House of R - ‘The Odyssey’ Deep Dive

Episode Date: July 18, 2026

Mal and Jo defy the gods by diving deep into Christopher Nolan’s latest film, ‘The Odyssey.’ They break down the themes, the performances, how it fits into the rest of Nolan’s filmography, and more! (00:00) Intro (04:46) Opening Snapshot (46:31) Really Defying The Gods (01:02:29) Polytropos and Xenia — A Crash Course in Greek (01:18:55) Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story? (01:30:59) Argos, The Boy Who Waited (01:34:32) Anyone Can Wear The Mask (01:46:22) Oh, The Telemachy (01:55:04) Nolan’s First Horror Movie? (02:02:32) Nolan’s First Musical? (02:11:34) A Bizarrely Unhorny 'Odyssey' (02:13:55) To The Monsters We’re The Monsters Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin Producers: Carlos Chiriboga, Scott Lee, and Jamie Yukich Studio Production: Jacob Cornett Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to House of Our. I'm Joanna Robinson. And as the rosy-fingered dawn breaks over the wine, dark sea, she has wise eyes. Athena's eyes. It's Valerie Rubin. It's the godlike, goddess-like Joanna Robinson. What a joy to be here with you to talk about this genuine masterpiece of a movie. An absolute masterpiece.

A movie we absolutely loved. It's The Odyssey. We can't wait to talk about it right after this. This episode is a great. brought to you by FIFA World Cup, launch edition, on Netflix. It's a fast, fluid game where your phone is the controller,

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of the Midnight Boys Poo-Pew and the House of Our We'll be returning to San Diego Comic-Con this July. We're kicking off on Thursday, July 23rd at Whiskey Girl for a Ringervis fan meetup. No badge required. We'll be there for an hour or so

starting around 6.30, so come say hi, grab a drink, celebrate with us. And then, on Saturday, July 25th at 10.30 a.m., come to our panel. Comic-Con badge holders can find the Midnight Boys Piu

and the House of R. Correct. in room 5AB on the upper level of the convention center for a ringerverse supergroup panel. We're going to be discussing the franchises that have dominated nerd culture this year and taken stock of what's to come. So whether you're local to San Diego or in town for Comic Con, we'd love to see you at Whiskey Girl on Thursday. Or if you're a badge holder, join us on Saturday, July 25th for our panel. See you in San Diego. All right, quick programming reminders.

House of the Dragon continues apace. We've got the deep dives coming out whenever they come out. and the Talk of the Thrones comes out on Sundays right after the episodes drop. Lestat finale on Monday. No screener. Exciting. Very exciting.

Can't wait to see what's in there. San Diego Comic-Con is next week. That's right. We will be there. We have a meet and greet on Thursday night. At Whiskey Girl, you do not need a badge for it. You probably just watched an ad for this, but I'm just going to say it again anyway.

And then our panel is Saturday morning. You do need a badge for that. Please come. Please come. Yeah. Come to both, but, you know, we'd love to see you at the panel. We'll be in Baltimore in August. That's right.

For the O's event. We have another local event that we don't think we can officially announce yet, but that's also in August. So we got a lot coming up. Geez. What a time. Yeah. How can folks keep track of all the things we're doing? Here's what I'd recommend follow the pod.

Follow House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch full video episodes of House of Our and The Midnight Boys, Boop, pew, on Spotify. You should also follow the Ringervverse YouTube channel. You can watch our episodes there as well. While you're at it, follow the newish, outhouse of our.

Yeah. Social handles. At House of Our pod. Instagram. TikTok. We're having a great time over there, you know? So check out the breakouts from the pods, some memes, some behind-the-scenes photos.

knows what we'll post from Comic-Connor. I mean, yeah, in San Diego. Plenty to go on. And email us. Hopinsendragons.com. The inbox is always open. The hot-dee emails have been out of control. The list out emails are great. We got a couple odyssey emails, but we're recording this a little early in the Odyssey run, so like not a ton of Odyssey emails.

Though a listener did months ago recommend an Odyssey podcast to me. It's called Odyssey the podcast, and I did listen to it, and it was fantastic. So thanks to that listener. I do take your advice sometimes listeners. Shout out the bad babies. Spoiler warning. Yeah. For Homer.

Mm-hmm. Or Homer. That's right. Yeah. Various dudes named Homer. The Ilya of the Odyssey. This movie, which if you haven't seen it yet, you should go see. Yes.

We'll be talking about it in depth. Any Nolan movie. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Anything else? History-ish. Disputed history? Troy.

Troy. Ilyam. Ulysses. Mm-hmm. The Great Witches. Bushbone episode based on the Odyssey. That's Simpson episode. That's Homer's Odyssey.

Oh, brother, where are, though? Uh-huh, absolutely. Uh-huh. The constant, that episode of loss. Penny! Oh, God. Penny, you waited. It's like, Penny you answered.

Oh, man. It's Friday afternoon. I have a coffee, a water, and I'm still quaffing mead, so we're doing our best. Here, the Holy Trilogy, Trinity. We're doing our best. Should we go to the opening snapshot? Let's do it. Let's do it.

All right, quick facts. This was directed by Christopher Nolan. Have you heard of him? Written by Christopher Nolan. Story by Homer, have you heard of him or the various peoples who go by Homer? Score by Ludwig Gorenson, a 172 minute runtime. Just shy of three hours. So far, again, we're recording this Friday afternoon, so it's early in the run.

Yeah. Quite a popular film. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. 96.97 on Rottenmados. Amazing. 89.

5.6. A metacritic. Box office tracking is a little early to tell, but $17.6 million just for Thursday night previews alone. And I know that they were doing, like, here in Los Angeles, there are 3 AM screenings that they're doing that are sold out. Jeez. Our pal Kai Grady was telling me he was trying to get seized for, like, the three, like, he's like, even the 3 AM screenings are sold out. For IMAX. For IMAX.

Yeah. For IMAX. Yeah. Yeah. like 70 millimeter and stuff like that. So yeah, this is according to deadline. Currently, we're hearing an opening frame of 85 to 100 million domestic with another 110 million overseas. So that's 200 million perhaps just an opening weekend, possibly. Is it going to get to a billion? I don't know. Up and Imer did. I would like to see it a couple more hubs. Oppenheimer got just shy a billion.

Round up. Yeah. Okay. Will it get to 900 something million? Sure. Absolutely. Yes. I believe. It would be fun if it crossed a billion, though. That would be exciting. Yeah. $250 million budget to operate against, not to mention the advertising budget. Ooh, yeah. Quick overall impressions of the honesty. Mallory Rubin, you and I have seen this together-ish. We were not sitting together the first time. We were sitting closer together the second time.

Yes. So I did get to hear you cry the second time we saw the movie. At a very predictable location, I think. Tell us your big picture thoughts about this movie. I thought it just was fantastic. I mean, I love it. I actually had, you know, originally secured tickets for yesterday to see it in IMAX. So I was like, man, I'm going to get to see this three times before we record because we got to screen it twice.

And I was delighted by the prospect of sitting in a movie theater for north of three hours three times. I can't wait to go again. I wasn't able to pull it off yesterday. Return those tickets out into the world where they were scooped up eagerly. But yeah, I can't wait to. to see it again already. I like forward to seeing this multiple times, not only in the near term here,

but to like revisit this over time, to come back to it after Nolan makes more movies. So much of his filmography feels like it is connected to this and was pointing toward this, that it's like so fascinating to contemplate where he goes from here, what happens next. But I think the nature of his filmography to date and the shared threads and common themes and interests,

but different ways that he explores them and dabbles with them across character sets, literally time and also like the actual, you know, the passage of time, but also the way he explores time, genres. Every one of his movies gets richer when you go back to it and consider the stuff that he's made in the wake of it. So, you know, this movie I thought was like a genuine modern masterpiece. It's my favorite movie of the year. It's, we're going to wait to, I think, reveal our complete Nolan film power rankings until

the Oppenheimer episode, which in, let's just say it was the plan all along. not a product of me being a gravely ill and deep distress and pain all week and not being able to get to that. We're going to do that after, and I think that will actually be interesting and fun to go back to that in a couple weeks. We'll probably do the whole power ranking of our films then at the end of that pod. But this is really high on the list. It's without question in my top five. Oh, no question. Is it in my top three probably where it goes in there, I don't know.

