The Odyssey (with Lucas Matthew Herchenroeder)

Summary

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Unspooled: "The Odyssey" (with Lucas Matthew Herchenroeder)

Episode Date: July 25, 2026

Hosts: Amy Nicholson & Paul Scheer
Guest: Lucas Matthew Herchenroeder (Associate Professor of Classics, USC)
(NOTE: This episode focuses solely on Nolan's film "The Odyssey," not the ancient text. Paul Scheer is absent from the discussion; it's Amy and Lucas throughout.)

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Episode Overview

In this lively and thoughtful episode, film critic Amy Nicholson and classics professor Lucas Matthew Herchenroeder dissect Christopher Nolan’s ambitious adaptation of "The Odyssey." Moving beyond simple fidelity to Homer, they explore how the film reinterprets the epic for a modern audience—grappling with themes of myth-making, trauma, and the nature of heroism. Expect deep dives into the meanings behind crucial adaptation choices, the portrayal of gods and mortals, and the challenges of translating ancient complexity to the big screen.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. First Impressions and Adaptational Choices

• Lucas: Impressed with Nolan’s “cinematic energy” and immersive storytelling, though the film’s loudness was notable ([03:31]).
• Both Amy and Lucas agree that strict fidelity to Homer isn’t necessary; the Odyssey was always a “story open to interpretation” even in antiquity ([04:56], [05:23]).

  “The Odyssey is a story that's open to interpretation, and that's built into its DNA.” —Lucas ([03:31])

2. The Ancient World on Screen

• Praise for Nolan’s gritty, pre-classical vision of Greece—dark, rustic, and avoiding typical “Greek columns and white pillars” ([08:53]).

  “Nolan is making a film about antiquity that doesn't look like any of the usual films you see about antiquity... he's really saying, no, this is ... a time where people are living in these kind of temples that are carved out of caves. It's rustic.” —Amy ([08:53])

3. The Cyclops Sequence & Interpretation

• Lucas likens the Cyclops scene’s “imperfect,” tactile special effects to Ray Harryhausen’s work, invoking “sword and sandal” films of the ‘60s ([10:12]).
  • He notes that in Homer, Odysseus narrates his own exploits, allowing for unreliable storytelling—a nuance missing in the film ([11:18]).
• Amy laments the omission of Odysseus’ famous 'No Man' trick, which exposes his ego—a trait she sees as central but underplayed in the film ([13:01]).

  "I wish that was here… he has so much ego… that's what curses him." —Amy ([13:01])

4. Dealing with the Divine: Athena, Poseidon, and Faith

• Both observe Nolan’s skepticism toward literal gods—Poseidon is kept ambiguous, and Zendaya’s Athena is reinterpreted not as an all-powerful goddess, but as a memory or embodiment of Odysseus’ trauma ([20:21]-[24:22]).

  “Nolan doesn't even want to get into the whole specifics of the Cyclops curse and Poseidon getting mad at him... I'm not sure Nolan believes in Poseidon. Is that wild to say?” —Amy ([15:24])

• Lucas appreciates how the film uses divine language to express human struggles with fate and trauma, moving away from direct intervention ([21:22]).

  “He seems more interested in the way the human characters will invoke divine principles or the favor of the gods in different ways to… sort out their own problems.” —Lucas ([16:00])

5. Human Responsibility, War, and Trauma

• The discussion highlights the film’s frame of Odysseus not just as a hero, but as a traumatized veteran—a lens Lucas finds effective and true to the poem’s concerns ([38:11]).

  • Nolan’s parallel storytelling of the Trojan horse and subsequent atrocities brings constant reminders of war’s costs and the complexities of return ([38:11]-[40:04]).

  “It forces us to think about Odysseus as this traumatized veteran.” —Lucas ([38:35]) "He brings the war home. It's like a Taxi Driver plus." —Amy ([40:00])

• The climactic massacre of the suitors is handled with discomfort; Nolan appears uneasy with the story’s original moral brutality and softens Odysseus’ vengeance ([44:02]).

6. Casting & Modern Parallels

• The double casting of Lupita Nyong’o as both Helen and Clytemnestra is debated. Amy considers it a critique of arbitrary mythic causes for war ([29:52]-[31:44]).

  "Maybe Christopher Nolan is like, there's two of them. Like, why are we even... you were just using Helen as a pretext for a war that you already wanted to fight in the first place." —Amy ([29:52])

• Amy points out the film’s engagement with contemporary anxieties: fear of terrorism, cycles of violence, the collapse of civilizations, and the need for empathy ([47:36]-[48:30]).

7. Heroism and Masculinity

• They contrast Damon’s Odysseus—wise and sad—with the more cunning, flawed, "brilliant bastard" Amy prefers from Homer. Nolan’s Odysseus is stoic and internally wounded, not brashly boastful or overtly sexual as in the poem ([33:37], [36:28]).

  “He's more like, I think I'm doing the right thing. And then the right thing gets you into trouble. But it's not, 'I think I'm outwitting all of you guys.'” —Amy ([34:22])

• The notion that ancient epic heroes could be emotionally complex—prone to tears and contradictions—is contrasted with modern depictions ([35:08]).

  "A lot of these men are emotional. I love that about Homer, that they're continually carried away with their emotions…" —Amy ([35:08])

8. Animals, Empathy, and What It Means to Be Human

• The episode dwells on empathy as a test of humanity, evoked through the treatment of the dog Argos and Circe’s animal transformations ([52:06]).

  “Everyone is being tested upon their ability to be fully human… The thing that keeps coming back over and over again is one's capacity to take care of someone, something else, some other being.” —Lucas ([52:09])

• Comparisons to "The Isle of Dr. Moreau" and commentary on extending empathy to animal life reinforce this thematic thread ([50:03]-[51:16]).

9. Penelope, Recognition, and Changing the Narrative

• The recognition scene between Odysseus/Matt Damon and Penelope/Anne Hathaway is analyzed for its ambiguity and complexity, with Penelope’s respect now something Odysseus must earn, not simply reclaim ([54:46]-[59:03]).

  “Maybe he has to actually earn her respect back and it's not just prove that it's you, but prove that I should even respect you again.” —Amy ([59:03])

• Nolan’s altered ending—Odysseus and Penelope sailing away together—is seen as a significant break from the poem, but one that gives Penelope a deserved sense of closure ([59:56]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (by Timestamp)

• On adaptation and flexibility:

  "This film is just the last edition in a long tradition of storytelling about the story of Odysseus after the Trojan War." —Lucas ([05:23])

• On the visual style:

  "Nolan is making a film about antiquity that doesn't look like any of the usual films you see about antiquity... It's rustic right from the get go." —Amy ([08:53])

• On missing the Cyclops ‘No Man’ moment:

  “He has so much ego that he has to take credit for being so smart… and that's what curses him. And here… I wish that was here.” —Amy ([13:01])

• On divine ambiguity:

  “He's more interested in the way the human characters will invoke divine principles… but the question about whether the gods hate us and are willing to punish us… is kind of left aside.” —Lucas ([16:00])

• On Odysseus as traumatized veteran:

  “What really, I think, is effective… is the way he strings along the story of the Trojan horse and the atrocities committed by the Greeks… That’s really effective because I think it forces us to think about Odysseus as this traumatized veteran.” —Lucas ([38:11])

• On the spectacle and morality of violence:

