Christopher Nolan finally worked out men completely suck

If “the adaptive choices regarding a work that you know as well as The Night Before Christmas” can be considered a spoiler, then by all means, assume spoilers for The Odyssey ahead.

Sinon, the first character we meet in Christopher Nolan’s new, startlingly fresh cinematic transformation of The Odyssey, is played by a trans man. It’s not clear whether Sinon is meant to be canonically trans within the story. It’s possible: beyond question, there have been trans men in every army in every war in the history of the human race; but seen as a youngster elsewhere in the film, (young) Sinon is played by a cis boy. Regardless: the thematic possibility of Elliot Page’s casting here is perhaps more utile than being another of The Odyssey‘s (many) instances of Nolan working again with actors he has enjoyed working with before. Sinon is played by a queer man, not a cis man, and Sinon’s place in the story will not be those of other men.

From a seemingly perfunctory opening scene — Sinon is killed quickly, by the Trojan scouting party that discovers the Horse — Page’s role becomes a crucial spine to Nolan’s take on the source material. (This happens in Nolan. “Perfunctory” doesn’t exist. Nothing is ever not something.) One of two spines, in fact, which is not a thing that happens in nature, but happens in stories all the time: the other is Zendaya’s Athena, who accompanies Odysseus (just Odysseus?) throughout the movie and whose choice of casting is also not perfunctory. We are shown why Zendaya’s casting, particularly, is important, in the final reel — we may have guessed, sooner — but, as in so much of Nolan, this is less a “twist” than a confirmation of an undercurrent that has been building to storm-strength throughout the preceding two and a half hours.

Wait, I said two spines. Gods help me: there are three. There’s this guy:

who is literally wearing a human spine on his back. This should say something to people. I suspect it does not, in many cases. An early scene, whose setup we never see — Odysseus’ men have put an entire village to the torch and are now mopping up, complaining about not having been greeted as liberators — should have the same effect. But really, back to point #1: this dude has a human spine decorating his armour.

The villagers hid from Odysseus’ men because they feared the men were “the people from the sea,” rumoured war parties that have been pillaging the coastlines in this time of war. Being associated as such flipped the men out, just like calling a racist a racist in mixed company these days flips racists out. Their pride, see. The naming of the thing matters, more than the thing itself. The Odyssey takes place in a time lost to history — literally, these people are sailing towards a 400 year gap in the continuity of human language, prior to which no artifacts remain — and Nolan’s take is, given his frequent political timidity, rather bold. The entire movie is a warning, more elegantly stated, but which transcribes to me as: “hey: dumbfucks: men do this again and again and again and it always destroys us.“

“It is a time of apparent magic,” the screen flashes at the very start of the film. The Odyssey would pair well with Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, another film which wonders what it would have been like to live in a world where angels and demons aren’t just metaphors (an undergrad read of Homer would hold that all of his monsters are externalizations of psychological thresholds, which they are) but are wandering around smashing shit with their hands. This interview pointed out that John Boorman’s Excalibur is a good comp, too: films that suggest if you go back far enough, you reach the boundary between reality and myth. Keep going, and you find out that at some point, these weren’t just campfire stories we were telling ourselves to explain why the sky-noise was so loud.

Zeus is invoked endlessly in The Odyssey — more accurately, “Zeus’ Law” is, which effectively guarantees safe houseroom for travellers, in an era where journeys are long and rest stops few. Odysseus whines to Athena (there are a lot of men whining in this movie) that gods don’t speak in words that men can understand. Athena replies, “Who doesn’t understand thunder or fire?” A clear line is drawn; again, we are in a world where this shit is real. Whether the gods themselves — Zeus, even Athena — are manifest in this world is left to the viewer’s imagination, but their manifestations — tentacly Scylla; the deformed cyclops; whatever the fuck is going on with the Laestrygonians, who seem to have time-travelled backwards from the 13th century or the planet Mongo — are not. They are real. They are here. Zeus’ Law is a law.