Yeah, that's the hard part. always going to love this, I think, just because of its connection to a classic piece of literature that I have studied for years and years and find fascinating. So, like, I was in the tank for this in the way that, like, certain people are in the tank for, like, a Nolan Batman movie. You know, like, whatever the subject matter is, I'm like, okay, I'm already, like, 85% there. And then you add on top of that, you know, the cast that we'll talk about and also just Nolan's absolutely overwhelming visuals. Yeah. You know, the ambition of the IMAX film. for this, for this movie and just sort of like, the sense of enormity and just sort of like,

you know, we talk all the time about like how, how few directors there are in Hollywood who are even doing this or can do this anymore, have the luxury of making something that feels as big as this did. But this just felt like, and, you know, and I felt this way, you know, watching the Dune movies and certainly in some points during an Oppenheimer and plenty of other Nolan movies. But just that seeing it on the biggest screen possible, which shut up, maybe I'll go up to San Francisco, see it on the Metri-On. Because shout-out the Metri-on. That is still the biggest IMAX screen, and I missed it for this movie. But, like, seeing on the biggest screen possible with a full theater, the second viewing we went to is a full theater and just sort of like,

just you're at the movies. This is a movie-movie. And it's just like I felt so lucky. I also think it's my favorite film of the year. I love Project Tell Mary, but like, me too. This is just extraordinary. I was always going to love it. I think also, doing our Nolan rewatch, which we did really, really enhanced my enjoyment of it. And even the Oppenheimer prep that I did for the episode that we didn't get to record, like, I spent a lot of the weekend with Oppenheimer, and that was really fruitful because when we came out of our first screening of this, you and I both were like, wow, there's a lot of Oppenheimer. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. And then just like rewatching Oppenheimer and studying like all the themes of that movie and how it hits

with Nolan. And just to think how interesting it is, even though we've watched his filmography out of order, you know, the way that he reiterates certain themes, for sure. But I feel like between Oppenheimer and Odyssey, these are the two movies back to back that feel like, he's like, I wasn't done with this story. And not only that, but he takes the ideas of Oppenheimer, which is like the guilt of this tremendous original sin, you know, a great man, a complicated man, a flawed man,

and his horrible invention and how it potentially broke the world. Like that is just to take that idea of Oppenheimer and apply it to The Odyssey, a book that has been translated and studied, maybe, you know, a text has been translated and studied maybe more than any other. And to layer in this idea that to me feels innovative. Like when we get to the end of this movie and Odysseus via his own recollection flashback is regarding the burning Trojan horse. And I'm like, oh my God, the Trojan horse is the. atomic bomb. Are you kidding me? I was like, this is a fucking masterpiece. I just think it's extraordinary. Was there, when you were watching the film, was there a film from our rewatch other than Oppenheimer or in addition to Oppenheimer or you want to, maybe you want to talk about

Oppenheimer yourself? That felt most rewarding that we spent time with. And was it Inception when you saw him with Penelope's Pinn and Sinon's lot and all these other things. tokens that show up in this movie. I love a totem as you know. I love Inception. I mean, I think the truth is it's the entire filmography. It's all of it. There's not a single movie that he's made that doesn't have some strand that connects to them. I think it's like fun to go through each of them individually and think about the most germane. It was actually fun to think about like now looking back at our pods where that was the closing category. Like what are we most anticipating about the Odyssey and thinking about regarding the Odyssey after talking about that

movie and sometimes that was a thematic or textual aspect. You were on the theme beat. Sometimes it was not. Sometimes it was like, Hamesh Patel. I'm really excited. Guess what? Well, that paid off for me. Yeah, I mean, he was just sensational and very central to the film. So all of the movies are worth talking about, you know, and maybe we run through them very rapid fire lightning round in that respect. But I think it's also interesting more broadly to think about them in clusters of original work and adaptation, right? And so, something even beyond just adaptation, like to your Oppenheimer point and thinking about those as the two most recent films, the films that are back to back, the films that he made, you know, what I think

is just undeniably like the peak of craft and filmmaking power for this generation of, I mean, like, we're Villeneuve heads. He would be in, you know, the top of my list for like the current directors making movies that are most important to me and that I think are the best. But, you know, Nolan is like a defining filmmaker of this stretch of time the last couple decades. And, you know, Oppenheimer and The Odyssey are adaptations, but like, so are the Batman films. You know, and I think, like, thinking about the Batman movies and the Odyssey, not just as adaptations and, like, what is the Nolan spin on a story we're very familiar with, right? It's like, how does he put something that feels fresh and unique, but still, and this is, like, we talk a lot about Nolan magic tricks,

this is, I think, one of the really undeniable ones. It somehow, to your use the word innovative, like it feels fresh and new when it is also simultaneously inherently, this is part of his objective, trying to be universal, trying to root itself in the moment or in the place, but tell us something about humanity, the nature of existence, what is fixed and what is unchanging. And so there's no better text to do that with than the Odyssey, I think you could argue, because some of that is inside of the story. but some of it is just about the nature of adaptation.

How do myths move and evolve or stay rooted over time? And so, you know, I have enjoyed making a bit out of the response to the like modern language, dad, daddy, you know, in the trailers because it's been, I think, amusing to see like, you know, pining for a daddy become a meme and stuff. But actually sitting down to consume the movie, I, for me, and I think clearly for a lot of the critics and just moviegoers who have seen it so far, it worked. in a way that almost defies belief. Like, it is such a perfect modern lens

through which to assess the story. The end note, the role of, like, one man, the great man complex, as you noted, but also more broadly, how we think about civilization, how we think about destruction and despair, how we think about longing and yearning and home, but also what your decisions bring and unleash into the world.

You can't have the lessons that end this movie, filmmaker operating in this time, be divorced from the time in which they're made. It's just impossible, right? But also it feels like a rendering of the epic that is 3,000 years old. So it's just kind of amazing. And I think, yeah, like to the IMAX point, I mean, the visuals are, a lot of Nolan movies are beautiful. You know, we've enjoyed talking about the set pieces and the visuals as we've gone. They're gorgeous films. But like, this is just amazing to look at. I mean, it's just breathtaking. The score is a step. I really like going to see movies at the theater with my friends, but I do, as you know, sometimes like, push back a little bit against that you got to see it on the biggest screen possible. And I'm like, it's okay to watch a movie at home if you prefer. Like, that's fine. I'm like really doing that you got to go see it on the biggest screen possible with everyone I know. It just feels like it not only rewards that, but really kind of demands that. And so it's just like an astonishing, astonishing feat. There was like, I think, a 10-minute period of acclimating. to the cadence and rhythm and pace. And then once you have a feel for that, you're like, man, I just am buying in completely to this version of the text.

I will say for me, I love the whole thing. You know, the thing I bumped on on Oppenheimer, which we'll talk about eventually on the Oppenheimer bot, is the third act of Oppenheimer. A lot of people had an issue with the third act of Oppenheimer. And that's something I bump on and feel more warmly towards this last time I watched it. The third act of this movie is,

is where it just jumps into a higher level. So, like, when I was watching the first two hours of this movie, I was like, this is good. And then I won't, then the third hour hit, and I was like, this is literally a masterpiece. And so then when you come to that conclusion, then you get to rewatch it and you just sort of like, knowing that that's coming and sort of picking out the threads of the themes and the track that's being laid. I also just so grateful that we did this Nolan project because I was like, I remember, especially when we had like, some, you know, friends, I use that so, like, loosely for the award-winning author we had on here. But, like, you know, when Chris Ryan was on here and he was talking about, I think every Nolan movie is about getting home when we were talking about Dunkirk. Yeah.

And what that unlocked for me, not just about in my anticipation for The Odyssey, but just sort of like how I then, like, sort of tried to think about that idea and apply it to, like, all of Nolan's movies. That was, like, a fascinating insight from Chris. when Arf Kwong, Rebecca Kwon, like, came on and talked to us about the idea of the family, the nuclear family, and how she feels like all of Nolan's movies are about this, or at least his latter day movies and how this is like, in her defensive tenet, like, you know, what a beautiful sort of unironic, like, wholehearted and very human in a director that gets accused of being cold sometimes, like, theme that is. So to marry this idea of like all of Nolan's,

stories about trying to get home and all of Nolan's stories, or at least lately, have been about sort of the nuclear family, however you define it. And all the other observations that all of our pals who came on to talk about talked about. I just found that, I just felt like we had gone to school with like some of our smartest pals. And then like it really helped me feel all the way in on this, a movie that I was going to enjoy anyway, you know? Yeah, I agree. It's been such a treat to to spend the last year thinking about the work and seeing what feels kind of like a shared takeaway or response to a given movie and what feels like maybe more in the eye of the beholder or what observes over time again with the additional context of like how his overall

uvro has formed i it's that is the the um the bringing up what rebecca said about family like it makes me think too like not only is it interesting to compare this film nolan's version of the odyssey to the epic to the post it's the poem itself, but to other adaptations, I think, like, that's also where what did he choose to emphasize and lean into can be unlocked. So, like, I don't know, if you think of something like the return from a couple years ago, the Ray Fines movie where he shows his dick, so I'd recommend it for that alone. He's very important. That movie is a really different telling in a couple different respects, one of which is just, as the name indicates, it's focused on

when Odysseus gets back to Ithaca and that stretch of the story, that's the film. But one of the real, real differences that after you watch the Odyssey is, I would say almost like shocking to consider and confront is the way in which Telemachus receives Odysseus, right?