  “Are we entertained by this? Is this enjoyable to us?... The extent to which we find this killing of the 108 suitors… to be a form of justice and a form of the world… it seems pretty ugly.” —Lucas ([44:02])

• On casting and the arbitrariness of myth:

  “Maybe Christopher Nolan is like, there’s two of them… you were just using Helen as a pretext for a war you already wanted to fight in the first place.” —Amy ([29:52])

• On Odysseus’ characterization:

  "I kind of wish that Matt Damon's Odysseus was a little closer to the Odysseus of my heart, which is like a brilliant bastard. This Odysseus is more wise and sad." —Amy ([33:37])

• On change as core to ‘Odysseus’:

  “In the first line of the poem, Odysseus is introduced… which means literally, of many turns… versatile in his thinking… The first Latin translator… puns upon the eminent translatability and remakeability of the character…” —Lucas ([63:16])

• On why the Trojan Horse is always on wheels:

  “That’s a great question. There’s probably some Renaissance painting… There needs to be an academic paper on this question.” —Lucas ([60:32])

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Important Timestamps for Segment Reference

• [03:31] First impressions of the film
• [08:53] Discussion of Nolan’s unique visual approach
• [13:01–16:44] Cyclops sequence, Odysseus’ ego, and divine ambiguity
• [20:21–24:22] Reimagining Athena, divine intervention, and memory
• [29:52–31:44] Lupita Nyong’o as Helen and Clytemnestra: mythic critique
• [38:11–40:52] War trauma, Odysseus as veteran, homecoming violence
• [44:02–46:34] The morality of the slaughter in the poem and film
• [47:36–48:30] References to contemporary anxieties and Sea Peoples
• [52:06–53:45] Empathy, animals, Argos the dog
• [54:46–59:03] Penelope’s recognition and moral agency
• [63:16] The meaning of Odysseus as “of many turns” (nerdy deep dive)

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Tone & Style

The conversation is rich, warm, and self-aware, filled with nerdy humor, honest reservations, and respect for both the ancient text and Nolan's creative ambitions.

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Summary Takeaway

Amy and Lucas’ analysis of Nolan’s "The Odyssey" celebrates its inventive brilliance while engaging deeply with the moral, cultural, and narrative challenges of adapting an ancient epic for today's audiences. They draw out how the film’s departures from Homer are themselves part of a living tradition—a reminder that myths, like Odysseus himself, are defined by their many turns.

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For further exploration, check out the Unspooled substack for deeper dives.

Transcript

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

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[Amy Nicholson]

Hello everyone and welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must sees. In case you missed some, we have covered the AFI top 100 and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. The Letterboxd top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDb top 250, and the New York Times 1000 essential films. And we are also chasing our own curiosity. I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times. We're doing an emergency episode on a film that might make a couple of those lists someday. We shall see. It is Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey and I am joined by an incredible special guest, Lucas Herkenroeder. He is an associate professor in Classics at USC. He has a PhD in Classics and all of this good stuff. I'm pretty sure he can speak Greek. I'll ask him in a second. But I thought he would be a fantastic person to talk about the Odyssey with the book, how it's received, how he thinks Nolan did a good job. We can get as nerdy as we want here. Lucas, hi. Do you speak Greek? Hello.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Hi Amy. Thanks for having me. I'm embarrassed to say I do not speak more than just a little bit of conversational Greek, but modern Greek. Ancient Greek. I can read and teach.

[Amy Nicholson]

How long have you been teaching the classics?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I have been a faculty member at USC since 2014. Prior to that, I taught continuously as part of my PhD training and I've taught ancient languages at the high school level for a few years before all of that. So, you know, all said and done, a little over 20 years at this point.

[Amy Nicholson]

Wow, that's like an odyssey.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

It is like an odyssey.

[Amy Nicholson]

What drew you to the classics in the first place as a young whippersnapper?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Oh no. You know, I really liked. I mean, I'm sort of like a just a lover of languages and the way languages and language study open up strange, unfamiliar worlds. And the languages of the ancient Mediterranean, Latin and Greek are really special ways to explore these kinds of lost worlds of antiquity for which there's little substitute. And that's always kind of enthralled me and motivated me. And you read texts like Homer's Odyssey and. And many others, and there's a great payoff in taking the time to visit these lost places.

[Amy Nicholson]

I love that. And now you're getting to see one of those lost places put in a gazillion movie with years across the world. Let me just ask you this to start our conversation off. First impressions of the Odyssey go.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

The film or the poem?

[Amy Nicholson]

The film.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

No, I'm kidding. Yeah. I mean, I was blown away by the kind of cinematic energy, you know, he kind of draws together to bring this story to life. I hadn't been in a movie theater in quite a while, Amy, and it was extremely loud. But I guess that made it kind of immersive and kind of really like. I guess contributed to the kind of, like, total description that he seeks and the way he kind of films some of these really tense scenes. So I really like that. I thought he made interesting choices with the material. They all seem. I think, in general, I like the way the ancient literature is kind of brought to life in popular media. And so I don't think this disappointed for that reason as well. You could kind of think about the choices a filmmaker, in this case, a filmmaker makes. It's always a fun experiment to think about why certain things are sort of left behind, certain things are brought forward. What did I really like about it? Yeah, I mean, the Odyssey is a story that's open to interpretation, and that's part of its. That's kind of built into its DNA. And I think that that bears up with some of the decisions Nolan made. And so I was excited to see, I guess, some of his. I guess we'd call him, liberties with the text. I think that makes it a better film and in a certain. Maybe a weird way, remains true to the poem.

[Amy Nicholson]

You know, I'm with you. I'm with you. I don't believe in, like, the best version of the Odyssey ever would have to be, like, completely committed to every single line of what the Odyssey was. I mean, A, that'd be, like, impossible to film. And B, I love his confidence in taking this classical, gigantic epic and just saying, chop this, cut this, move this, add this. I have ideas of what I want this story to say to me today in, you know, the year of our Zeus, 2026.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, totally. I mean, even, you know, the story of the way. I guess the starting point I would. I would. I would take. Is that the story of Odysseus was reimagined in context apart from the poetry of Homer immediately in the ancient world. And it's in its reception and its afterlife. Odysseus was a figure on the comic stage. Odysseus was a figure in tragic drama. Roman poets did interesting things with the figure of Odysseus that borrowed or drew upon the Homeric texts. And there's not a lot of consist. There's not a lot of. There's not broad consistency across all of this material. And so I see this film as just the last edition and a long tradition of storytelling about the story of Odysseus after the Trojan War.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, it's true. I mean, when you go back to this time of inventing stories, you have to Euripides and Aeschylus and everybody, you start to get this headset of, like, the ancient Greek poets were thinking of characters like Odysseus and Medea as the way we might talk about, you know, Batman and Supergirl. You know, they were taking figures that people were familiar of, like their basic personality. Okay. If it's a Batman story, I expect him to be a little bit, like, moody. I expect him to have a complicated relationship with his parents. And then from there, you can shape it in different directions to kind of fill out parts of the story that you want that you think are the most interesting as an author.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, you might need a different story. You might need a different Odysseus at different times, or audiences might demand different things to be accentuated. Not demand in the strong sense, but expect, maybe. And I think that allows. I guess the thing that really interests me is that if you take that seriously, then you can see that this material, even in antiquity, was pretty pliant and flexible. And it doesn't really make a lot of sense to think about fidelity to one particular version of the story or some original version of the story, when even in the ancient world, it was subject to pretty adventurous revision and rethinking.

