to see. [00:04:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:09] Speaker B: And I think that's a huge selling point of the movie. Obviously it was in all the marketing, but like the style that it was filmed in is like a huge selling point. Aside from the story itself. [00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, I don't know how they could have done some of those special effects. I'd love to see the people who made the. The puppets in, like, however they did the pig thing, Like, I'd love to see that. And so, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was visually impressed even [00:04:36] Speaker B: more than the pigs. I was struck with the lraganians, with the giants. [00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah, the perspective shot, like, how they did, you know, like, you know, the movie Elf, it's like, one of my favorite movies. And they, like, every year you see the memes on Elf, like, right around Christmas time, they're like, actually, they got these people tall because they did forced perspective. And I'm like, yeah, we all know that. But it reminded me of. Of that. But, yeah, the L were cool. They should have been cooler. But we can talk about that later. [00:05:03] Speaker B: So, again, I have no structure for this. I don't think this is basically just going to be a conversation between you and I, which, of course, has no structure ever. So the one thing I'll start with is that I think you have all of the same critiques that I have and more. So I will lay out kind of where I'm at and then you can, like, expand on them because you're. You're. One of the interesting things. And the reason I asked you on this, to be on this episode in particular, is that I love talking to people who are smarter than me and who know more than me and, like, have deeper critiques than me. All of which is you on this. Like, you know way more about the Odyssey than I do. [00:05:36] Speaker A: That being said, I'm also not an expert on the Odyssey. I've just read it many times. [00:05:41] Speaker B: I suppose that's maybe a good place to start is what our frame of reference going into this is mine is that I, quote, unquote, read the Odyssey in high school. So that level of, like, engaging with the actual text to the extent that, like, I read bits and pieces of it, I did essays on it, I took tests on it, and then I haven't touched the text since. I think I even texted you guys at one point. I was like, I don't know if I'm confusing some of what I know about the Odyssey with, like, what I've read in Circe by Madeline Miller or, like, you know, various other ones of those. I did fact check myself on a couple of things, but, like, that's my frame of reference for this is most. I think what probably most people have a general sort of cultural osmosis. You remember the big things, you know, the various beats of the story. And that's pretty much it. And even that, like, even with that level, I was like, this doesn't seem right. It's like, I think. I think there's some things that are missing here. Let me actually pull up the text that I sent you guys because that's probably a better way for me to figure out where I want to start. [00:06:44] Speaker A: I have texts pulled up in three different group chats that I'm going to like, help remember some of my notes on. Because I have been talking about this for several weeks and I kind of want to shut the door on how frustrated I am by mostly the conversation surrounding the movie. Not even the movie itself at a certain point. But yeah, I mean, while you're pulling that up, my frame of reference is I also did the high school thing. I have my high school book with me right here. I read it again as an undergraduate in a classics class where we've read. We read all the major Western foundational classics, starting with Gilgamesh, ending with the Aeneid, probably. That's how much I remember. And then I read it again in my master's study and that was a really in depth look at the Odyssey. And we read it through a lens of veteran coming home from war, which I hadn't gotten in the previous two studies of it. And then I'm actually considering right now teaching it to my own students this year because I think the movie's really hot and it might be. [00:07:46] Speaker B: It's a good time for it. [00:07:47] Speaker A: So we'll see if that works out. But because my head is so in it, I've been rediscovering some pieces about it. But like you, some of my facts also mix with Circe, mix with other Greek myths that sort of also bend what happened in the mythological history, the plays, you know, all of that gets certain details different or they just interpret things differently. And so like, we can be a little wishy washy with the details. The Greeks certainly were. [00:08:18] Speaker B: The thing about an adaptation, I think we'll probably get into this when we're talking about, like, the way that people take critiques of this movie is that like, I think we both have an understanding that like, you're going to go into this and it's not going to be the same. And also like this, this poem is thousands of years old. It doesn't have to be the same. I'm not looking for it to be the same. But the question is always like, what is this interpretation doing? What's the point of this interpretation? What's the message of it? Like, what is it attempting to bring to the table? Or is it attempting to bring just the same story back to life? Like, what's it trying to do? And I think a lot of the things that this interpretation attempts to do is really in service of making it so much less interesting. It is so bland. Like, his core themes through it seem to be and are very apparent. And as you're watching it, war is bad. Like, full stop. Like, it's just war equals bad. Cool. Got it. Coming home from war can feel impossible. You know, you have soldiers who are no longer the same person that they were when they left. And so, like, it feels emotionally and physically impossible to come back from that. And whether, like, you deserve to get back or you feel like you should or you feel like you can. And then the idea, like, they reference. I mean, I know the poem does this as well, but, like, the repeated references of Zeus's law, like, it feels like every 10 minutes, it's like the concept that turning your back on each other, being this loss of kindness and compassion, betraying