And the way that there can be a version of the story that is rooted in longing and desperation and then gratitude and awe and appreciation. And there's a version of the story, which, like, spoilers for the return, that's like, I don't know you, man. And where have you been? And look what happened to this place while you were gone.

And then... But I think it's a more realistic version of the story. Yeah, and there's, like, all sorts of permutations, you know, along the spectrum. That's part of what's interesting about seeing how the text is rendered across different versions. Or, you know, we already mentioned, like, oh brother, Ulysses, but this is a text that people port into, much like, you know, Pride and Prejudice is Bridgette Jones, right? The Odyssey, some of our great works, truly. The Odyssey is something where people can take the journey and the trials and port that into

stories where characters have different names or the trials, or maybe they don't. Maybe it's still Ulysses, right? And so that's interesting too. But yeah, like, I think the effort to get home and the relationship to family, undeniable. great man complex and the guilt that the great man carries, the culpability that the great man carries and the ability to show us that complexity in a way that feels really necessary, I think, right? Like to really interrogate what achievement looks like and means, but also, of course, memory, you know, deception, the idea of the disguise. We go back to like the very beginning of the film of the first film Nolan made, a mini film, right, following, which we had such a really kind of like transcendent experience, I think, watching for the first time and talking about and talking about what a blueprinted it clearly was for everything that he explored after. You know, this question of like not only just deception and disguise, but self-deception.

Yeah, who do you want to be and who do you think you can be? And then where does that lead you? Yeah, and who, and, you know, we'll talk about the sirens moment later. which to me was like the first mic drop of the movie and then we get to the later mic drop of the movie. But like this idea of like Odysseus defined in myth and legend and history as the man who was trying to get home. Yeah. And this idea of the sirens saying like you don't really want to go home. Right.

And why? And why would a man take so long to get home? You know, in this version, he's beset by this, that, and the other. and other virgins, he's just sort of like, I'll stay a year on Circe's Island. Why not? You know what I mean? Like, what is the shillying and the shelling? And also, let's just talk about The Odyssey for a second. This is Odysseus's account of why it took him 18 years to get home. And he's like, there was a witch and a cyclops. And all these hog goddesses main yet sex with them. And I don't know what to tell you why I'm 18 years late, Penelope. I'm so sorry. This is my story. But like, I was thinking of a memento so much. That's the idea of being like the arc, not being able to know yourself, but also the architect of your own, you know, a tragedy. Yes.

Right. And I think with Memento, the, for the comp, not only for the character and the story, but for us as an audience member, that Memento felt really crucial. Like, there's the memory, but the way that we, there is so much that is revealed to us about Leonard later. At the very end. Yeah. So that's, there's a real parallel. there. That is, I think, quite interesting. And, of course, also, that's a trying to return to your wife's story in addition to a memory story. So that's there. You know, insomnia, I think,

it gives us the memory. It gives us also kind of the haze. You know, could Al Pacino and Insomnia just be eating lotus flour instead of not sleeping because it's always sunny? Why not? He would have loved if Charlize had been there serving him lotus flour. Who wouldn't? I think we talked about the Batman stuff a little bit already. But that, you know, with Gotham, and we had such fun talking with Voss about Gotham as a character and Gotham is a really central aspect of the Nolan treatise in exploring Batman, but there's also the, like, the, of course, the Joker element and just like the dark mirrors that you not only have to contend with and face, but inspire.

But also, again, the way in which you're the architect of your own misery. Like, what did Bruce do in the first movie that comes back to haunt him in the third movie? Or how are the sins of Gotham itself, you know, the engine behind a lot of the story that happens in the Batman movie? Yes. The moral ambiguity of the central figure. I think an undeniable parallel with Batman, a hero to many, but a vigilante and one who at some point says, they're going to need this other guy instead. Can't be me.

I think it's interesting in terms of his complicated heroes, which is something that he's always been interested in. I think they're just getting diceier and dicier in a way that I enjoy. Like, I think if you take Robert Oppenheimer and Odysseus and put them up against, like, Cobb, who you're like, Cobb. Yeah. I have some questions for you, Cobb, about, like, limbo and Mal and all these things that happened. But, like, he looks like a Boy Scout compared to, like, you know, we broke the world. There is definitely something more, especially given how nonlinear Nolan's stories are,

thinking about that linear evolution in his work is really interesting. Yeah. Because you're right. There's something that is much more, this is kind of gnarly way to put it, but intimate about the transgressions in, like, the prestige or Inception. It is much more rooted inside of a person, a relationship, one show. Inception takes it into a like, what do you, what the world-building aspect is, of course, in the dreamscape.

So it's there a little bit, but I think you're right that the march towards something. Like, yeah, if you think of something like interstellar, which has so many tendrils in common with the Odyssey in terms of like a man's journey there and back again and all this sort of stuff like that. But despite his daughter's belief, like, what is his complete, like, he is a very, fairly, like, innocent in all of this, but also the world is dying. And why is the world dying? Because of the generations that came before his children's generations. And so as Christopher Nolan evolves as a parent and thinking about what is the world I am leaving behind for my children.

when you think about in Oppenheimer, in that sequence in Oppenheimer, when Robert is being cheered on by the audience and he has this vision of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and he sees a young woman's face feeling off. That's Nolan's own daughter that he put in the movie. And that's him reckoning with like, what have we left behind for our children? So thinking about Odysseus and Penelope selling off to the sunset, leaving Telemachus behind to rule Ithaca. But like, we broke the world. And now Telemic is inheriting that throne. I'm not going to be here. He's got to handle that, you know? And so Nolan is a sort of like, as I grow older and think about the legacy that I, that we, my generation, the world, humanity has left behind for these children that I have raised. How does that change his own feeling of complicity, guilt, you know, all that sort of. And like all of these characters are author inserts in many ways. And we can talk about that specifically for Odysseus. But so like how that Christopher Nolan author insert. changes as he grows older and his concerns grow more global, I think.

Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about an inception the way the kids are present as these, like, faceless. Yeah, faceless mirages and will they turn and when and what does it mean if they do? And you have the idea of building worlds and creating and forging, but also the losing your way in limbo and the capacity to just show. to the interstellar point, you know, the cost is so indeniable immediately when we start that film, the blight, the toll, what does it even mean for your kid to be able to, like, go to school, right? The other thing that's there, though, in addition to, like, the collapse of the world around us

and the lie, right, with Michael Keynes' character, and the quest, the trial, the mission, and then the desperation to get home is the question of how much time passes and who remembers. And I thought, I mean, that's certainly present, like, in terms of just the lesson. But I'm loath to bring up Tenant, but I think we also have to invoke it because that's like, you know, thinking about the idea of the future in the future generation in Interstellar and Tenant. you can't process Nolan's version of The Odyssey without thinking about those things. And I was just like really blown away by the end of the movie, like you said as well. I mean, I think the suitors, the bow, the axes, all of it which you know is coming, if you're familiar with the text. To be able to like maintain that level of suspense and execute at such a fever pitch that you're just riveted even if you kind of know the beats is amazing.

Louvre Gorensen's score. Holy shit, dude. We almost need a new word. It's like it's not even like score or, composition. It was like a fair role. It was like a cardiac event. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. That is what I was searching for. Exactly. But then to build into, in the closing sequence, the, oh my God, the horses, the Adam Bomb that you mentioned, Odysseus reckoning with his complicity, his role, this idea that the thing that other people worship you for, deify you for, the myth that will be told and passed along in a adapted over time is the source of your great shame and that you are aware. And you couldn't go home because you're carrying that guilt. But then also the note of like they won't remember.

You know, civilization is going to fault. What lesson is lost over time? Like they won't remember the writing. And this is like this is where, you know, the thinking about how the myth tracks on with actual history. I know. I didn't. I don't know that I, maybe I studied this in school and forgot it. But I went home and I was like, was there a dark ages after. And there was. And we'll talk about that a bit more at the end. The people from the sea are real, like, things from history. So, like, that's incredibly fascinating. But I think that, yeah, who's telling the story? Who will remember what? There is a moment. And did they remember the right lesson? Yeah. There's a moment in Homer where Odysseus hears the story of the horse, and he cries.

Yeah. There's like a, there's a kernel or two that's there to inspire Nolan to be like, what if? Right. Because there's also many other ways in which Odysseus is. like, yeah, I'm that guy. Yeah, I'm that man. That's what I did. But, like, I feel like if you were to make interstellar now, I feel like McConaughey's character would have been responsible for the time they lost on the ocean planet rather than it wasn't his fault.

It would have been something in his character flaw that delayed him for all of those years, right? Versus, like, earlier in his filmography, I think he was still sort of, like, interrogating, like, what's a hero, what's not a hero? And now when we get to Odysseus, it's like, you know, he shoots the bow at the Cyclops. You know what I mean? And in the text, it's a boast. It's a taunt.

Taunting the Cyclops on the way out and being like, it was me, Odysseus. This is where I live. This is my dad's name. So if you want to make a very specific curse and curse me and all my sailors, you can do that, right? So Odysseus is, even without the Trojan horse, the absolute architect of his own misery. inside of the Odyssey. And so to have that moment when Odysseus loosens the arrow at the Cyclops, they were freed. They were out.