[Amy Nicholson]

Now, in the ancient days, would somebody like a Homer have been like the character we see even opening this film? A guy in a banquet room hitting the floor with his pole and saying, let me tell you a story. Is that how these stories were performed? Is that how the Odyssey was staged?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I mean, I found the poll hitting annoying because the volume was so high, I guess. But I was like, go ahead. Yeah, I see. I could see what the intent was. And I do think, I guess, yeah, that's a good. Okay, that's a great example. So the pole hitting was, I think Nolan or maybe Travis Scott's way of creating a kind of a visceral experience. Right. For this performance of the. The story of the troached horse. I guess that's how the film starts. And I don't know, I'm embarrassed to say, I don't know if the pole stamping is something we can attest to with evidence from the ancient world, but the basic insight was that these performances by a single performer were engaging and kept huge audiences enthralled for long periods of time. That's basically true, as I understand it. And so how do you recreate that for a modern audience? Seems to have been what drove the. The creation of that scene. I think it works. It had some kind of gravity and feelings of electricity.

[Amy Nicholson]

It did. It helped you. I think it helped you really get into the mindset of what this era was like. Because one of the first things that knocked me sideways when I saw the Odyssey is, oh, Nolan is making a film about antiquity that doesn't look like any of the usual films you see about antiquity. Like, it doesn't have that clash of the Titans look of like Greek columns and white pillars and all of that. He's really saying, no, this is an ancient time. This is a time even older than that. You know, this is a time where people are living in these kind of temples that are carved out of caves. You know, it's rustic right from the get go.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah. Actually, I think that there's. I think there's a. I think there's some real value to that actually, that, you know, our. Our understanding of the ancient world was kind of dominated by classical Athens and the physical presentation of the city of Athens and its monuments. But Dark age Greece and the Mycenaean world, the period of, you know, the 1200, 1100 BCE, which is the imagined setting of the poem, the ancient Greek audiences would have understood that these stories took place in worlds very much unlike their own and that for them was a lost world. I think, actually.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, because he's setting this really, like at the collapse of the late Bronze Age.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

You know, the Parthenon is built like in 400 BC. Like, this is like 1200 BC.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, in the 400s. And yeah, the stories were imagined to take place. You know, if the poems are being kind of. This poem is being composed in the late 700s, mid to late 700s. It was imagining events that were many generations in the past and in a world that had basically gone to disappearance. But I do wanna push back on one Thing did you feel like the cyclops sequence brings up? Maybe we can come back to it. But I thought it brought up some of the special effects from, like, the 60s sword and sandal filmmaking. I think it was kind of like. It was sort of imperfect in interesting ways.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. You mean like the kind of Ray Harryhausen claymation style? Totally. And I loved that about it. I thought the cyclops was so tactile. Like, I loved his gray, wrinkly skin. I loved how his face was sideways because I was like, I don't know what scene you were most looking forward to, but me, the scene I was most looking forward to was the cyclops scene.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Oh, totally.

[Amy Nicholson]

And after all that anticipation to have a cyclops that didn't look like any cyclops I was picturing in my mind, that was amazing.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, I agree. I think that scene was a success for many reasons. Maybe some interesting things were left out. And I kind of liked, I guess, the one I was thinking when I left the Orange. Yeah. When I left the theater was, you know, part of what's interesting about that scene in the poem is that. And Nolan changed this, is that Odysseus tells the story of the cyclops to the sort of the Phaeacians, I guess, or his host for a period in the center of the poem. And that's been omitted from the film. But my point is that the cyclops episode is narrated by Odysseus because he lands in their island, Scaeria, the Phaeacians. And they're like, who are you? And he says, well, let me tell you who I am. And his answer is, basically, all the things I've done since I left Troy. But the first big extended story he tells is his encounter with the cyclops. And it's quite important actually, even for the poem, that this is Odysseus in charge of the narrative. And that means it's kind of subject to all of his deliberate as he might take, or a person in his situation might take. And so it should come off, not it should come off as generically kind of separate from the main narrative thread of the film. And scholars sometimes talk about the cyclops episode as having a kind of folktale feeling or ambiance. And I don't know how you create that cinematically, but the decision to kind of make it a throwback to sword and sandals flicks of the 60s seemed like an interesting way to mark a change in genres, I guess, or a change in mood or ambiance. I would have liked it to been a little sillier But I guess you can't have everything.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, yeah. I mean, my impression of how he tells the cyclops story in the original poem is like, ain't I a stinker? Ain't I a smartass? I tricked this guy. Cause this is one of the things that Nolan leaves out, which I found to be a bit of a bummer that this wasn't here just because of what it reveals of Odysseus personality, that he tricks the cyclops by telling him that his name is no Man. So that when the cyclops starts yelling for help, he is like, no man is hurting me. No man is hurting me. And Odysseus is like, got him. That was my trick. And then as soon as they escape and he feels like he's safe, he yells back to the cyclops, actually, this is my real name. I want you to know who tricked you. And that's what curses him is then the cyclops tells his daddy, Poseidon, go get that guy. I know who his name is. And it's because Odysseus has so much ego that he has to take credit for being so smart. He has to Bugs Bunny himself, you know, be like, look at me. That that's what curses him. And here I feel like it's a pivotal moment in the poem because he spends 10 years away because he can't resist putting his name on, being an asshole. And I wish that was here. Here's this, like, he throws an extra arrow and I'm like, oh, that wasn't great. That was mean. But it doesn't have the ego exactly. That I love in an Odysseus.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, the sort of assholic elements are sort of limited or muted in that sequence.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I think it's so important, actually, that he tells these stories of his encounter with the cyclops, his encounter with Circe, his encounter with the Sirens. His point is to tell his journey to the underworld. He's telling a story in the poem, you have no independent authority for the story. You're basically reliant upon him. And he's in a situation where he has to demonstrate or impress, I guess, his host, the Phaeacians. And so kind of makes sense that he comes forward, he leads with this story about how he tricked this basically subhuman cave dweller living on the edge of the world. I guess that dynamic is kind of missing from the film generally. I guess, if I'm recalling correctly, Calypso, his memory of what he's done actually is kind of. It's presented as he's sort of retrieving the memories, and they're true memories. And there's no question about whether he's kind of rhetorically embellishing for the purpose of. For the purpose of self narration and self creation, you know, taking pride in certain actions that he's kind of performed since the time he left Troy.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, because he has a fair amount of pride, you know, And I think his pride gets him in trouble. Like, the most reason I can think of as to why Nolan would change that dynamic is because. I don't know if you felt this way. I thought Nolan doesn't even want to get into the whole specifics of the Cyclops curse and Poseidon getting mad at him. Poseidon taking his boat all around the world. Because I'm not sure Nolan believes in Poseidon. Is that wild to say? Like, he doesn't want Poseidon to be a character. He doesn't want Poseidon to be after this guy. He almost wants to make Poseidon be like, is he or isn't he real?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, yeah, he definitely leaves that pretty ambiguous. And the existence of the gods generally, if I'm not mistaking, he seems more interested in the way the human characters will invoke divine principles or the favor of the gods in different ways to sort of sort out their own problems. But the question about whether some. There's the question about whether the gods hate us and are willing to punish us in capricious ways. And that that is an important part of what it means to be human. That we encounter forces that are greater than ourselves and that are incomprehensible to us. That seems to be an area of the poem that is kind of left aside. Isn't that kind of what you mean?