each other, is like the literal fall of civilization. That seems to me to be the main core messages of the film. Would you agree? [00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you nailed that. I think that the book also has those things. It's just there's more to it. And the sort of depth of those things, like, interweave with a history that is so much larger than the slice you got in the movie. And so when you're picking and choosing what specifically to highlight, you have to do so with the knowledge that you're leaving other things behind, which communicates to your audience that the things that you chose are more important than the things that you didn't. And I think, like, that's where people get frustrated with retellings or adaptations or whatever is, like, the thing that is important to me was not prioritized. Therefore, it makes it feel like it's unimportant to you, the movie maker. And so I go in fully acknowledging that the things I love about the Odyssey definitely weren't going to be there. But there's a responsibility, I think, like, when you're picking and choosing what to prioritize, Nolan's also doing it from the perspective of a very rich, successful white man in a society that ultimately praises him at every turn. And when you're prioritizing like a white male story in a story from a culture that is not your own, what is the intention here? And to me, going alongside a lot of other things that he did not prioritize the Women in the show where he filmed, did he film it ethically? All of those things. Oh, I forgot about that. Based on the back burner. Where is the authenticity in the story you're trying to tell here? Yeah, and that's where I start getting a bit more frustrated, I think, with [00:11:28] Speaker B: the themes that he chose. They're very palatable to white audiences. Like, they're very simple. They're really easy concepts. And I don't think it's bad to have easy concepts in a film. I think if you have easy concepts that are very well executed, that's fine. This doesn't feel like he executed these concepts very well. I think two of the big problems in his narrative here, and I think what I really ultimately wish is that he had directed somebody else's screenplay because he just didn't write a good adaptation. He is one far too concerned with fitting the entirety of the Odyssey into a three hour time frame, which just isn't possible. So you have to let go of that. You're not going to be able to do that. And. Oh, shit, where's the other part? Fuck. A time frame and. Oh, right. And the fact that he's like, largely incapable or unwilling to portray Odysseus as anything other than capital G. Good guy. [00:12:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:19] Speaker B: And he's so bland for it. He's so bland. [00:12:24] Speaker A: That's like putting aside everything I just said, which is sort of like my academic take, I guess my personal, like, nerd take is like, where was my awful but beloved guy underdog that you want to root for, who's super smart? And he wants the Trojan War because of his wit, not because of his strength, which was weird and wild at the time. He's a guy that loves sex. He's a guy that loves drink. He's a guy that does want to get home, but he sure loves all the things he's getting on the way. He's an abuser. He is a colonizer. He's a complicated man, as Emily Wilson calls him in her translation. And it did not feel as though he was a very complicated man at all in this movie. [00:13:10] Speaker B: No, it's so sanitized. He whitewashed all of Odysseus's. And I think this is one of the first things I said to you guys. He whitewashes all of Odysseus's actions to the point that it, like, removes his agency entirely. He. I actually wrote up a review and I think the line I used was like, he basically trips and falls in oopsy daisies his way into taking 20 years to get home. He has no agency in anything. And I'm like, he made a lot of these choices himself. Like, these are things that he made conscious decisions to take this long. He was like, I'm gonna get to Penelope eventually, but on the way, I guess, certainly interesting. And it, like, a part of it is that sort of like, he's trying really hard to fit all this in a three hour time frame. And it felt like watching a checklist of like, if you did street interviews and you stopped people on the street and were like, hey, are you familiar with the Odyssey? What do you remember about it? He was like, I have to hit all of these beats, right? The Trojan horse, the Cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, Apollo's cows, the bowstringing, the suitors that like. He was like, I have to hit all of these big things and they all have to be in this movie. And what ends up happening is that you spend three minutes on each of them so that none of them matters. Like, there's nothing thematically that matters about any of them because he's trying. So like, even like, I'm sitting in the theater and I'm like, I'm not feeling what's happening. I'm checking off Cyclops and wondering, okay, so where do we go from here? Okay, Laestry is probably next, right? To what end? [00:14:37] Speaker A: And for that matter, like, it's interesting because he did cut out certain things and he cut out certain parts of the things he included. And I would have rather he just picked like a couple and really focused on the importance of them. And he. He also seemed to only prioritize the places that were, like, scary and bad and had, like, crazy people there. Right. [00:15:02] Speaker B: All right. And this full conversation is a subscriber exclusive podcast episode. So that's all I've got for you here. That was the first roughly 15 minutes of an episode that's about an hour and five minutes long in total. If you would like to hear the whole thing, you can become a subscriber at my [email protected] that is actually the home of all my publishing news. I have a publishing imprint. We are currently in process of publishing two books right now. They're both releasing in 2027. The Archaeology of Falling Worlds by Megan Chi and the as yet untitled sequel to To Bargain with Mortals by Ra Basu. So all of my publishing news happens over there, as well as things like exclusive podcast episodes, which you can get access to over there. Yeah, so that's where that is. I'm gonna go. I didn't really script out this last part here, so bye.