They were done. And men are like, why did you do that? You know, and Nolan's like, how flawed of a man is my audience ready to look at? Like, Robert Oppenheimer. Again, not to step too much on our Oppenheimer pod, but Robin Oppenheimer, the womanizer, the liar, the guy who taunts Strauss in two different again, occasions like he's taunting a cyclops and is the architect of his own downfall, you know, and it's just sort of like, I just think it's really fascinating the way in which Nolan is sort of like able to lean more and more into the reality of these incredibly flawed people.

And can we still sort of be with them on their journey and still be like rooting for them while also being repulsed by the same time, you know? Yeah, I think so we'll circle back to this, but obviously there is a lot in the text about not only the unreliable narrator aspect of Odysseus that you noted, but like, he's a liar, he deceives. Those are the ability to operate as a tactician as like part of why Athena's like, you're my whole thing. Yeah.

So, you know, there's a lot of morally repugnant behavior in the text that obviously Nolan is heightening. We have the, I love the. shooting the bow in the eye example that you called out. There are so many moments in the movie where Odysseus is making such a clear in real time mistake and you're like, why? But it's so it's so much more interesting, right, to show us the full totality of a man. Your coop point is interesting because I think you're right. That would be a change. But I also think that the choice to go in the first place is a link, right? Like there's the hubris of thinking everything would go right,

that there would be no mistake along the way that you would be able to get back the promise to Murph. But also what other choice do I have? Right. And there's like that that's again the melding of like the heroic aspect. And I'm excited to talk more about what the word hero even means in these contexts. Right. But there's the heroic aspect of going and doing and trying and leading. Being a person who the people of your community would look to, right?

Odysseus being a general who Agamemnon requires, requires. to ultimately prevail. But that's the thing is like, both Coop and Odysseus could say, I had to go. I had no other choice. He says that to Penelope, right? And she's like, we could just leave. And she's like, we could just go. And then the tragedy, of course, if you work your whole way home, fearing whether you deserve

to make it, doubting whether you deserve to make it. And is that home even there anymore? Yeah, dreading the truth you have to face when you're there and the version of yourself that the people who you hope miss you and waited for you will see. And then you have to leave anyway. You have to go into exile anyway. So that's amazing. And then, yeah, you know, you started with Chris.

But the Dunkirk, not just the trying to get home part, but I was thinking about Dunkirk, I mean, ocean stuff, certainly just the sea. I mean, watching these men flail in the water to try to scramble onto the boat, you know. Still got to say, the achievement on that front and the Odyssey in Dunkirk top tier, can't hear a fucking thing in the tenant water sequence. And I never will be able to. Maybe they'll re-release that at some point. Were you looking for Harry Styles in the Trojan horse when it was underwater? I'm always, always. The stabbing through of the horse with the blade was just so the bullets punching through.

But even the water filling it? No, yes. This is not Dunkirk, but can I just say that like in terms of like cleverness, the sword stabs in and you wipe the blood off before the sword comes back out, silently wipe the blood off the sword before it comes back out. Amazing. Community in Dunkirk. What does a community do?

What can a community with sand? You know, that feels like a real parallel with Dunkirk. And then also, like, even in the height of some sort of monumental moment, like what is lost, either for the community or the individual. You know, that is certainly there. So, yeah, all of it. Literally all of it. What will you do next, Joe? I know.

It's a great question. Where do you go from here? Something that, like, our pal Jomi asked us before he started recording and something that Amanda said on the big pick episode was like, is this the most Nolan movie? And you and I both, like, we don't think so. But I think, yes, you can see the DNA of all these other movies and that. But also you can see the DNA of all those movies and all the other movies as well, like, as we've been tracking this last. And I think the response I would have is it can be the most Nolan movie depending on what you think the most Nolan characteristic is. Right.

Because there's a ton of options. And so, like, what do you weigh as the most crucial Nolan characteristic? You know what I mean? And if you talk to Rebecca as we did, she's like, Tenet is the most Nolan movie. If you talk to CR, perhaps, he's like Dunkirk is the most Nolan movie. You talked to Van, maybe it's Enderstellar. Like, I think... I still think it's Inception.

You know, you talk to Mallory Rubin, it's inception. I don't know that I have the answer. Maybe it's the prestige for me. And it's not just like... Following? But it's not just favorite. It's in terms of like most, it's like, what is the theme that Nolan is interested in that I'm most enchanted by? And where is that at the most at the forefront, you know?

Appel asked me who I thought had the best performance in the film after I saw it for the first time. and I told her I didn't really think it was that kind of, like, I didn't walk out of this movie being like, wow. Like when I walked out of Oppenheimer, I had my notes that I'm on record having my notes about Oppenheimer, but I was like Killiam Murphy. That is an undeniable, like, God-tier performance. I think Matt Damon is great in this movie and actually one of the best things that he's done in quite a long time. But I didn't walk out of this movie saying, wow, Matt Damon, you like blew my life away with this. I don't think maybe other than Samantha Morton, there's like a single. performer in this movie that I'm just like walking out. But I'm not mad about that because I've

since had this conversation with a number of other people. Because this is myth. Yeah. It's iconography. It's sort of like bigger than a human story. I think a lot of these characters don't behave in ways that humans behave and sometimes that's a criticism that I have of Nolan. But it works with a story here. So I didn't walk out saying like, oh, my God, what Anne Hathaway did with Penelope is Goddair versus like Ann Hathaway and Interstellar, I would say, is like, God tear. I think everyone was like good in this movie. I didn't walk away saying anyone was like miscast. Right. But I didn't walk away saying like Oscar for this person, Oscar for that person, Oscar for that person, which is fine. It doesn't matter. And if Matt Damon gets

I will say this, Matt Damon gets an Oscar for this, I will not be mad. I do think it will be more of a, he should Matt Damon have an acting Oscar? Yeah, it's weird that he doesn't have an acting Oscar, let's give him one. Right. Then, like, his actual performance in this film. Best director, best picture, though? Who's to say? It's a long year.

I wouldn't be upset about it. But it's a long year, and there's a lot of stuff still on the table to see. But, like, doomsday? In terms of, in terms of this idea of, like, this is a myth. Yeah. A face, a fleet, a trick, a war. What do you think about this? Like, what do you think on the performance front?

And does it matter at the thing? the end of the day, whether or not there is, like, a performance in this movie that, that blew you away. Yeah. That's an interesting question. I thought that the, I think I agree. I think the performances are all really impressive and strong and everybody did the thing they needed to do. I think Tom Holland's a little weak, but I also think Telemachus is a weak character, so, like, by design, a weak character, but also just, like, kind of a... Yeah, his was, I think, the performance that I'm curious if you had this experience, improve the most for me across viewings.

There are moments where he gets to cry. Yeah. He's quite good at that. He's a good crier. Yeah. And I had a better grasp of Telemachus being like so beta in the closing, you know, then I did the first time I went through. But yeah, if I had to pick one.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Slightly weak spot. I thought Damon was great. In the moments where it almost feels like we, the collective, and the film, the ensemble, the wall has just vanished because I'm like, that's like, that's goodwill hunting, like, sarcasm breaking through us. How do you like the Maples was like present and accounted for in this?

Yeah. But like, kind of in a way that. worked for me actually you know there's a the charm there that is a necessary counterweight to some of the mistakes and decisions that we see i think do you talk to ants uh in the in the cyclops scene and also i think we're past that that that was the one that was just like that was really the there is it's will hunting yeah exactly it's a guy from boston i'm fine with it yeah um my favorite performance i think by a comfortable margin was was Pattinson. Okay. I thought he was like amazing. I thought he was just incredible. I really,

really loved him and I thought that what he was presenting not only in the portrayal, but through the character, was like really necessary. I mean, we're going to talk about the Zeus's law, the guest rights aspect, and obviously the suitors do not care for Zeus's law. Yeah, that's, we really need him to be a piece of shit in that respect and all of them to be pieces of shit. But like, I think he's just handed some really tough stuff when he's just like, the spears, the spears, the shields, the shields. I was just like, so I love that because he's so, his cowardice in that moment is just so undeniable. And he has gone through this, you know, very intentional play acting theater of like, she has made her point. None of us can live up to the man.