[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

unschooled.

[Amy Nicholson]

Okay, I believe that Zendaya is not playing Athena, That Zendaya is playing his memory of an Athenian priestess who he saw get murdered. And that. That is why Athena is just sort of hanging out, not doing anything. Cause, I mean, let's talk about Athena in the play, like in the poem.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Why is no one talking about Athena? Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

[Amy Nicholson]

Athena in the poem is like, I got you for everything Odysseus needs. She's like, oh, Odysseus, you're walking into a strange castle. Boom, Let me make you hot. Boom. Let me make you tall. Boom. Let me make you even more of a beautiful speaker than you are.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

She's fussing and she's just. Him. In the end, in the bloodbath with which this story closes, she's there fighting with him and his son.

[Amy Nicholson]

Exactly. She's, like, really proactive. And so when I first started to watch the Odyssey, I was like, why isn't this Athena doing anything? Why is she just staring at him, disappointed? And then I thought at the end, when you see the battle of Troy, that's when I thought, oh, I don't even think that is Athena. Like, I think no one is kind of saying, I don't believe in the gods.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. Or if there's something. Okay, let me say what I liked. I liked how the character of Athena confronts him on the question about can the gods be understood? And she speaks about kind of mundane parts of human experience as areas in which the gods are communicating with us. What does she say? Storm?

[Amy Nicholson]

Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of, like, Zeus thunderclaps in the movie. Like, Zeus kaboom. Yeah.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Right. So I think that's interesting that the imaginative capacity of human life requires that we, like, perceive divine forces communicating to us. Maybe. Maybe in situations that could be explained in other ways. But that's kind of an important part about what it means to be human. But. So I thought that was interesting. But, yes, I think you're right that. I guess that is the sequence at the end in which they put to death this woman who is Zendaya. She seems to be then the embodiment of some feelings of guilt, or it's revealed, I guess, that the atrocities he's committed during the sacking of Troy have kind of stayed with him. And the presence of the Athena character, is this embodiment or a manifestation of feelings of the unfinished business of trauma and war or whatever you want to call it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, that's how I read it, that she was an Athenian priestess, maybe, and that's why he associated the two of them together.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Okay. I mean, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, that's an interesting invention. That's not in the poem, but it's. But I think, to go back to what we were saying, I think it remains true to some of the core questions raised by the poem, which do have to do with making things right. When one has done grievous things, the sufferings and the trauma experienced in war, sometimes trauma that one suffers because of what one has done in war. These seem to have been pretty powerful questions that were raised to the poem and that, you know, I don't know how you. I don't. I think a filmmaker can do interesting things with trying to bring that to life. And if. If that's what he's done with Athena, I think that's interesting. That seems to me cool.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. I don't point it out because I'm mad at it. I mean, I'm a little mad that, like, that Zendaya doesn't get to do more as an actress, but as an idea. I really like it. Like, I likened it into my review that he kind of treats the Greek gods the way that I treat the zodiac, which is. I don't really believe in the zodiac, but also, I've realized that there was a pattern, and most of the boyfriends who drove me nuts were Libras. And it's like, hey, that's sort of where I'm at with it. I get Himesh Patel being on the boat. Maybe Poseidon cursed us. I don't really know. I just don't trust this anymore. I'm going to err on the side of it, even though we have no evidence of the gods actually being here.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. So the zodiac is good to think with. And we can leave aside the question about whether it has any actual real existence that shapes us, but it's a good way to organize experience and to organize our relationships to other people.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't know that you have kind of a hanger with which to start organizing your thoughts. Yeah. About people.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I mean, do you remember in the Wire, which is also a very Homeric show, which, I'm embarrassed to say, I literally just watched a year ago, and that's why this reference is, like, in my back pocket.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, well, at least we watched it before. It was, what, two and a half millennia old? You're catching up.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

You're getting closer to the end. I'm ahead of the game in this case. But there's ways in which they talk about the gods in the Wire, which is, like, so out of place in contemporary. Well, not contemporary anymore, but contemporary story. Early 21st century Baltimore, the late, late, late Bronze Age, I guess. And I think they talk about the gods in the sense of the powers that, like, prevent certain funding and resource from coming to police enforcement, I guess, which is, you know, it's a. It's a turn of phrase that's useful for understanding powers that are beyond our control, but that we grapple with and try to understand. But it would be strange to have actual gods in that story. But it's. But. But I think it's, like, from a storytelling point of view, effective to think about how in situations that are difficult to process in other ways, we have to kind of look to the Goddess of Wisdom and how she would treat us, or the zodiac, as you like, or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Wwad? Like, what would Athena do? Or, I guess, what would Zeus do? Like, that's really the thing. Zeus would be nice to strangers. Zeus would be nice to the poor. So wwzd.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I mean, and second, we need to bring back paganism. Maybe more people should be asking these questions.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, and I like that. By keeping them vague. Ish. I mean, it's a completely different way of framing this sort of story than Clash of the Titans, where Clash of the Titans is always up on Mount Olympus, where the humans are just seen as tiny action figures. And they're like, let's do this to you. Let's move you over here. Whoops. Harry Hamlin, you're waking up on this island. Like, there's an element of Clash of the Titans that makes humans and human behavior seem kind of small, fatalistic. You don't have much say in it. And here I think there's so much of the movie that's wrestling with, do I do for myself? Do I wait for the gods to help me? Telemachus, like the Tom Holland Telemachus, is just walking around telling everybody they've got Athena's eyes all the time. Like, you've got Athena's eyes. You've got Athena's eyes. Which is his way of guessing that Athena is, like, inside someone. That's a big thing in the book. If you haven't read the book yet, I'm gonna just keep calling it the book because I keep forgetting to say the word poem. But Athena is like, yeah, she's getting inside, you know, of the form of, say, like, mentor. And so it's Athena as Mentor telling him to do stuff. But here it just feels like Telemachus is like a gambler, kind of betting that maybe Athena is inside of all of these people until he gets swatted down by his dad, who's like, stop looking for gods and men.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, I think to some extent that's pretty true to the Homeric poems, I think. There's a scene in the Iliad, if I'm recalling, in which Paris and Menelaus duel, and Paris is at the edge of defeat. He's about to be killed by Menelaus, but he's saved by his protector, Aphrodite, who whisks him away inside the citadel where he has sex with Helen. And, you know, he's kind of. His day ends much better than it seemed like it was going to. But Menelaus is sort of enraged by the sudden. The abrupt loss of the opportunity to kill Paris. But he blames Zeus. Oh, Zeus has taken, if I recall correctly, blames Zeus. And so it's important, though, that, I mean, here, this is a combination of both different ways of representing gods. On the one hand, you have an actual goddess and who in the plot of the story intervenes, but it's misunderstood by Menelaus. And so the poem preserves the interesting question about human responses to the unpredictable, which sometimes draws towards divine explanation. And that can be right or wrong, but it's meaningful either way.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. That if we don't understand what somebody is doing, we can make a wager that they're being made to do it? Is that what you mean?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. Or just that Menelaus only ability to understand this situation of the unpredictable having happened is to invoke the name of Zeus. And he's partly right. A goddess has intervened, but it hasn't been Zeus. And so the scene underlies both the kind of impulse to look to the gods for explanation of the inexplicable, but the kind of folly of human perception which shows up in the Iliad a lot and very strongly in the Odyssey as well.

