1,252 words
Christopher Nolan, one of my favorite living directors, is now working on a movie of the Odyssey, to be released next summer. Frankly, everything I am hearing about it fills me with dread, especially the cast full of Africans. I may just skip reviewing it. I may skip it altogether. But just in case, I have been preparing by rereading the Odyssey and surveying other adaptations.
I just finished the Odyssey in the Robert Fitzgerald translation, which sweeps you back to archaic Greece by using touches of archaic English with exquisite moderation. I’ve never been so moved by Homer.
I felt strongly for Odysseus because I could now relate to his homesickness, his nostalgia (from the Greek nostos, for return, and algia, for pain). Of course, things changed very little in twenty years during the Bronze Age, but today, twenty years of cultural decadence and immigration can change a society beyond all recognition. A lot of white men today can relate to Odysseus’ homesickness and rage at seeing his homeland usurped and dishonored.
Honestly, Odysseus did not have that much to complain about when he returned home to Ithaca to find his wife Penelope being courted by a number of prominent men. He had been missing for ten years. In Greece today, one can be presumed dead if missing for seven years. If one is lost at sea, it is six months.
The courtship had dragged on because Penelope refused to choose but also refused to send the suitors away. Instead, she prolonged the courtship with trickery and lies. If she was still mourning her husband, she was being self-indulgent, because she had responsibilities to others as well: Ithaca needed a king. Everything was in decay without a decisive and authoritative ruler, which she was not.
Why not simply cede power to her son Telemachus? Interesting question. Perhaps she was not yet ready to let him be a man.
Why was the old king, Laertes, not ruler in Odysseus’ absence? Also a good question. The answer may be that he had given himself over to mourning, which is also self-indulgent, given that Ithaca needed a king.
Perhaps Penelope just enjoyed the drama and attention. Perhaps being courted by a lot of men fed her vanity. Perhaps pitting them against each other and her son made her feel powerful. If so, she’s not so different from the legions of empowered young female narcissists at their looms today: swiping left, swiping right, hitting block, going into ghost mode, in short, consuming little hits of dopamine as the world goes to ruin around them.
There were three basic charges against the suitors. First, they violated the laws of hospitality by staying too long, eating Odysseus out of house and home. But that was Penelope’s fault. Second, some of them became rude and abusive. But that is inevitable when young men are kept idle for too long, and that is also Penelope’s fault. Third, they began plotting murder against Telemachus. But if Penelope was feeling empowered by playing “Let’s you and he fight,” that is her fault too.
Of course, the ultimate fault would lie with Odysseus, the king who left his homeland and apparently didn’t establish any clear authority in his absence. It wasn’t his fault that it took ten years to conquer Troy and ten years to get home. But it was his fault that he didn’t prepare for such eventualities.
You can order The Best of Trevor Lynch here
The Return (2024) is a film adaptation of the Odyssey starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, directed by Uberto Pasolini.
A film reviewer must use language with precision. He must choose words like a surgeon chooses a scalpel. The Return is shit. Indeed, The Return is not just the worst Homer adaptation I have ever seen, it is one of the worst films, period.
Basically, The Return gives the Odyssey the Game of Thrones treatment. Everything noble is stripped away, everything cynical is heightened, all in the service of woke liberal moralizing.
There are no gods in The Return. But without the magical disguise created by Athena, there is no way that Odysseus could return home and without being recognized immediately by anyone but his blind old dog, who recognized his voice. This is idiotic, because some of the most moving parts of the Odyssey are the recognition scenes: the dog Argos, Eurycleia the old nurse, Eumaeus the Swineherd, Telemachus, and of course Penelope. All of this magic is absent.
One of the most striking traits of the Odyssey is the sensitivity and moral delicateness of these barbarians: strong men are always weeping, manners are exquisite, comradeship and loyalty are exalted, people are open-hearted, hospitable, and generous, from beggars and swineherds to kings. Because of this backdrop, the snobs, bullies, traitors, and cheats seem especially loathsome. But in The Return, everyone is swinish. Cynicism, effrontery, and petty cruelty reign everywhere.
