Odysseus took long enough to reach Japan, making it to Tokyo in September, after the film had already grossed over a billion dollars. Never had a classic text enjoyed such promotion, with the filmmaker in tow and in town around the globe, as well as a clan incarnating new power and actual bonds, made up of Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, and Robert Pattinson.
Christopher Nolan inevitably brought up Jason and the Argonauts during interviews, with its celebrated stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen. However, he did not go out of his way to mention, in the spirit of the myth, the character of Medea.
Not unlike Helen tusked away by Paris, Jason makes off with Medea, chased by the king’s soldiers. We may recall Medea had killed Jason’s intended new bride, or that she butchered her brother Apsyrtus, leaving pieces of him on the road when they originally fled after taking the Fleece. It might have proven ‘generous and scholarly’, an image Nolan likes to display, to point to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea and Maria Callas’ otherworldly performance. But these are two filmmakers who aren’t speaking the same language.
Medea also makes a troubling appearance in Madeline Miller’s remarkable book Circe. The character’s depiction in The Odyssey -by Samantha Morton- has been widely praised. She is not Miller’s Circe, but is she closer to Emily Wilson’s version, the translation selected by the director ? Who would claim ownership? Morton’s performance carries a rough britishness as opposed to Holland, who effortlessly drops americanisms. Telemachus’ parents do speak after all with a clear American accent. Yet both British actors project indignity as a credibly hungry thing. But Ithaca is where all manners of English are spoken and perhaps this is true of other Greek islands, as does Troy. Priam spoke one and Achilles another in the Wolfgang Petersen film, to which, Nolan recalled, he was briefly attached.
Nobody endures the wrath of Poseidon, he loses men to Scylla, survives the sirens, is shipwrecked in the arms of Calypso and her tricks with memory, possibly having forgotten Nausicaa in the process; several major scenes take place at sea. As with his most accomplished and satisfying film, Dunkirk, Nolan demonstrates again how he excels at being on water and staging drama on a ship. Perhaps a film solely about reaching one island at a time, without Odysseus ever setting foot on a beach, might have provided an opportunity for another boat yarn in his filmography. Much was lost at sea.