None of us are Odysseus. Right. And it's like then to get to watch the undeniable truth of that, which we have no reason to doubt at point from either of them, but I just thought was so satisfying. And obviously the moment when Odysseus thrusts his blade up through and a very like thronesian, you know, slow, I'm going to make you, yeah, feel. Yeah, give him back his shame. That was great. So I thought he was just wonderful. Yeah, this is, maybe it's just because I recently saw the drama and I'm just like, that's the Patinson. I prefer more to this Patinson. But he's, he's good in the movie. But I think

the thing they did with Antinous that I thought was the most interesting was the flashes to him on the hunt with Odysseus when he was younger and the very sharp-jawed young man that they cast to clearly play young Robert Pattinson, young Antinous. And to watch him like look worshipfully at Odysseus as a youth, I thought was like a really beautiful moment. Yeah. And then to like have the clarity of everything that could have been possible. But obviously like also there's the choice in real time. But then the, you know, the. Oh, wow. That great man, we would have. I would have followed that great man. So I thought that was all really good and really satisfying. I think more broadly to your point about the kind of nature of the performances, like the quality of the performances and the nature of the speech and how it's conveyed to us. You know, you're going to talk in a few minutes a bit more about the variance across the different translations of the text and what is consistent and what moves time to time. but in, I think the one that probably most people podcasting about the movie and maybe most people who have seen the movie revisited is the Emily Wilson translation. And one of the early aspects of the whole thing's obviously great, but the introduction is talk about like a work of scholarship, right? And just being able to like learn from that and see the consideration that went into the translation, but also this question of kind of like what evolves and changes over time. The discussion of the language.

The language contains a, quote, the language contains a strange mixture of words from different periods of time and from Greek dialects associated with different regions. A handful of words in Homer were incomprehensible to Greeks of the classical period in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. The syntax is relatively simple, but the words and phrases in these combinations are unlike the way that anybody ever actually spoke. The style is from a modern perspective, strange. It's full of repetitions, redundancies, and formulaic expressions. These marks the poem's debt to a long tradition of storytelling and suggests that we are in a world that is at least partly continuous with a distant, half-forgotten past. I think that in this translation, but then also in Nolan's film, there is simultaneously a channeling and centering of that. Listening to the performances feels like that, right?

And also then a deliberate, like, and where will we tweak and change that so that this is maybe more something that a contemporary audience can more easily receive, that I think is just really brilliant. And something that Wilson talks about in her introduction and is part of why this translation of The Odyssey was such a smash-o-o-o. Is she has made the language more without sacrificing, I think, an inch of scholarship. She has made the language even more approachable for people reading the story. It's, you know, this version didn't exist when I studied it in school. It's not, you know, we read the Fitzgerald version, I believe. I couldn't remember what we were at in school. Maybe it was that.

Fagels or Fitzgerald, I think, are the two other main, you know, but that language is much flowery in a way that I really enjoy, but then I also really enjoy, you know, this version she did. There's like a recent translation of Beowulf that is, like, again, in like much more plain spoken language. You know, so this sort of like trend of, again, not sacrificing scholarship. But like, how can we translate in a way that people can understand? Yeah. Should we go to the deep dive? Let's do it.

Okay, as Rebecca pointed out when she was on the Tenet podcast, the tagline for this movie is Defy the Gods. And she talked about sort of what she anticipated that might mean. I'm calling the section really defying the gods. And it has to do with the lack of gods in this story and sort of like what we think Nolan is getting at here. So like in his New Yorker review of the film, Richard Brody, the goat, really got hung up. up on this aspect of the film. If anyone's going to be contrarian about The Odyssey, is probably going to be Richard Brody. Shut out, my guy.

Always. But to misquote Jurassic Park, now eventually you do plan to have Greek gods in your Greek God's story, right? So like this is, okay, so this is, I've been sort of like trying to talk to people about this, about sort of like the level of gods

in this version of the Odyssey. And some people are like, well, I mean, there's supernatural stuff. I was like, yeah, of course there is. There's cyclopsies here. There's witches here. You know, there's like a giant whirlpole, like, you know, who's, who's a lady, you know, like there's the supernatural is here. The opening crawl says an age of apparent magic, though, which I think is really interesting language.

Homer's Odyssey is absolutely teeming with godly interference. Of course talk about Athena, but like Zeus and Hermes and Poseidon and all, like Hermes is flitin hither and thither inside of the story. The gods show up. They are characters inside of the story. story. And so Nolan decides, we're not going to do that. I'm going to say Zendaya is playing Athena, right? But, you know, and Nolan may say otherwise, but I do think there is like a definition of this film where you could say, is that actually Athena at all? And is that interesting? So like, there's this runner in the film of Telemica saying you have wise eyes, Athena's eyes to a number of

characters, right? One of whom is Mentor, the man who's training him. Yes. Which is one of the guises that Athena takes on in the text. She disguises herself as mentor. In this version, that is a human man who dies a human death

and Odysseus is like he is a human. And when Mentor dies, he sees Odysseus's face with this moment of just sort of like shock and recognition and sort of like glad home-go. The way that a lot of his vassals look at him when they realize who it is, You know what I mean?

So, like, that is a human, that guise of Athena in the text is in this film a human person. And Odysseus says to Telemachus, of course, don't look for gods and men, you'll just be disappointed. And so when it is revealed at the end of the film, the first time I saw it through, when it was revealed at the end of the film, that the shape that Athena, as we understand are in the film, has taken the whole time, is this slain Trojan priestess who, who, you know, is the face of innocence loss at the Trojan war. And so, and as Odysseus is remembering and sort of like exercising the demons of that moment as he is sort of recollecting the honest telling of what happened there, then she vanishes. So there's an interpretation of this movie where every time we see Zendaya, that is Athena, who much like Athena in the text, is guiding her favorite guy home, challenging him sometimes, saying, don't you recognize Ithaca? You know, like there are moments that are like very Athena in the text, very Athena in the movie. Or, you know, and shout out Christopher Nolan for adding a dead girl to this movie where there is none. Had to have it.

Great. Or is this a ghost that's haunting Odysseus on his way home? And are there actually no gods in this movie? And is that an interesting story to tell of just sort of like apparent, it's either Poseidon's fault that they didn't get home. and Poseidon is, like, definitely controlling the winds? Or that's what the men believe, but is there something else going on? What is your preferred interpretation, and what do you think is interesting about that potential ambiguity? So, first of all, let me say, I love thinking about the Greek gods.

We love Greek myth. I haven't mentioned, managed to mention Wishbone before Percy Jackson. But, you know, this is like another example of a modern text that asks, like, what does it mean to have that presence in your life? Right. When I had the pleasure of going to Greece in, well, last fall. And one of the things that I was like, you know what, this is really cheesy and real like basic bitch tourist stuff, but I have to buy a copy of The Odyssey while I'm here. Hell yeah. And so I bought one in Santorini and got the little stamp from the bookstore. that was fun. And it's like, I think, a real, like, starter kit translation of it. It's actually, like, written in, like, prose instead of written as a poem, which is interesting. But I opened it, and in it I found the postcard that I had gotten you in Athens and then forgotten to give you. And so I would just like to give it to you now. This is from Athens.

This is from the trip to Greece. It felt like the right moment to give it to you. And it is, in fact, a cat. And I think a very godly one. We love a cat. Can I just say that Rob Mahoney saw this movie yesterday. He texted me and he was like, we're in a current like cat person, dog person battle in our friendship. And he was like, got to say, great dog movie. We'll talk about that. He's like, I don't think a cat would have done that. I was like, my cat would have slit Antenius's throat. Those suitors would be absolute jerky if my cat had been. Anyway, shout out cats. You know, I'm obviously a cat enthusiast, but shout out Argos now and always. Also love a dog. Love a dog.

It doesn't have to be either or. Rob decided to make it either. No, no, why not both? Let's love all of the animals, including the cattle that they, you know, were warned not to kill and eat. And then they did, and that gets back to your question. Because I think that there are many texts and many stories, including the oral tradition told, but then also written, right? And for us now, something we can hold in our hands and read version of The Odyssey, where, as you know, the gods are present, not only in the guises that they wear, but in the omens that they send

in a way that feel really, like, very early in, you know, one of the first three books in the Talanaki, when Zeus sends the Eagles, you're like, all right, well, pretty hard to, like, not as a reader interpret that, but also not to see how the suitors are. interpreting that and everybody in Ithaca is interpreting that. So I think that what Nolan chose to do here is, I think, appropriate for his version of the story and more interesting for a filmmaker who is very, very focused on the decisions people make. If I love stories that involve Zeus and Hermes, that's great. But if we have Zeus and Hermes in two out of every five scenes. It's just a radically, radically different story than the one we got. And I think a story like

this, where Odysseus and his men are in very different places about like the wrath of Poseidon in response to something as like literal as you, that polyphemus is Poseidus is Poseidus his dad. So this is going to be a problem, right? But also just more broadly, even the initial, you know, you have the post-Troy the reckoning to come, but just opposed Troy Huber. So maybe we'll see some of the world will go this way instead. And like, what are the seas like? The wind that draws you in, the wind that sends you away. I think there are plenty of subtle things in the film where the gods are still present,

even though they're not walking around. And that feels like the right note to hit because then it's about the characters perceiving and processing the omens and deciding whether to let that determine their fate. So it ends up becoming a story, just as the original text is, but in a way here that feels very much in the minds and hands of the human beings about whether you accept your fate or you try to shape it and change it. That's just, I think, a more interesting movie in Christopher Nolan's hands given what he is interested in assessing about human nature and civilization.