[Amy Nicholson]

And I like that you're picking that example, too, because so much of how we think of Helen is through. Did the gods make her do this? Did Aphrodite make her leave her husband in the. Aphrodite is going to make you whisk away from your husband and now have sex with Paris again?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, Maybe it's kind of at the core of the story. Who's responsible for all of this suffering? To what extent do we have control over our lives? Are there forces over which we have no control? How do you resolve that constant dilemma? Both of the poems are deeply concerned with those questions.

[Amy Nicholson]

You know, I was really wrestling with the casting of Helen in this. Not for all the stupid Elon Musk made up reasons of being mad about things, but because they double cast Lupita and Nyong' o as both Helen and her twin sister, Clytemnestor. They're not twins in the original, but whatever. And I've been really going back and forth on this. Cause I've seen the Odyssey twice now. I'm a nerd. I have to. I was thinking, wait, what's the point of having the most beautiful woman in the world be Helen if you have a second one right there? Clytemnestra. So I was really annoyed by that. The first watch and then the second watch. I thought, oh, maybe that's the point. Maybe Christopher Nolan is like, there's two of them. Like, why are we even. You were just using Helen as a pretext for a war that you already wanted to fight in the first place. Agamemnon was just after the trade routes. Like, this woman's being used as an example. And we'll prove it, because there's two of them anyway.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, actually, you know, I'm embarrassed to say I didn't even notice or even think about that. How do you have the woman who won the high school superlative for most beautiful, and then she has a twin sister who's played by the same actress? But I think it's the latter of what you said. Yeah, that's the point. It's like, why is it that we assign weight in arbitrary ways, usually at our own expense, and suffering and

[Amy Nicholson]

how

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

to put those in the correct way? It's kind of like the way in which we assign causal responsibility to the gods. We're like, prone. Human beings are prone to kind of misunderstand the world and to apprehend it in incorrect ways. And that may involve, like, assigning status and, like, extreme and inordinate ways. In this case, judging one twin to be the most beautiful, when in fact there are two. And that we're kind of irresponsible in the way we make sense of the world. And that's part of our folly, I guess.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, it's true that we're just seizing onto, like, random excuses for things, claiming one thing is true, and One thing's not like. I mean, there's almost a way where I feel I'm taking.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Hold on. Just. Sorry, just not to interrupt. Was your point. Kind of like it's more expedient to Agamemnon that Helen is the most beautiful because it justifies the war in a way that maybe it doesn't. Yeah, yeah. I think that that's very Homeric. I think that, oh, this is kind of arbitrary why the Greeks are all doing this, and the pretext seems to be vengeance, the recovery of Helen and her wealth. But there's more basic and mundane reasons that have to do with pride, aggression, ambition, things like that.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the things that they don't put in the Odyssey because it's. Well, it's more of like an Iliad thing in the first place, and it's probably too much backstory, is that this whole idea that the war has to be fought to bring Helen back, that everybody has to go to war to do this, was Odysseus's idea in the first place, that when Helen was single, everybody was fighting over Helen. Who's going to get to marry Helen. Odysseus was in the game. He was like, maybe I'll marry Helen. And he came up with this idea that everybody who says they want to marry Helen. Let's just make a pact now. Whoever wins, we're going to just back you. We're going to have your support. If anybody takes Helen from you, we're all going to fight and win Helen back. Like, let's just make a bro code, basically, like Zeus's law and a bro code here about Helen. So the fact that this war starts is, in a way, Odysseus fault. Probably too much story to get into in this movie, but I always find that part of it really interesting.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. Is that is very interesting. But that's a thing that's omitted from the film, right?

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, it is.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

That he creates the conditions. Yeah. Because he's a kind of. He wants to abstain. He's kind of blaming it on Agamemnon's political policies.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. But this was his bright idea. Like, I love an Odysseus who's just coming up with brilliant stuff that's getting him into trouble. I kind of wish that Matt Damon's Odysseus was a little closer to the Odysseus of my heart, which is like a brilliant bastard. This Odysseus is more wise and sad. I think he's great in the scene where he's like, Tied up and the sirens are singing at him. And Matt Damon is like, sobbing. It's beautiful. He's great as this Odysseus, even if it's not my Odysseus.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, I mean, he's not your Odysseus. Yeah, I agree. The thing that brings about the most suffering for him is not necessarily his scheming. He seems a little more smug and, like, blunt instrument than kind of chess strategy, I guess.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, yeah. He's more like, I think I'm doing the right thing. And then the right thing gets you into trouble. But it's not. I think I'm outwitting all of you guys. I mean, because what's his name translate to anyway? Like, the hated or something? I think that's. What. Is that true? What is a disease?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

There's a. You know, it's a. This is where I have to get super nerdy. I think the etymology is, like, uncertain, but at least punned with language. For hating. For hatred and so on. Like a kind of. On a play on words, his name would be associated with being someone who is hated. But I don't know if that's like a. But, you know, that's irrelevant. What mattered is that when audiences heard the figure of Odysseus, it would be like his name was like, Mr. It's easy. It would be easier if it was Hater. But it's Hated, I guess.

[Amy Nicholson]

Right, Mr. Hater. Yeah, yeah, like that. He's. I don't know. What I really admire about how the Greeks wrote their main characters is that somebody like Odysseus is so complicated, you know, to read the whole Odyssey, which is fantastic. You get a sense of a person who kind of covers the gamut of human emotions. Honestly, like, one thing that he does a ton in the book is he just cries. He's an emotional guy. A lot of these men are emotional. I love that about Homer, that they're continually carried away with their emotions. Oh, my God, we're still back at sea and, like, all of the men on the ship are crying for days. There's, like, a manly version of sobbing. They're so in their feelings. And I love that, like, I love that the Greeks wrote characters where you just have to accept all their contradictions. I'm coming home. Hope my wife is still celibate. If my mates haven't been celibate, they're all gonna die. But meanwhile, in the book, he's, like, banging Calypso for seven years. He's banging Cersei for a year. Like, he makes a whole deal with Cersei. Like, if you turn my men back from pigs, I will. Pardon my language. I will pork you for an entire year, baby. Let's do it. You know? And none of that gets reconciled. It's not like he lands and says, well, I'll never do that again, Penelope. I swear. It's like, it happened. It's fine. And I. I like that the Greeks unsettled me that way. Yeah.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I mean, he's.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

All that stuff is kind of muted as well. He doesn't. The Circe episode doesn't turn into an erotic episode. The calypso scene is, I guess, like, the love affair is where the sex is kind of implied but not really explicit in any way.

[Amy Nicholson]

She's wearing fishnets. I was like, I guess that's it. I don't. It bums me out just because I'm like, I want more from. I want more from all of the female actors.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I mean, she lives on an island, though, so the fishnets there's, like. They're, like, appropriate in a certain way.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. She's, like, taking them off and catching dinner and then putting them back on.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

That's practical. Yeah, no, that's. He's not a. Yeah. He's not the Matt Damon. Odysseus is not emotionally complicated in the way that you can definitely find in the character as he appears in the Homeric poem.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I wonder if that's for us or for Nolan. Like, Nolan's never been that interested in sex in movies. Or is he just worried that we'll never forgive Matt Damon if he is boning Charlize Theron and then he goes home to his wife?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. He's like a. It's like the Odysseus that he's interested in, is this one of, like, stoic persistence and self regulation? Temperance.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. I mean, and I like where he takes it. Like, I think the end of the Odyssey is really strong. Like, really strong. The idea of grief. I mean, when he makes it this, like, Oppenheimer prequel of. I'm so sad that I invented the Trojan horse and I have. I'm basically condemning the whole region into a dark age that's gonna last for, like, 400 years.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

What really, I think is effective first, and it comes out, especially at the ending, is the way he strings along the story of the Trojan horse and the atrocities committed by the Greeks at the end of the war along as a parallel narrative through the whole film. That's really effective because I Think it forces us to think about Odysseus as this traumatized veteran.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. He even uses the word veteran, which I think really hits hard.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. Super important. And then. And so we're like. I guess we're like. We're forced to realize that this is part of who he is now. And for a story about someone coming home from war, it raises the question about how and under what conditions you do come home from such a really difficult experience. And, you know, the first thing you can't look away from is the fact that for this veteran who comes home from war, his homecoming culminates in this violent spree in which he kills everyone in this living room. And the way that story is, the way that sequence is related in the poem draws upon a lot of the battlefield imagery of the Iliad. And so the ancient audience of the poem would find it unmistakable that this homecoming is super complicated, or at least of ambiguous value. Because the way it's presented is as if the war has actually been brought home, I guess, would be one way to think about it.

[Amy Nicholson]

It's really explicit. It's like. And then the spear goes into, you know, antinous neck. That's the Pattinson character. Like, it's very violent. You get the sense of he's mucking about in a floor that's, like, ankle deep in blood.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. It's like blood is all. Yeah. And it's kind of like, wait a minute, I thought this was supposed to be the. I thought he was supposed to have arrived home from war. What's going on here? So you have this super complicated ending.

[Amy Nicholson]

Right. He brings the war home. It's like a taxi driver plus.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. I think the ancient poem. Ancient audiences would have been thinking about this. The fact that the final step in one's homeward journey from war is actually like a rebooting of all of the experiences of war in a spectacular fashion.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. And I mean, I can't help thinking through today's eyes of just the imagery of a veteran returning home from a war that they didn't really want to go on in the first place. And, you know, not being taken care of. Like, you know.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Like being on the sidewalk, needing food, needing shelter, look, feeling really ragged. I mean, that's. You know, that is an image that I think has been around my entire life. Like, we both grew up in a post Vietnam War era. Like, there have always been those men on the streets my entire life.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yes. I think. I think the poem would.

[Amy Nicholson]

Have.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Would have project or would have been read this way. You Know, there's a. There's a. You know, there's a. There's. There's one really important detail which I have to mention. I mean, there's many I could mention about the sequence, but one is the bow itself. For example, in the poem, the bow is a gift to Odysseus from a guy from Messenia, Iphitus, who Odysseus had been sent by his father Laertes, to ask back a group of cattle that had been stolen in a raid by a group of Messenian men. And so he travels to Messenia, can have the cattle back. And he ends up making friends with this guy, Iphitus, who gives him the bow. And then Odysseus gives him sword and shield. And so Odysseus goes on this journey, which is kind of like one of his early journeys in his young adulthood, a journey in which he is supposed to kind of become a man in the process of traveling on his father's request to resolve a dispute. And the implication is that this would be resolved by force. He would take the cattle that were stolen back as well as. Not cattle, I'm sorry, sheep and shepherds. And that. That this visit to Messenia would result in bloodshed. But it doesn't. It results in a new friendship. And he gets the token of the friendship, which is the bow, gives the sword and a shield. And so you have the backstory. In the backstory of the bow is this story of nonviolent resolution to a dispute over property, which is very interesting that the bow becomes the centerpiece of the violent resolution of a dispute over property. And that's. I mean, you don't have to think too heavily. The unmistakable conclusion seems to be that, yeah, there's something corrupt or tainted about the way in which the distribution or the dispensation of justice to all the suitors is carried out with indiscriminate violence. Many of them ask for mercy in the poem, he denies it. He kills them. Some of them are defenseless. When he's killing them, Athena comes down and frightens them all and they flee. And the simile that the poet uses is they were like smaller birds fleeing from eagles who are hunting them. And the interesting detail that always gets me is that, oh, and we're as humans look on with delight watching this large bird of prey kill these defenseless, smaller birds. That's the image that the poet gives us for the massacre in the living room. And I think the question is raised a. Is this justice or is this just vengeance? Right? And if it's vengeance. How could it really be justice? And B, are we entertained by this? Is this enjoyable to us? And our own kind of morality, I think, is kind of called into question. The extent to which we find this killing of these, the 108 suitors in this bloody spree, to be a form of justice and a form of the world in a way in which the world is made whole again. It seems. It seems pretty ugly if you think of it from the perspective of the human capacity to be entertained by such a spectacle. And probably the readers of the poem are like, oh, this is cool. The Iliad has begun again. This is a great action sequence, I guess.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. It's almost like the end of Avengers movies. I don't like where they kill a gazillion aliens who you don't really think of as human. And I feel like it makes Nolan uncomfortable, too, because he is changing little bits of it. Like here when people kneel, he does let them live. Like, he doesn't kill everybody. And here he doesn't let his son do any murdering because he's like, this is bad. If you murder, you're going to have to leave. You cannot do any of the murdering. Whereas in the poem, Telemachus is right up there with him killing people. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love, like, the staging of it, like, dramatically, a lot. Like, I love Telemachus up there, you know, trying to keep the guy from fighting and throwing the spears down through the hole and, like, how the fight keeps escalating while you have Robert Pattinson, who's so funny, just hiding behind that pillar, being like, get the sword. Get the shield. Like he's a coward. It works great. But, yeah, yeah, you feel in it that Nolan himself is like, man, this is rough. Like, I don't love the morality of how this ends.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

And, yeah, there's another detail. The Eurymachus character, who's actually. He's the first one killed in the film, but he's killed second, I believe, in the poem. But Antinous is the first guy to get killed. And so.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, the Corey Hawkins character, That's who you're talking about?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Is Corey Hawkins is the actor's name.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Okay. And he. In the poem, the Corey Hawkins character, Eurymachus, throws Antinous under the bus and he says, okay, that's the guy. You got him. Let's make a deal. And he's like, we'll pay back everything. It's all good, you know, because if this is really a dispute about property, we can make you whole. And it's interesting that the bow is right there. It's this symbol of nonviolent resolution to. To a disagreement. And that we're human beings, are capable of that. And actually that. That makes us more human. It's more human than the. Than the eagle and the little birds. Right. And that we can come to an agreement, a sense of justice. And this is all kind of thrown. This is all kind of left behind, I guess, when Odysseus denies Eurymachus claim for a resolution and kills him second and then kills all the others.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. You see, I'm turning away from the ability to settle this more peacefully.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. And in a poem that's actually about, like, what does it mean to be human? Very explicitly in the Circe episode with the pigs, one is left with the question of how this episode of violent vengeance has humanized Odysseus in any way or his son.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. I mean, God. Oh, we have to do. Talk about that Circe scene, though. The way that Samantha Morton is just like, caressing these men, turning them back from pigs into humans, but saying, go back into your disguises as men. Go back into your disguises as men. I mean, there's so many moments in here where I was just thinking again, like, we are back in the world of Oppenheimer. Men who do terrible things, men who are wrestling with their regrets, men who've invented horrible things. Are we a violent species? Like, I love that Nolan feels like he's absolutely thinking of today in everything that's worrying him about today. He's putting into this film. You know, I feel like it's a movie about fear of terrorism. Everybody's worried about the Sea peoples coming. The Sea Peoples coming. Which is not in the poem, but it is a thing in, you know, historians. Historians have this idea that part of what brought about the end of the Bronze Age and, like, led to the rise of the Greek dark ages for 400 years was these mysterious people called the Sea Peoples that they haven't figured out who they really were in lore, who went around destroying all of the great cities that marked the Mediterranean at like, 1200.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Oh, yeah. A plus for that.

