Of course I love The Odyssey.
My love for Myth is as old as my love for Story itself. I was the weird kid who read mythology textbooks for fun at the middle school lunch table and found The Silmarillion positively RIVETING. My first fantasy novel, The Ancient, was an exploration of mythical creature lore from various cultures. I was an adult when the first Percy Jackson book came out, but that didn’t stop me from becoming an instant and lifelong fan of Rick Riordan. (If you have an hour to spare, ask me about the siren scene in Sea of Monsters. Both in the book and in the new Disney+ show. I am eager to expound upon the unique-yet-related beauties of each.)
As a lover of epic storytelling in any form, I am also a longtime fan of Christopher Nolan. I admire his creative approach to film as a medium, his courage in taking on tales that are dizzying in both complexity and breadth, and his refusal to let his narratives be bound by linear chronology. I went into an opening day IMAX showing of The Odyssey expecting to be stunned and staggered. I was not disappointed.
I did not expect my second viewing a week later to leave me copiously weeping.
As I said, I love myth. I have blogged about it often, such as in this eight-year-old post “Myth Matters”. I have always been fascinated by the story behind the story—the foundational tale-giants upon which all following writers have stood.
In Western civilization, one does not get much more foundational than The Odyssey.
That was part of my undone-ness. All through the movie, I kept seeing familiar story tropes and archetypes with the strange, thrilling sensation that I had followed them all the way back to their source. When we encountered Circe, my husband leaned over and whispered, “She’s a witch, isn’t she?” I replied, “She is THE witch.” Another example: ‘the weapon only the true King can wield’. Long before Aragorn’s Narsil/Anduril or Arthur’s Excalibur, there was Odysseus’s bow.
(NOTE: I know there are older written stories than The Odyssey, besides millennia of oral tradition. I am merely acknowledging Homer’s undeniable role in the development of Western literature.)
But it was not merely my fascination with Story—as a reader, as a writer, as a lover of tales—that moved me so deeply. It was the message Nolan was using this ancient story to tell.
As usual, poetry was the best way for me to sort through my thoughts. Here is the resulting sonnet:
Wonder and Welcome. Nolan’s film revealed to me afresh not only the indispensable nature of each, but the fact that they are inextricably linked. Interdependent.
“Zeus’s Law” is the belief that one must always welcome guests, for anyone you meet could be a god in disguise. This determined Welcome fosters an attitude of Wonder towards one’s fellow human beings. I was reminded of C.S. Lewis’s words in The Weight of Glory:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
To see thusly is to see through the eyes of Wonder. With such Wonder-sight—such expectancy of encountering the divine in each other—how could we not reach out in Welcome?
Wonder leads to Welcome. Welcome keeps our spirit-muscles trained towards Wonder. Or, to use Penelope’s words (Penelope quoting a Once-and-Future Source): “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Society itself—all human relationship—depends upon this fundamental principle.
Nolan’s The Odyssey shows us what happens when this principle is forgotten. When wonder is twisted into fear, and welcome degenerates into hostility, the cost is civilization. The cost is everything.
’Tis a message we are always in peril of forgetting. Ergo, seeing it demonstrated for me so artfully, I wept: in sorrow for our failure, in hope for our future, and in gratitude for the reminder.
There is much more I want to say about this film’s meaning. Perhaps, when enough time has gone by that I shan’t be afraid of spoiling anything, I shall speak in detail about leadership, responsibility (both individual and corporate), repentance, fate vs. free will, and the role of faith.
For now, I leave you with these words from another favorite truth-speaker of mine, Madeleine L’Engle:
