The Odyssey

One would argue that it is foolish. How could that have been possible? So many men in a giant wooden horse went unnoticed, and above that, somebody was building a giant horse on the shores of your land, and you couldn’t notice. Well, it’s a tale, and we’re talking about the existence of gods and their presence amongst men, so I would suggest keeping an open mind here regarding the different possibilities. Long story short, the plan came to fruition, and the Greeks won the war and breached Troy's gates. Nolan’s Odyssey actually begins here, with the men lavishly enjoying their victory and finally prepping to head back home. Odysseus and his loyal men depart for their home, and so does the rest of the army and King Agamemnon. He received a hearty welcome, which later played an important role in Odysseus' actions.

While all the other kings had reached their destination, Odysseus and his men lost direction to their home and stumbled upon an island from which they thought to replenish their strength and restock for the voyage back home, but little did they know what fate had in store for them. They had a confrontation with a Cyclops living on that island, which ended with a few of Odysseus’ men dead and Odysseus blinding the Cyclops in a fit of rage and revenge; the Cyclops was a son of Poseidon, who was brother to Zeus and god of the seas. Poseidon cursed Odysseus and his crew for hurting his son, which led to 7 years of struggle as Odysseus tried to find his way back home to his wife, Penelope (played by Anne Hathaway), and his son, Telemachus (played by our very own Spider-Man, Tom Holland).

The story of this film centres around the lives of these 3 people; it quite literally is their world. It shows the longing of a wife for her husband to show up after years away due to THE war, Battle of Troy, the son who longs to see his legend of a father return home and take his kingdom which he is not yet prepared to take control of, which is under threat of being overruled by a long queue of suitors who wish to marry the Queen and take it for themselves, and lastly, it’s about the constant pain a man endures, the loss of his men one-by-one, the loss of the time he wished he could have spent with his family, the loss of having missed seeing his son grow up, the fear of what might have befallen his family in his absence for this long while he has been struggling to somehow make it back home.

Wait! I forgot to mention, probably you do know, Odysseus is played by Matt Damon, The Martian – another good watch.

Coming back to the plot. The story follows these lines, focusing on each character and what they are personally going through, the growing tension in the palace as the suitors plot to kill Telemachus to force their hands into marrying the Queen and taking the throne, while on the other hand, Odysseus is living the fate that has been decided for him. No matter how hard he tried, he could not defy what was destined to happen.

I wouldn’t wanna spoil the fun of this movie for you by telling the whole story. Find a theatre showing this film and experience this feeling for yourself.

What’s Nolan up to?

It would be preposterous to have visited this page on your own free will, knowing this is completely based on movies, which makes you fond of this art, cinema, and yet you have not seen, or worse, heard of Christopher Nolan and his line of work.

If you haven’t, I still wish you to stay and get a feel for his work through this blog, if I am able to deliver that. PS: Just search for the list of his movies as director; not a long list, but each makes you watch it at least 5 times before you even begin to comprehend the story.

Hello!!! Back at it.

Watched “The Odyssey” on, don’t judge me for saying this, a regular screen. In my defence, I couldn’t find a seat for IMAX, and news flash, the experience was as surreal because the story was just amazing. I think I have mentioned this before, in some of my loooonggg being sarcastic here list of blogs, that I take genuine pleasure in history, and this story, lore, has been told throughout history, as Homer’s Odyssey. Was it just a tale? Or was it based on some real facts? Regardless, what a story! So picture this: Homer was the storyteller in his era; we needed a rendition of it in this new era, brought to us by the crazy, flabbergasting mind of C. Nolan and his appetite for storytelling. In all honesty, I think Nolan kept this historical story simple in his direction, compared to his previous work, but made sure it was majestic. Hence came the idea of shooting a film, for the very first time in the history of cinema, completely for a 70 mm IMAX screen. And here I say I didn’t watch the film how it was supposed to be watched. Great!

Oh! I remember something. There has been an attempt to tell Homer’s story before, in the early 2000s, with Brad Pitt playing Achilles, a very important character in this tale. You could think of that movie as a prequel to Nolan’s story, although it was directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Something interesting was said by Nolan during one of his interviews on the press tour for Odyssey: he mentioned having asked to direct “Troy”, but passed the baton to Petersen, since he probably could not see his vision realised with the resources we had back then for this story. However, Troy is a great watch, and technically it is the first part of Homer’s story, but with subtle changes in the arc that are quite monumental, which do not sit well with Nolan’s story and how it progresses. Troy focused on the life of Achilles and his role in the historical Battle of Troy, which had a tremendous effect on the battle's outcome.

Just FYI, Achilles’s Heel, the idiom often used, found its origin in this story, which is where the fatal blow was dealt to the otherwise immune Achilles, his heel. This is debated, though; there is no mention of him being blessed by his mother so that no fatal blow could be dealt to his body by any mortal. In Homer’s poem, he was just a very skilful, mortal fighter representing the Greeks. If you watch Troy, you will not find any mystical scene illustrating this myth. He is simply a great fighter whom everyone both admires and fears.

I will stop here about Troy, since this is a post about The Odyssey. However, it was important that I point out this unintended, or maybe intended…*hmph*…, connection between the films, which just happen to look like a two-movie franchise with, of course, some changes to the fate of a few key characters of the story. Watch Troy first, then this, and figure this part out yourself.

So, “The Odyssey” follows the struggle of this one man, who devised the infamous devious plan to infiltrate the impenetrable walls of Troy: Odysseus. He was a smart, courageous man, respected by his peers, and a crucial ally to King Agamemnon, whose greed led to this chaos and, inevitably, to Odysseus’ fate. The devious plan I talk about is “One where they built a wooden horse” (I hope you get the reference): King Agamemnon and his men spent years trying to infiltrate the walls of Troy but to no success, and it is then that Odysseus thought of this idea of building a giant wooden Trojan Horse, one big enough to hide a considerable number of skilled soldiers inside it. How is that thoughtful, you ask? Well, in that era, gods were considered beings who interacted with humans as blessings or curses and were also said to visit disguised as beggars or unknown sailors. Now the idea here was that they would build this horse and leave it behind, as if to leave a parting gift of defeat, which would be considered a gift to the gods and eventually be taken into the city. That is exactly what happened. Odysseus had thought it far too well. The people of Troy took the Trojan Horse into the city and kept it as a display of victory, but they had no clue what or who was inside.

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