[Amy Nicholson]

A for bringing in the Sea Peoples. Yeah. And a plus for being like. And you were the Sea Peoples all along, Greeks. But that he's thinking about this. Yeah. And by the way, like, just the collapse of the Bronze Age, I mean, the things that ruined the Bronze Age, it was like wealth hoarding, climate disasters, human appetites.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Are we just. Appetites? Do we have. Do we have the Ability to do something that transcends the most basic things that we do as human beings. Eating and sex.

[Amy Nicholson]

A new type of technology, like Iron age technology. Like coming in and overpowering what we had before that was keeping societies in check. Being too easy to murder people with gazillions of mass produced swords. I really feel like Nola is saying we're entering a new Greek dark ages. If we don't do something right now. Or maybe it's already too late.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I think you're right. I think it makes a lot of sense to call attention to the way in which the thing that is causing the most anxiety to the characters with the story of the sea people ends up being something that they failed to see in themselves.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Yeah. It's like the antifa of the day.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. What if I told you you only have 12 hours to legally have sex?

[Amy Nicholson]

To finding true love or just like a good guy.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

From the director of Easy A and Anyone but you.

[Amy Nicholson]

This whole thing is nuts.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

There's nothing traditional about this.

[Amy Nicholson]

Lane.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

On August 7th, the clock starts on the summer's biggest rom com.

[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

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[Amy Nicholson]

Say I do.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I'm schooled. Were you getting the Isle of Dr. Moreau with the Circe episode?

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. But that's a great parallel.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I've always thought of that novel as a kind of retelling of the Circe myth in a way, because you have this figure in control over the powers of nature, the Moreau character. But the thing that got it for me in the film was the way in which she's molding these sort of the very plastic bodies of these men. Once they've been kind of cursed by her magic, she can sort of mold them into what she describes as their true nature. They're animals. And that's a very. Would you Call it a Wellesian idea from the novel is that there's a continuity between human and animal life that is horrifying if you see it, and it's in the clear light. I mean, I don't think the stories are ultimately the same, but the question about our relationship with animal life and the extent to which we are animals and maybe, no, maybe not even capable of much more than what animals are capable of is something that I think connects the Circe episode and the novel.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, I think you're right. And I mean, I think it goes both ways. I think we need to be elevating animals up and giving them more respect and also lowering ourselves until we meet in the middle. I don't want to be like we're the worst, we're the lowest, because I don't think that's how animals are either. I think animals have a completely complicated language that we don't understand because we're too dumb.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I agree. Yeah. And whatever else The Isle of Dr. Moreau is about, it's about human capacities for empathy and where we are willing to see suffering in another creature, a non human animal. A non human animal, for example. And is it truly human to fail to see the suffering of a creature that's different from us? Isn't it? Maybe it's more fully human to be able to be empathetic with a life, a form of life that we don't completely understand or we're cut off from

[Amy Nicholson]

because of language, which is actually even kind of, I think, underlined here when he arrows that deer that he's hunting and it turns into a human, which is. I don't believe that's in the poem. I feel like that's a Nolan addition. To be like all of the life that you see around here. Think of it as a human life, you know, value life as much as that.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, that is an invention of his. Um.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

And then what? And it. It comes up. But it also. But it comes up over and over again in the poem. He doesn't empathize with the cyclops. The suitors don't empath, empathize with the beggar. Everyone is being tested upon their ability to be fully human. The thing that keeps coming back over and over again is. Is one's capacity to take care of someone, something else, some. Some other being. And the question about whether it's human and animal. The dog, I guess, is not treated in empathetic ways by the suitors. This is.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, my gosh. Argos.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, yeah. Poor Argos.

[Amy Nicholson]

They put him On a literal pile of dung with tiny bones poking out of it like it's a Heathcliff comic. I was like, oh, my God, that's so brutal.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

I'm pretty sure that's in the poem. And I think in the Greek there you learn the word for lice.

[Amy Nicholson]

Ooh.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Which I couldn't. I couldn't quote. Yeah, super.

[Amy Nicholson]

That's gonna be the. Tell me what it is and I'll make that. This the name of my metal band.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

The Greek word for life.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. The Argo scene made me cry.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I knew that it would. It always does. But that tiny little tail wag. I thought the tail wag looked silly, but even so, that tiny little tail wag, I thought it looked a little bit fake, but goodness, what a sweet dog. And also, how funny that when we first. When we get the flashback to Argos as a puppy, it's John Leguizamo sitting up there as Eumaeus sorting the puppies and throwing the bad puppies off of cliffs over his back. He just tosses a puppy over his back to die.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. He's a character acting without empathy. But in the poem, the dog recognizes Odysseus, right. Treats him. And Odysseus will still enter the palace, and he does go around begging and they treat him like dirt. But. And you know, this is. They're not even willing to treat a dog very well. But the dog has the powers of recognition that. That no other human being does in that sequence, which is interesting to your point, that. That. That animal life may be. It's interesting that animals in. In even since the poetry of Homer, they're thinking about the capacity of animals to recognize the kind of moral being of another creature in ways that human beings are so easy to forget.

[Amy Nicholson]

That's true. Like very few things in this poem are as loyal as that dog. Penelope is loyal and the dog is loyal. Eumaeus is loyal, Athena's loyal. That's about it.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Can I ask you a question about Penelope? I guess I just did, but can I ask you a second question?

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, you can ask me as many as you want.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Okay. So do you think when. In the recognition scene between Penelope and Odysseus, one of the innovations of Eumaeus. Eumaeus, sorry. One of the innovations of Nolan is to have Odysseus describe what he's done at Troy to her. And her response then is to. Including the atrocity of having killed the. That the Greeks had killed defenseless people, killed this priestess or this woman that's associated with the priesthood of Athena and Anne Hathaway as her character is to react. Her reaction is ambiguous, I thought, because she may know she's talking to Odysseus, she may not, but she at least hears truths about who the Greeks really are based upon their behavior at Troy from this informant, the nameless veteran. Or maybe he's still identifying himself as soon on there. And then she says, well, I'm going to have the contest of the bow. What did you think about that reaction? Or I guess my question is more specifically, does it suggest that she's been kind of turned off or that that story has kind of affected her in a negative way?

