Movie review

While the berry pie is in the oven I think I'll share with you my opinion of Christopher Nolan's new movie, The Odyssey.

But first, a joke. Two goats were in the back lot of MGM one day, eating old cans of film. One goat says to the other, "Oh, wow! Billy, you have to try this Gone With the Wind! It's amazing!" So, Billy took an bite, chewed, swallowed, then said, "Yeah, It's okay. But the book was better."

There are a lot of interesting things about Nolan's movie. I liked how the bard reciting Homer's poem introduced the story and reappeared near the end. I didn't like Penelope's angry speech at Telemachus; totally out of character with the woman we know from the poem. And the armor the Greek soldiers were wearing was not like the armor Agamemnon's solders wore. (But if you like the Gladiator movie that won't bother you.)

The actress who played the part of a man who wasn't in Homer's poem was an interesting thing. She pretends to be a man, plays a man's role from Virgil's version of the story, and the character was duped into into tricking the Trojans. Which is, I think, a pretty good way of expositing Odysseus's cunning and trickster nature. Lies upon lies upon lies.

There were a couple very jarring references to the Bronze Age Collapse. While it is historically true that the Greeks (and they didn't call themselves Greeks, that's what the Romans would call them centuries after the events portrayed in the movie.) would forget how to read and that the Bronze Age was coming to an end, there was no way for anyone alive then to know that was going to happen. But the most bizarre thing in the movie was how the ending was changed. I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it, but the most beautiful part of Homer's poem, when Odysseus and Penelope were reunited in the bed/tree and all was right in Ithaca was changed to Odysseus dealing with is regret for all the killing. In the poem Odysseus did not regret killing anyone.

I will say this good thing about the movie: It dealt with the gods in a way that was better that that Troy movie from a few years ago. Now, I had better go check on that pie.