All that is sacred is profaned: A review of the Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s film is both a simplification of the Odyssey and thematically brilliant, finds Rob HorsfieldFirst of all, the bad. For all of Nolan’s pretensions to arthouse cinema, the film does narratively tie up Homer’s poem far too cleanly. It is about the violence war does to human beings, to our social fabric, the betrayal of rules and bonds to domination. For example, in the poem, Odysseus tells the cyclops Polyphemus his name is Nobody. In Nolan’s Odyssey, Odysseus returns to custom and law to save his son and seize the chance to reverse social decay.