These Greeks act like rappers in the hood, and a shocking number of the cast look the part, too. There are negroes, half-negroes, quarter-negroes, Maghrebis, and complete mystery meat everywhere in ancient Ithaca. This sort of ritualistic anti-white humiliation is getting very tiresome.
Bronze Age Greece must, of course, be blacked up, dumbed down, graffitied over with cynicism, and smeared with profanity because new gods now rule us. If Odysseus’ world seems significantly better than ours in any way, that undermines the dogma of progress.
Here, the oracle of the new gods is Penelope, who instead of welcoming her husband back, scolds him and Telemachus for killing the usurpers. Today, she’d be waving a Migrants Welcome sign.
As I eyerolled through scene after scene of banal dialogue, I realized that there’s not a single line of Homer in this movie. Of course something had to replace the noble words and sentiments of the ancients, so The Return treats us to family melodrama and even a chase sequence. Fortunately, Odysseus and Telemachus throw the tracking dogs (fearsome greyhounds) off their scent by . . . crossing a stream.
Imagine dropping Homer to include lines like, “I think it’s time for you to talk to your father now [Telemachus],” because the script says they need to patch up a petty conflict that the screenwriters contrived but Homer did not.
As for Homer’s own “action” sequences—the fight with Irus, the stringing of the bow, the slaughter of the suitors—they completely lack poetry.
The only genuine beauty found in The Return are the works of nature, but nature photography is basically point and click. The director’s own works are unremittingly ugly and dull: the clothes, the sets, most of the cast. AI slop films and Netflix “content” have more genuine drama and artistry than The Return.
Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche are accomplished actors, but you’d never know it from this film. Their performances are flat and there is no sexual chemistry between them. They aren’t even trying. Everyone else in the cast is mediocre at best.
Our director doesn’t even have the sense to use music to convey emotions that his script, actors, and directing can’t. The occasional musical cues are completely forgettable.
Astonishingly, The Return got mostly positive reviews from mainstream critics, but they are culture destroyers as well, so of course they recognize and cheer on one of their own.
The Return gets one thing right, if only by accident. It very effectively evoked the rage of Odysseus in me, for this movie is an act of cultural usurpation that deserves more than just verbal barbs.
35 comments
I’d rather watch older films by Christopher Nolan. There’s no point in seeing this one.
Did you see the 1997 TV miniseries The Odyssey and if so, what is your opinion of it?
Only a bit of it. It seems pitched to children. I loved Isabella Rossellini as Athena, though.
“Of course, things changed very little in twenty years during the Bronze Age,”
Are you so sure?
Agree, prove it.
Great article. This film I will avoid. 🙃
Kathryn S said she might review The Return, I hope she does as I would like a second opinion at CC. I thought the movie was great and the acting excellent. The final scene in the Mead Hall was worthy of the bloody ending of Hamlet, and the heroism of Odysseus was on display throughout.
That would be interesting. Although I must confess that I am unfavorably predisposed to anything that comes from the film industry since, let’s say, the early sixties (I know, I know…)
I started to watch it, but then I stopped, not liking it, I can’t even remember exactly why. I don’t like the casting very much. Basically I agree. Don’t they like sacrifice a guy for no apparent reason at one point, to make the Greeks look barbaric.
wow, that inspires me to want to reread the Odyssey too. I’ve never read the Fitzgerald translation. Next, I wanna read William Cowper’s version, for the “third best blank verse in the language,” according to Coventry Patmore.
actually the old movie Ulysses with Kurt Douglas is actually quite watchable, given its date and the primitive special effects. Oh for the days when woke was a few not bad looking Jews and the occasional Chicano!
I once praised Richmond Lattimore’s translation of Homer to a sophisticated grad student who scoffed and told me, “That’s Lattimese.” The only other English version I’ve read is the verse translation by Pope. I hear T. E. Lawrence’s translation was good.