What's your interpretation of Athena as she is represented here? Like, do you, again, I do think it's up to the viewer. Do you think that that's Athena or? Yeah, I think so. I don't mind the alternate interpretation that he's like haunted by the spectrum. I think he is haunted by the spectra. I think the fact that she takes the shape of the slain priestess of the temple kind of makes that part of it undeniable. But that given the tie between Athena and Odysseus and the text, I think it's, you know, the chosen fave for his ability to lie to lie to deceive and outwit, outplay outlast everyone. That should be one of the themes for Survivor season is Athena, Athena and Odysseus, just the Odyssey. I mean, they're all the Odyssey in a way, aren't they? Yeah, they really are. So, you know, I think, and in general, I just really loved, that was an interesting, and there's a lot overall of like, oh, this person is actually in like 47 seconds of this movie stuff with the movie.

Real Doom part one, Zendaya participation here. Yeah, and, you know, I mean, Lepeda has five scenes. Barely any screen time, you know, dynamite as always. but I thought what Zendaya did in those scenes. Oh, she's fantastic. Was amazing. And not only the performance, but what, you know,

what is written into the script for Athena to express to Odysseus. And it felt to me, like, in miniature, encapsulating the choice to have the gods be less present, but to convey the thing they needed to convey, which is, like, people are like, what don't you understand about the wind? And, you know, the things around you, the elemental nature.

Who doesn't understand thunder? The call and response, you know, when he's questioning. So, so, like, here's the next part of this, which is, which you've already touched on a bit, but this idea of, like, defy the gods, accept your fate, this sort of push and pull, right? That, like, when Odysseus is talking to his men who are believers. And it seems like Odysseus comes out of, perhaps before the war, but comes out of the war, despite having Athena right by his side, as, like, maybe kind of not as much of a believer, because when they leave Circe's island, he says,

who gave Sersi Her power is your gods. That's what he says to his men, right? When he's asking Athena about the inscrutable nature of the gods, how can we understand this, that, or the other thing? And she says, who doesn't understand Thunder? And other time, she says other things. And a call and response that just, like, feels like a really beautiful, like, nod to the verse

of just sort of like this idea of, like, repeated phrases and stuff like that. When Eurelicus, shout out Hamesh Patel, who has a shit ton of screen time in this movie. Really, really, really wonderful, as always. Um, it is his final soggy moments begs Odysseus to pray to Poseidon, right? You can barely hear him, but that's what he's saying. Pray to Poseid and all the sort of stuff like that. And Calypso says, you're a man who needs to control his fate. Give yourself to Poseidon. Give up the fight. Give up control and live. And then he like puts himself on that little raft and is like, okay, I give myself up to the gods. Right. What's your understanding of, so is our, is, is your understanding then that Odysseus walks out of the Trojan war?

like it's because you will not accept his fate. And what do you understand the fate that he's denying is? That he's the only one who makes it home, that his men won't survive. Like when it's like, give yourself up to your fate, what is the fate that he is avoiding? So I think that on the one hand, I don't know that we have enough of his earlier life given to us to say with confidence what his relationship to the gods was. previously. However, I think we get glimpses that maybe guide us toward a read that he was always a like skeptic. Maybe I'll decide what makes the most sense here. The lots. You know, there's a king of Ithaca. There is a king of someplace in this time who does not allow the changing of the

because the gods have deemed it so, right? And we not only see what we see, but we hear later the discussions of, like, Odysseus, while the judgment will be rendered so satisfyingly later, was also a character who understood a father's shame, right? And so he is thinking about all of these very human concerns. However, while I think that is there as maybe a colonel, something that could be heightened by the experience, I do think it was heightened by the experience and that we are presented with a character across the trials and the journey, the effort to return home, and then the return itself,

who not only has seen things, has witnessed things, and the way that the Trojan horse sequence is given to us in many parts, through many narrators and many eyes and many different stages of clarity, was so gobsmacking in its execution. I'm just like, man, no one is really the goat. Like, there's maybe no part of the movie that people are more familiar with.

There's a story that people are more familiar with that. And I was like, this feels new. That's nuts. How does it feel new? It's just crazy. Not just a character who has witnessed this atrocity and what people and men are capable of, right? And then we'll build toward in the future of his timeline. Circe saying, like, oh, they became what they always were.

Pigs, right? Like the beast inside of man. Look on your men. Look on your men. Know your men. there's all of that, but there's also his own shame and guilt and culpability. And so there's, I think, a little, there's an interesting read of like the question of, well, wait, if I'm your favorite, but this is what I'm capable of, then what are you about?

You know, that's interesting to think about. I think also thinking about Odysseus as someone grappling, just like as a soldier grappling with PTSD and what, like, post-war trauma does to people's faith in whatever deity it might be. You know, and can you walk out of seeing the horrors of war believing in any kind of God or gods? Right. Yeah, there's a shattering, a shaking of something, right? Of a foundation of civilization, but also of that faith and the structures and ways that people live their lives, then around the idea of faith. I think it's also like because we get, you know, we haven't, perhaps not shockingly, women are very rarely welcome on this podcast.

Talk to much about Penelope yet. that's the, you know, we do have the, the, the tripod of this family. We have Odysseus, we have Telemachus, and we have Penelope. And there are versions of this for all of them. But Telemachus is presented as, and this is more about like generations and innocence. But he, as you noted, is the one who's like, wise eyes and Thina's eyes, like looking for signs of the gods. The fact that his belief has not been broken and chattered, despite, you know, the suitors and the intervention of the suitors and what is happening to Ithaca. Privilege of not having gone to war.

Yeah, exactly. There are plenty of bad things around him, but nothing like what his father has confronted that has stripped him of his ability to believe. I think an interesting thing that you really watch Emily Wilson to grapple with in her translation is she's like, Telemachus is supposed to be like 20. Yeah. Why is he sometimes behaving like he's 12? You know?

She's just sort of like, what is happening here? All right. Let's talk about Penelope a little bit as we talk about a couple concepts, very Greek concepts inside of this story. So I'm calling it a crash course in Greek. First one is polytropus. This is the very first adjective that Homer uses to define Odysseus in the opening lines, and it's proven very difficult for modern translators to properly pin down. It literally means the man of many turns, polytropos, many turns.

And so some people interpreted it as like multidimensional, others adaptable, but some interpret it to mean that Odysseus was a liar, a fabulous, a teller of tales. He's all those things. And his cunning, as you mentioned, his wily deceptions are like the core part of his character. This idea of like Odysseus, the man who thought of the Trojan horse, the great lie. Like this is who he is. Here's a couple translations to convey this idea, right? Emily Wilson says, opens her translation with, tell me about a complicated.

man. Mews tell me how he wandered and was lost when he wrecked the holy town of Troy. Fagel says, sing to me of the man, Mews, the man of twists and turns. It's not complicated, but twists and turns, driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hollow heights of Troy. And Fitzgerald says, sing and me, muse, and through me tell the story of that man, skilled in all ways of contending. The wanderer, harried for years on the unend, after he plunded the stronghold on the proud height of Troy. love about these three different complicated, twist and turns, skilled in a way, in all ways of contending, those three sort of different interpretations of polytropas. Inside all of this,

we also get wrecked, plundered, plundered. Like there is no ambiguity that when he sets out on his journey in the first sentence of this story, he is leaving a great act of violence that he has done. wrecked, plundered, not conquered, not, you know, not, you know, Hail, Hail the Conquering Hero, not, not won a victory, not like whatever. It's like, they destroyed Troy. And that is something that I think is interesting from the very beginning, no matter how you interpret Homer, Odysseus is a man with blood on his hands as soon as he starts this story. And so I do think it's interesting to think about like what version of this polytropis idea, what version of this man is Nolan most interested in. Sinan, we hear Sinan say, you lied to everyone, did you

have to lie to me? Yeah. I thought Elia Page is really good in this role. Serce calls him a liar, right? Uralicus, you knew and you didn't tell us about skill and cryptis, right? Right. And the Trojan horse is, of course, the lie to end all lies. And then, of course, there's, Odysseus lying to himself. We'll talk about that more when we get to the sirens. Nolan has described him as, quote, an amazing strategist and a very wily person. That's how he describes Odysseus. But I love that he chooses to open the story. As you mentioned, and we'll talk about it again and again as we talk about sort of these like who's telling the story at any given point. But we open the story. Not with Penelope and Telemachus, not with Odysseus on Calypso's Island, not this and the other. We open with. Odysseus' first victim And his first lie, the horse.

