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Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway are marvellous in Christopher Nolan’s stunning epic for today but he misses the original’s humour — and eroticism
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Nolan is one of the few film directors with the skill and the bravura to take on The Odyssey from start to finish. Nolan relishes the complexity of the chronology, as he moves between different time zones, intercutting the stories of Telemachus and Penelope with the long backstory of the Trojan war and Odysseus’ voyage. And he includes some sharp readings of the poem, bringing to the surface, for example, the doubts about Odysseus’ leadership that are raised by Homer but often passed over by modern readers and adaptors. What kind of leader, after all, arrives back home, as Odysseus did, having lost every single member of his crew? At several moments we see the unhappiness of some of his men with their heroic leader, not so far from mutiny.
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Nolan’s dark and menacing inhabitants of Hades are a brilliant reminder of just how dangerous and terrifying it is to leave the world of the living. For many people all this will be a great introduction to Homer.

But Nolan’s Odyssey isn’t always so successful. Of course, there is always the danger that, when a professional classicist gets her hands on any modern adaptation of an ancient text, she will spectacularly miss the point. Pedantry gets in the way of enjoyment. The truth is that it is very rarely useful to ask how “faithful” any adaptation is. Ultimately, none are or can be faithful (and that is not just in the tired question of the actors’ skin colour). The important test is whether the changes and reinterpretations introduced by the adaptor add more than they lose. Nolan doesn’t always pass that test with flying colours.

The character of Odysseus himself is one case in point. In Homer’s Odyssey the crucial feature of the hero is his “tricksiness”. In the first line of the poem, he is referred to by a rare Greek word, polytropos. That literally means something like “very twisty turny” and has often been translated as “wily” or more recently by Emily Wilson as “complicated”. In practice, it heralds an Odysseus who throughout the poem is playful, ironic, witty, dangerously deceptive and sometimes an out-and-out liar — so much so that the reader will always wonder which of the many stories he tells are true and which not. No one tells whoppers quite like Odysseus — and that’s part of the poem’s tantalising pleasure.
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Originally posted by dsiets:
"Matt Damon!" - F.A.G.

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Originally posted by goose5:

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Originally posted by dsiets:
"Matt Damon!" - F.A.G.

I'm sorry. What exactly are you trying to say? Spell it out so there is no doubt.

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Originally posted by goose5:

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Originally posted by dsiets:
"Matt Damon!" - F.A.G.

I'm sorry. What exactly are you trying to say? Spell it out so there is no doubt.

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Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
I’ve actually never watched Team America and I understand the reference and the point.

Goose, the point is Matt Damon can’t play anyone or anything more complex than Matt Damon.

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Originally posted by parabellum:
Do you know what you'll get from this SELLOUT next time if he's given a pass this time? Take a guess.