Pope is brilliant, but I didn’t find it immediate or emotionally impactful.
I would like to read Lawrence. He actually lived several Iliad‘s and Odyssey‘s worth of adventures.
I admit I find pope’s translations difficult to read. That’s the same effect celebrated in On chapmans Homer.
The best-looking jew from my childhood is Sarah Michelle Gellar and it’s not even close.
Susanna hoffs of the bangles?
no, I’m just saying back then they would use you know, more or less attractive Jews, like Douglas, Tony Curtis, Lauren Bacall, which is much better than all these mystery meat, individuals, and anhistorical casted blacks that we have to deal with today.
One of my favorite bad movies as a kid is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The ending scene with Kristy Swanson dancing with the late Luke Perry is to Susanna Hoffs’ cover of ‘We Close Our Eyes’. And yes, she was good-looking.
oh yes, I like that movie too. That nexus sort of escaped me. But the real Buffy is definitely the TV series!
Hi Greg,
Is John Morgan still around?
He did a two part series on 10 great films against the modern world. In the introduction he mentions that his full list is one hundred films.
I’d love to see the full list to get some new suggestions.
https://odysee.com/@countercurrents:6/TEN-GREAT-FILMS-AGAINST-THE-MODERN-WORLD-BY-JOHN-MORGAN-PART-I-:5
Yes, he’s just taking care of family business.
Okay good to hear. Thanks. I really enjoyed his film review chats with you as well.
Thanks for warning me away from this one. The racial miscasting alone is increasingly a deal-breaker for me. I suspect they didn’t even include one of my favorite parts about the homecoming of Odysseus: the final test Penelope sets for him to make sure it really is her husband. She orders his bed to be brought out of storage, knowing that the real Odysseus would know it was physically impossible for the bed to be moved. One of the bedposts is an actual tree.
No, that test isn’t included.
I’d really appreciate an assessment of Ray Harryhausen‘s work in Jason and the Argonauts as well as Clash of the Titans.
I know that these movies are full of artistic license and interpretation geared toward fantasy and cinematic action rather than cultural significance. But if I’m honest, Clash of the Titans is in my top 50 all time films, strictly for the love of stop motion animation.
All of Harryhausen is tops blooby in any fantasy lexicon. See if you can answer the lamp riddle in seventh voyage of Sinbad! I agree, I prefer the old stop motion animation to cgi. Jason and the Argonauts is pretty true to the myth, and of course versions of the myth differ among themselves. Great poets have the power to change the myths. The only greater fantasy movies (because they have more in terms of substance) might be Conan the barbarian and Dragonslayer.
I’ll give you a quick comment on this.
RH is very popular figure. Very well liked. He had a lot of creative insight. Was more or less working in his own bubble.
I’m not totally sure where he got his stylistic influences from, but whatever RH did, it became influential. His style of these characters, their look, became absorbed into other things like those DnD miniatures, stuff like that, sometimes you’d see it in video games and so on, and became a kind of standard that lasted a long time. Quite interesting.
You couldn’t repeat RH now at all. He was entirely of his time, as the sole person to do this and movies could be built around this in that era.
And it’s a powerful irony, and indictment of progress, that despite the obvious issues with stop motion animation, a lot of people prefer to look at it than CGI. I do also think CGI overwhelming went hand in hand with being dominated by terrible design decisions, terrible art direction, when it came to cinematic characters. So we never even got the best of out it we could. It instantly entered its own hole and never climbed out again.
We’re entering a phase where AI video generation will now take this role on, so we’ll see what that looks like I guess.
I saw Homer’s Odyssey (1997) and Jason and the Argonauts (2000) as a kid and both were very good. I’ll probably watch it again.
Nothing to do with Odyssey itself, but it’s possible Nolan’s best days might be behind him.