[Amy Nicholson]

Gosh. I mean, I think the main emotion I felt coming out of that was just her impatience with this entire society, as it was like her impatience for not being respected by her son as being a person leading on the throne. Her impatience with these guys just hanging out in her house all the time, treating her like she can't see through their attempts to manipulate her. And her impatience with her husband that he's taken this long and was any of it worth it? I just feel her need to just like, kick the pot over and be done with all of this. But I don't know if she knows who he is exactly in that moment until he steps forward as the beggar to seize the bow. And I think as soon as he grabs the bow, then she's really hoping it's him because she does that tiny little lip tremble, you know. But now that I'm talking about it, though, they do make this Penelope, who I think has a lot of moral outrage. The one scene I don't really like in the movie is earlier on when they're having this debate about, like, is he even going to fight in the war in the first place? And he tells her the story of. He tells her the story of Agamemnon throwing his daughter Iphigenia off the cliff. And she acts like she's never heard it before. Cause I guess she has it. And she just goes, that's horrible. And there's something in her reaction there that I find really annoying. But I think it's Nolan being like, you need to understand this is an important part of the story. And oh, my God, if you wanna know the Splinterpit poems, go read all these other plays about this moment. It's a big, big, big, big, big, big deal. But, yeah, she's got in putting that scene together with the one you're just talking about. I don't know if they fit.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, I mean, she's clearly like this victim of this world that's basically organized around male ambition and the way men in the warrior culture kind of resolve their problems. She doesn't seem to be enamored by Odysseus, story in disguise about who the Greeks are. I mean, what's interesting is that no one finds a way to have a partial recognition. She doesn't necessarily realize she's speaking to Odysseus, but she receives clarification on who Odysseus is.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, she knows who she's married.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah. And so, like, oh, okay, so this is what, you know, this expedition to Troy, which is meant to kind of bring glory for all of the victors and so forth, actually is pretty ugly if you get a truthful account of what happened. And she's kind of confronted with that truth in this moment. And I think it's interesting that she says, tomorrow I'm going to have a. Or I guess it's not tomorrow. She says, we're going to do it now, but in the poem, it's tomorrow. She says, we're going to have a contest and marry whoever can string the bow. And so if she is just kind of fed up with everything, um, I think. I think Nolan finds a way to convince us that maybe she is willing to just move on. And why wouldn't she? It's totally relatable.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe he has to actually earn her respect back and it's not just prove that it's you, but prove that I should even respect you again. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I know we should wrap it up in a second, but I do like that it at least ends with them reconciling in sailing away together, which is a huge change from the book. In the book, he gets back and he's like, hades told me that as soon as I'm home, I have to take an oar, go into a landlocked part of the beyond, and walk until somebody doesn't recognize what the oar is on my back anymore. And then I have to say I'm so sorry to Poseidon. I apologize. I have to grieve. And only then can I come home. And then I can come home and live a long life here. They just sort of become like retirees on a. On a cruise, which I'm fine with. I've always hated that he comes home and immediately leaves again, or. That makes me really sad.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

So they go to, like, a Buffett. Like a Margaritaville.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Uzo Ville. Yeah. Okay.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a. That's a huge change from the story. Yeah. Retirement.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Which I'm. I. I'm happy for them, though. I feel like Penelope has earned that. She's earned, like a lifelong trip to Uzoville.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

She's definitely earned it.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Can I ask you one last question before we go?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

You just did.

[Amy Nicholson]

Okay, great. Can I ask you a second one?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Why have I always pictured the Trojan horse being on wheels?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

That's a great question. There's probably some Renaissance painting. No, I'm embarrassed to say. I don't know.

[Amy Nicholson]

I don't. Embarrassed that I even had that in my head. I think I'm just always. Is it a Far side comic? Like to see a Trojan horse that wasn't on a heel?

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

No, no, that is what it is.

[Amy Nicholson]

Amazing. They have to drag it. I always just thought you pushed it. And I was like, why have I thought that? They made it easy for them.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, that's probably. There needs to be an academic paper on this question. I mean, it makes sense because, like, if it's Odysseus idea, he must have thought out the delivery, the means of delivery, because what if the Trojans. Like, no, we're not dragging that into the city. So then the whole ruse would be spoiled because they just thought it would be too difficult. And so the wheels would certainly sweeten the deal. I don't think it's mentioned in Virgil, which describes the horse, but I'll have to check. But I think it might be onto something. The Far side comic.

[Amy Nicholson]

Maybe that's it. So I was like, that looks really heavy. I can't imagine deciding to wheel that horse in immediately. I'd be like, oh, give me a month. And then everybody would starve to death or something.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Yeah, that was an atrocity itself, making them drag the horse.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, totally, totally. And I. Oh, wait, I totally. I forgot what I was going to say. Sorry. But I do like how when you first see it, it's buried in the sand and it just looks like the Statue of Liberty and the Planet of the Apes, which I think is. I think it's on purpose, you know, like the end of a civilization again. Like this is marking the collapse of something.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

No, no. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of quotations and interesting allusions to the film. I mean, visually and the sort of presentation of the scenes and. Yeah, I think they need to be revisited. A lot of the scenes reminded me of some paintings from the story of Odysseus. I can't think of a specific example, but I remember thinking, like, I want to go back and think about if there was some sort of really kind of prominent examples of Renaissance or really modern painting that he was kind of channeling in some of his depictions of the. Especially Penelope and Telemachus in the earlier part of the film. Yeah, I think maybe there's a far side comic. Maybe that's the. Yeah, there must be.

[Amy Nicholson]

I feel like there must be a far side comic. I think this is why I don't mind that he changed so much, because I can really tell that he cares. He didn't change it because he doesn't know. He changed it just on purpose. He knows that Odysseus is like a big old F boy, and he just chooses that. He doesn't care about that. And I can be annoyed at it, but I trust that Nolan knows everything. He changed and has an argument why. And I can disagree, but he's not dumb.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

No, it's interesting. Yeah. You know, the. I mean, it's. In the first line of the poem, Odysseus is introduced by the term, which means literally, of many turns. Maybe this will be a fitting end of many turns. And it also. So it refers to his, like, wander, his globe trotting lifestyle, but it also means, you know, versatile in his thinking. He's flexible, he's pragmatic, he's got many ideas. His mind is overflowing. So it has that double significance. But the first Latin translator of the poem is a poet at Rome named Livius Andronicus, and he translates polutrepos with the Latin word versutum, which means changed or related to the idea of change, but also means translated. And so he puns upon the eminent translatability and remakeability of the character of Odysseus. And so this is, like, built into the DNA that Odysseus is defined by flexibility and versatility in the way he lives his life, the way he has episodic kind of adventures, but also he's kind of given over to being reanimated by artists and now filmmakers in the centuries that lay ahead.

[Amy Nicholson]

Whoa. That was so nerdy. And I loved it so much. That was epically nerdy. Wow. Thank you for that, Lucas. Lucas Hergenruder, professor of Classics at usc. Thank you so much for being on here and letting us just nerd out about all of this.

[Lucas Herkenroeder]

Amy. Thank you so much. It's been fun.

[Podcast Announcer]

And make sure you check out our substack each and every week to go a little bit deeper on the movies that we talk about here. It's always free, so join in the conversation. Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson. Sound engineered by Cory Barton, music by Devin Bryant, episode art by Kim Troxall, show art by Lee Jamison and social media production by Zoe Applebaum. This is a Rome production. See you next week. Bye for now.

[Amy Nicholson]

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[Lucas Herkenroeder]

And just because the Oscars are done

[Amy Nicholson]

for now doesn't mean we are. Join us every week for coverage of the biggest stories in Hollywood, interviews with today's brightest stars, and so much more. Listen to Little Gold Men every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.