Like these crimes of Odysseus are right here at the very beginning of the story. But that is complicated by this idea of like we watch Odysseus try to save his men again and again. We watch in the Cyclops sequence, he gets out of the cave and he goes back into the cave to try to rescue his men. So we're not... Right. This isn't a villain. No. What is a villain and what is a hero?

and this is when you mentioned you want to talk about this idea of the definition of a hero as it pertains to this era of storytelling. Madeline Miller, who wrote the incredible book, Song of Achilles and Circe, both of which I just think are absolute fucking masterpieces. Gave this great interview to the New York Times book podcast talking about the idea of a hero in ancient stories is not always and often not a virtuous person. Hero means warrior. Yeah. Someone who's real good at fighting, but not a noble person of fine moral character. So what do you want to explore about this idea of, like, hero, and this shading of Odysseus as liar, as storyteller, as hero, as villain inside of this version of the story? I think some of this is a little, for me, feels hard to separate from what we'll hit next.

but while I don't tend to spend much time reading the comments online, as you know, I was very struck by on the different translation fronts and on the New York Times front. A.O. Scott, there was an Instagram reel. I'm sure it was in other forms as well. I saw it on Instagram. A very interesting examination of the language across translations. And I was like, oh, cool, this is interesting. Out of curiosity, took a look at the comments. You know, who knows how the algorithm works and what gets moved to the, the top and stuff, but there were a lot of people who were like, it complicated, it's not right. That's not, you know, big mad at the Wilson translation. There's a lot of bros who do not like

the Wilson translation. Yes, right. Which I, there's a lot of like bad faith stuff behind that. But then there's also a little bit of a, or two other things. One, what maybe version of the story have you carried with you? By the way, Christopher Nolan loves the Wilson translation. Oh, I mean, that's the translation that like, yeah, leads to this movie. There's no question. And that's what I was going to say next is, like, I think that the, frankly, I was kind of one, even though, like, you know, people yelling on social media is not an indicator of the world. Like, I think there are, I was like, I wonder if people are going to be, like, really mad about some of the equivalents in the movie, too, actually. So I've been surprised at the, not surprised because the film is so magnificent that the response has been so euphoric, but, like, wondering if there would be a little current of, like, this is not, like, the reading of the text that I would choose to. Well, what I love about you is that you don't go on Twitter, and that is very important to me.

Is that happening on Twitter right now? Well, Twitter about this movie has, like, lost their entire lives. I can't look at Twitter. And also, Chris Renolin's like, I don't pay attention to that. And I, you know, I haven't, well, no, I have increasingly been like, this is, this opinion is not interesting or worthwhile. Oh, I thought all of the, like, you know, in the run up to the movie, all the, like, oh, you know, the casting and this is just obviously, like, nonsense. Absolutely. But what I'm saying is, like, those people were bots.

or whatever they maybe, are like in the comments. Like I just tweeted something yesterday about like how Troy is a bad movie because it is. That's not a good film. That's a bad movie. And I like walked away for four hours and I came back and they were like the MAGA people were being mad about it. Because they have decided that like Troy is the like good white person like storytelling here. And then this because we've got like a woman of color is Helen or like a trans man is sent on that this is a problem. Anyway.

Troy is quite a poor film. That's garbage. Quite a poor film. So I don't mean any of the like bad faith nonsense that people spew, but more like the question of the complicated portrait of Odysseus. How would people in a modern context receive that? I've been sort of curious to see how people feel about it. It seems like it's sitting quite well initially. I think that the on the hero front and what do we mean and the way that we in a modern context talk about heroism and virtue and

morality and think of these things as deeply entwined. You know, again, it does make me think of, like, Percy in that passage from the end of the first book that I was like, where is this line at the end of the first season? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, you know, like, heroes' fate is never happy, which is also kind of in this context, and one of the Wilson passages in the intro, you know, sums it up well, being a hero. Heros, which in archaic Greek suggests a warrior and does not imply virtues, connected to the

other point you're making, is different from being a pirate. to the plunder point, in that it is a much more positive term, which a man can proudly apply to himself. Nobody in Homer admits to being a pirate. This is right on the heels of outlining all of, like, what is different about this actually? Right. Different acts of, in essence. I mean, the disson men plunder immediately. They leave Troy.

They've got a lot of, in the text, they've got a lot of charges, they've got a lot of slaves on board. They've got a lot of women that they kidnapped and all that sort of stuff like that. And then immediately they start to plunder the various towns on their way. With a quickness instantaneously. Some of it in the story is a question of intention and need, right? Not that whatever the read or answer to that is like absolves the act itself. But, okay, we have run out. We have run out of provisions.

We must seek food. So the question of how do you go about seeking that food? Certainly, right? So some of that is embedded into the text for us to think about both as we watch it. and as we read it. But I think the most rewarding version of that, in terms of the portrait of Odysseus to the prompts, comes at the end, actually.

Like, obviously it's president of all of the trials. I think the polyphemous cyclopsine that you noted is a great example. And, like, you know, the kind of pettiness of what he does. You won. You got out. Not all your men did. Keep going. Yeah.

You know, the literal stick in the eye and then the arrow in the eye, all of it. And, you know, I think we end up feeling like pity for Palafemus, which is like, pretty amazing thing to watch. But at the end, and this is why I said I thought for me a little hard to separate from what we hit next, maybe this can transition us into it. Yeah. There's a reading of what Odysseus does at the end. And this is, of course, accounted for in the story to be clear, by now I go and.

went to exile, right? That is a violation of guest right, of Zeus's law. Again, this is embedded clearly into the text. This is present for us. The characters are talking about it and discussing and thinking of it. But this story kind of asks us to consider, well, what is the difference? Between the suitors who overstay their welcome and insist in demand on something that they have no right to and that Penelope does not want.

There's no denying that what they are doing and what they represent is foul and wrong. kicking Argos, which like, horrific to watch. The kicking Ligua Zamo. Awful. Don't kick Ligizamo. You know, and of course, the initial beggar we see at the beginning and the text, to your point, that's one of the Athena in the guise of a beggar moments. But it primes us in the film, certainly and in the text for Odysseus, of course,

returning home in the guise of a beggar. How will he be received? How will Penelope receive him? The washing of the fee, right? My husband wanted us to receive guests, this question of the openness and kindness to other people. So Penelope, Telemachus, Odysseus, Ithaca, their home is presented to us as a place of welcome and acceptance that the suitors have worked and leveraged for their gain at great cost, right? What version of that is Odysseus and are Odysseus's men inflicting on the places they visit and they travel

upon? And then what does he do that violates some sort of sacred thing, even though we want him to do it And are glad that he does. So Zinia is the name is the Greek word for this idea of like Zeus's law in Nolan's version, guest rights in Game of Thrones if you prefer. Zenos means host, it means a lot of things, but it means host, stranger, friend, foreigner. We get xenophobic, xenophobic from that. Basically, I agree to feed and house you. You agree to do me no harm during your stay.

And like Wilson talks about this in our intro, but like, and Jeff Wright in the Odyssey podcast spent like an episode talking about it. But this idea of like in this time when you're traveling around the world, you can't stay at a hotel. You know, you have to depend on the kindness of strangers. And so there is a social contract inside of this, which is sort of like, I welcome you, I feed you and house you. You do me no harm while you're here. Wilson also talks about how it is like a sort of geopolitical way of spreading the Greek. It wasn't the Greek empire at that point, but like, you know, this culture around the world.

This is at the core of almost every single one of the, you call them trials, but adventures trials, how we prefer to call it, that Odysseus's men undertake in the book, Polyphemus violates Zinia by like literally eating these men. He does not feed them. He eats up on them. Yes. There's a lot of eating, feeding and consuming inside of this story, like, you know, the suitors in there and their voracious appetite at Penelope's table or Polyphema's eating or Circe and her meal, et cetera, et cetera. But like, what is so interesting to your point about the story is that, you know, in a black and white version of these stories, whoever violates Zania, this core idea of the social contract, is a monster. But Odysseus and his men constantly violate Zinia.

Right. When they show up and they plunder and they take. You know, the version in this story is when his men are sort of at their first stop. And there is that the huts are burning behind them, right? Right. And there are these men being like, they're like, oh, we're covering in terror. We're not the people from that. We're Greeks.

We're, no. You know, but they're taking because they can. And this whole thing starts Paris, our guy, the Prince Paris, Orlando Bloom and the Troy movie who prefer, violates Zinia in the very first place by going into Mennelius' house and taking his wife. Guess what?

You're not supposed to do that. You show up someone feeds you and houses you. You're not supposed to take his wife. But that's what Paris does. So it's a huge Zinia violation that starts the Trojan War. And then we get the bookend. And then, you know, the book, well, the Trojan horse is that what we mean, the bookend of the war.

Yes, being this violation of Zania, which is what Odysseus is like, we broke the world. Like, this is the hugest violation is under the guise of the gods. Yes, exactly. A gift for Athena. To be brought into your community, into your home. And then destroy. And for the trick to rely upon the understanding, the acknowledgement, the recognition, the inevitability, that it would be received as such, that it would be brought in.

To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire. She's so so good. And doing this transgression of, you know, all we hold dear as people and safety in the world just destroyed the way that we as people move through the world. Heroin. Guess what it's great. Guess what this movie rules. Anything else you want to say about Zinia, I guess writes Zeus's law while we're here? I think we covered it.