I don’t know that, and I didn’t see his last three movies. But I didn’t feel compelled to for one reason or another. I wasn’t getting the signals I’d hoped for. The last one I saw was Interstellar and I wasn’t that impressed by it. CC did a fine discussion about it though.
You have certain circumstances that surrounded his impressive rise, his cinematographer he worked with early on who did all the heavy lifting on the look of the films was a significant part of it, the film subjects, some great fresh ideas he put into film, some incredible performances, great scores, Nolan not being too pressured about diversity casting yet other than the odd magic Negro, things were happening in that time that made him a very exciting director seemingly with a lot of potential.
But that period may be over, and I’m getting a sense Nolan might be slowly becoming a new hwhite Spielberg. So it’s epics, “our shared values”, that kind of thing. Still an improvement over Spielberg, but maybe there’s a move slightly towards the center. I’m sure there will be some novel or clever take on whatever films he does, but if you stick a black actor in as the main guy I ain’t gonna watch it.
You should see Dunkirk. It is superb. My review is here: https://counter-currents.com/2017/07/christopher-nolans-dunkirk/
Tenet was a huge disappointment. I saw it in the theater and had no interest in ever watching it again. The more I think about it, the worse it seems in retrospect. It is his only downright bad movie, though.
Oppenheimer was flawed but basically good. The last 40 mins could have been cut, though. My review: https://counter-currents.com/2023/07/oppenheimer/
Thanks. I will give Dunkirk a look.
I’m surprised that there is no mention of this Master piece, for me, the best adaptation ( from 1968 ) : Odissea
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064750
It aged very well ( even if a little slow for our ” modern” taste ) and the cast is outstanding ( Irene Papas as Penelope, ), I highly recommend this italian serie ( with a lot of south Slavic ” extras ” ) . Watchable on YT
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BjN_merCA0Q&t=16s
Thanks. I will add this to my list.
Mr Lynch, you said in a podcast recently that you desired a story about the Boomer question/”day of the pillow”, and the problem of a rich elderly elite that lives forever.
That movie sort of exists with “In Time” (2011). The film is about every person being genetically engineered to be immortal, and society works around the malthusian limitations by making time itself a currency. The rich get to live longer while the poor literally live “from week to week” in a literal sense. To buy things you have to “spend time”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Time
It’s a pretty mid and forgettable action flick, with some creative ideas. It’s one I somewhat enjoyed though. There’s not much that you can really work with for a full review on the boomer question though, as it spends much of its running time not really exploring the philosophical implications and gets dragged down into action set-pieces. But at the end of the day, that is the genre it’s in.
I guess there’s a bit with the intensified death anxiety and risk aversion of the elites (as accidents are the only things that can kill them) which plays into the plot somewhat. Modern boomers have a bit of that going on. And the cost of living crisis in western democracies we have now closer reflect the week to week desperation of the working class in the film, although the cause in the film isn’t non-white migration so the comparison falls short there.
Thanks, this is interesting. I will add it to my list.
very funny review and a good remembrance of reading the Odysee. I never thought about the faults of Laertes Penelope or Odysseus himself for not setting up a better authority in his absence; I always assumed there was a larger point of a missing piece of society; or just missing fatherhood or leadership . But it’s a good point anyways. Jeepers Odysseus is kinda a complex guy and presented really interestingly in metamorphosis as a man of practical politics over tradition, but I don’t know if that was how Homer saw him.
wasn’t that chick in the chocolate movie with Johnny depp? Using chocolate she shows that stuck up conservative town how to loosen up!
If you mean Calah Lane who figured prominently in Wonka (2023), I’m not seeing her listed in The Return.
Anyway, if this is an awful retelling of The Odyssey, just wait until I’m done with mine…
No! Sorry, my enormous ego prevents me from googling sometime: it’s Chocolat and I did google it and it is binoche and depp. It’s really crude progressive propaganda. She’s can’t be as perky in the Return as she was in Blue that’s for sure.
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.