That someone must be animating these wonders becomes most painfully clear on the black beaches of Hades, which Odysseus visits for advice; Sinon is here, wretched, furious with Odysseus for lying to him about the meaning and purpose of the Horse, because the Horse broke Zeus’ Law as a battle strategem. Sinon was left outside, guarding the thing, claiming it a gift for the temple of Athena in Troy; he was killed by the Trojans, never knowing he had lied, while Odysseus and all his men squatted and shat inside the colossal artwork, waiting for night. The cleverness, the cunning of men, shatters the covenant between humanity and its greater roommates. We once shared this world with gods. Then we defied them. Now look at us.

The godworld in this film reads feminine to me. The Odyssey is never crass enough to state that the human, war-strewn world is inherently male and the natural one female; but with Zendaya’s Athena serving as our only onscreen goddess (if she’s there at all) while Circe speaks the subtext into magical being and Calypso keeps Odysseus pinned on a card like a butterfly, I read Odysseus’ hubris — all mens’ hubris — as a defiance of a godworld whose leader might be a “he” called “Zeus” but really just seems like the top of the natural order of things that is getting mighty fuckin’ sick of being ignored by all these bros. We never see Zeus; but Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, weaving behind her screen and making careful chess-moves to keep her suitors at bay without violating the covenant of guest right, seems to be the god’s onscreen avatar. Earlier, the Circe scene, particularly, elucidates the boundary-line between the cunning of men and the covenants of women and gods. Samantha Morton (superb!) transforms Odysseus’ crew into pigs, revealing their true natures; something empowered her, Odysseus notes to his men, and her malevolence in protecting herself from assaultive invaders does not violate the covenant of that power. Zeus’ Law, perfectly spelled out. Don’t fuck with those who keep home and hearth, or the world will break and language itself will die.

Christopher Nolan was asked recently if he minded the culture-warrior shit-fit that Elon Musk and his bros had disingenuously pinned onto his new work. No, he said, remember, I used to work on Batman. It’s a good line, but a more useful reminder and point of connection. Everybody loves Batman, a demographic commonality that we mustn’t let obscure the fact that the worst men currently living loooooove Batman, for transparently obvious reasons: he’s a fascist. Superhero tales always lean fascist; Batman is the worst one. Frank Miller knew this; Alan Moore knew this; but if you lather-rinse-repeat the point they were making enough times, you arrive at adaptations that deploy all of those writers’ stylistic signifiers while employing none of their intent. This is how the meaning of myth breaks down to all but the wise. This is what Odysseus already knows will happen to the story of the Horse.

As I’m finishing this, a thunderstorm is squatting over Toronto. I’ve watched lightning strike the tower five times in five minutes. This isn’t a scary-storm — thunderstorms like this are part of what’s fun about living in Ontario in summer — and I’m about nineteen generations past believing there’s a brooding sky-bully animating those strikes, whose whims and wishes we must deduce and perform. But the point isn’t lost on me. Lightning strike six, lightning strike seven. We’re years past breaking the covenant, here. It is no longer a time of apparent magic; it is a time of assumed law. We’re much too stupid, now, collectively, to understand either one; and even when we aren’t, we profess ignorance. Here’s Athena again: “Who doesn’t understand thunder or fire?” Strike eight. Nine.

Further reading

• New by me: I walked right up to the point of opening my laptop thinking to myself, “fuck, how am I gonna say anything about The Crying Game,” and then I wrote one of my favourite Criterion reviews ever. (Screen Anarchy)
• On the Odyssey kick, this interview with Emily Wilson about her recent, bro-roiling translation is excellent — I particularly love how thoroughly uninterested she is in culture warriors as bringing any kind of important idea set — as is Roxana Hadadi’s new interview with Himesh Patel, who is in everything I’m watching lately, and who I love. (Vulture)
• Speaking of people I love: Mark Cousins. Great interview here by Martin Kudlac. (Screen Anarchy)
• Finally: I’d be remiss in acknowledging that the photo at the top of this post inspired a lot of this week’s writing. The post’s pretty good too. (Anxiety Shark)