I think we covered it. Again, very thornsy. And as you said, you know, it's... Calypso. Yeah. A very hospitable host. Seemed great, though. We have a very amusing text thread going with one of our colleagues who shall remain nameless. Are we not going to nameless? It's like, that seemed critical thinking is going. Yeah, who do we work on his take would have been, why go home? Actually, that's set up with Calypso. Seemed great. Not enough shade for my taste. I would not stay on that version of Calypso. Island. In the book, she lives in a lush, leafy paradise. I would stay there, perhaps forever,

but not on the boiling shore with no shade. Okay. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story, I apologize for the Hamilton reference there. As is the case in the text, this is a story that's chopped up and told out of order. What could be more Nolan than that? Couldn't dream of a more Nolan arrangement. We have several narrators here and layers of the story to uncover. So as you mention, we get the story of the Trojan horse told in three acts, essentially. We get the horse as experienced by Sinan, inside the horse as told by Menelaus, and then the horse on fire as were called by Odysseus. Yeah. It's masterpiece. This was really, really, really, really excellent. And for me, this is excellent no matter how you slice it. But for me, and you mentioned this,

this connection to like momentum inside of this, how the telling of the tale makes us complicit in the story, right? So when it's Menelaus's turn to tell the story of how they ninja sneak their way out of the belly of the horse, really impressed with the rope on the door apparatus, the silent descent from the belly of the horse. Is this the takeaway in the thing we should be focusing on? No, but is the craftsmanship excellent. I mean.

It is. But also I like that it looks like maybe it could be made from ships. a little. It does. Oh, I think the belly. No, no, no. I mean, I know that. Yeah.

The horse, the head part, I'm not sure. Yeah. But the belly is definitely like, you know, we took a ship. Yeah. No question. That's fantastic. Why no one in Troy saw them building the ship down there on the beach. I don't know.

Building the horse, but that's fine. Okay. When is Menelaus's turn and we get the exit from the horse and the desperate bid to open the gates. Lovig Gorins his score is giving us a cardiac of. event. We are, like, we're invested in Odysseus and we are desperate for the Greeks to get that damn gate open. And like, I just remember sitting there being like, oh, my God, like, the gears are turning forever and nothing is opening. And like, the men are coming and it's so intense. And you're like, oh, my God, will they get, you know they do? But like, will they get the gate open in time?

And oh, my God, they have to get the gate open in time. And, and then they do. And then in walks, fucking Darth Vader, Agamemnon, and, you know, we'll find out what happens after that. But just that vision. Boy, will we. Well, just that vision of Agamemnon is in itself, like, oh, fuck.

Oh, yeah. But still, we are rooting for Odysseus and his men to win in that moment. The guile, you know, the, you know, the cleverness of the trick. Yeah. And also, we'll talk about this a little bit more later on, but, like, the fact that all of the Trojans are masked, and so there are no until Zendaya and then, like,

a few other, you know, people we see milling about in, in the absolute calamity of, of the war itself, the battle itself, there are no human figures on the Trojan side of this story. Roseburn's not here. Yeah. Yeah, but like, you know, Paris isn't here. Prime isn't here. Hecuba isn't here. Like, none of these characters are here.

So it's just sort of like a faceless enemy. And then, you know, our guy John Bernthal, we care about him. Our guy Matt Damon, we care about him. And then we get to the third act and we're like, oh, my God, that gate that we were rooting for to open, this is the absolute decimation that it wrought. And inside of that Menelaus storytelling sequence, you know, the film itself constantly is asking you to interrogate who's telling this story, right? Menelaus talks about gossip of Odysseus. Some say, some say he's rich, some say he's poor, some say this, some say that, right? So who's telling the story?

Is it Travis Scott? Is it somebody else? Actually, I thought the Travis Scott stuff worked really well. I wore my Travis Scots today. One of my pairs of Travis Scott. Of course. AJ won Lowe's to, I quite agree. I thought that was super effective. But Helen's incredulity, righteous.

Vatury. You know what I mean? Like there's just a constant, like we hear Menalaisus version. Which he's telling for Odysseus' son so that he can think of his father as a hero or whatever. Just Frank Castle and Peter Parker? and then he's just cutting the story up there. Yeah. And let's not worry about the rape and desecration of Troy.

Right. Unsurprisingly, I thought the Barenthold was great. Pretty great. The Manila stuff was great. As I texted you in Van last week because Van said he rewatched Troy. So I was like, maybe I'll rewatch Troy. I haven't seen that in the minute. As I already told you, Adam and I somehow could not find a version other than the director's cut,

which is three hours and 16 minutes. Can't recommend it. We got an email from a listener this morning who saw my tweet about how the movie was trash. He's like, but have you watched the director's cut? It's very good. I'm not going to. Well, I have. Quite recently.

I see my time. But I texted you a man. I was like, I really forgot that like Menelaus is just gone in a jiffy in that version of it. It is bizarre. The Menelaus Telemachus stretch and, the text is such a fascinating insight into like all of the themes that you just outlined in these core Greek ideas. Zeus's law,

guessed, right, what is a visitor in your home entitled to? What do they receive? The conversation that they have, the exchange, they have about gifts. You know,

it's just, it's really interesting, but also the, uh, the tales that Menelaea shares of his own trials and his own journeys and struggles to get back for like a different version of a, different stretch of time, different places, but this idea that that unlocks, because we have this centrality of Odysseus, this mortal man at the center of this astonishing thing. And then you have

that Menelaus account of like, how many other people have some version of this? You know, that's really interesting. He's crying a lot in the poem. And I really liked that here we got more of like a, and that's great. He's got to kind of be pulled out of it, right? I really liked, this felt right here that he is very like, bombastic. Yeah, boastful. And then we cut to, like you said, sweet Tommy's cheeks, tears just rolling down. It's very powerful. One more accolade for Tom Holland, I will say, is that he tells the story of how they shot that scene and because of, you know, I don't know, I think the IMAX camera is like overheat after five minutes. or something like that. And so they had to, like, film his crying scenes first. Just they had to film it out of

order. So he didn't, like, get to cry responding to anything. He just had to, they're just like, go. And he crushed it. Amazing stuff. I, uh, yeah, the Helen, the turn of Helen's cheek. Oh, so that we can see the cracked face. The cracked, scarred face. She's got this, like, crack on her shoulder, too. Yeah. And it's so, it's so interesting because, like, there are ways in which the scarring is, you know, like, her eye is sort of, like, drooped. There are ways in which the scarring looks human. But there are also ways in which this guardian looks like a cracked statue. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I thought that the, I agree, I thought that the following of this, almost like I'm cheerleading for your dad, the daddy you didn't even know, moment was followed by the questioning of the righteous nature of this thing, very effective and powerful. I liked that we then got the additional beat of the bird hunt. Oh, I love the bird hunt. The next day, not only because we have the hunting parallel. and with Odysseus and thinking of those flashes to the earlier time. But the discussion of what is required and what is acceptable. You know, the guided. Yeah, exactly.

And the like horror of. Rusty's killed his own mom. Mom, which not every text has that detail. So like this deliberately puts that in there to sort of give us. Well, not every text has Clytemnestra being the one who. kills. Exactly. So to have that there as a a warped version of the Penelope Telemachus. Where could this go in a different version of this tale? Very effective. And the encouragement and the

nudging and the pushing to retake Ithaca and to do the thing that's necessary. And then to have Odysseus shield. The thing that he has finally been able to give his son is to this wrecked man who has seen his faith in the gods destroyed, who is reckoning in real time with the fact that he has, the thing that he has wrought into the world is the death of civilization itself, the breaking of Zeus's law, that he's like, I have one thing left to give still, and it's sparing you of having to do that thing.

Right. I mean, it's just like amazingly satisfied. Yeah. Keep your hands clean, because then all the relatives of the suitors will come after you. In Homer's text, the relatives do come after, and Telemachus and Odysseus kill all of them. And they kill all the women in the house who slept with the suitors and they kill a lot of people. No, I deal.

This story has like 20 endings. You're like, is it done yet? Is it over? Okay. Just rapid fire some other sort of like unreliable narrative stuff. And Tenuous's repeated lie wanting to go to Troy, I would have gone with him. A lie repeated a story retold. How many times do you repeat the lie until it becomes true, you know?

Sinan saying, in the flashback when Odysse's is like, why did it have to be you here with the horse? Yeah. And Sinan says, you know, tell my father how well I did, quote, feel free to add some stuff. Yeah. That got a chuckle. Oh, it was really funny. But like, the delivery was really funny. But like the thin line between later, Senator will be like, you're a liar.

Yeah. Yeah. That same character says, feel free to add some stuff. Yeah. So the thin line between a liar and an embellisher, like what's. you know, when is, when is it right, when is it wrong? Yeah. Penelope and Eumaeus and their memories of Odysseus.

What is, you know, what is accurate about what they're recalling about a beloved husband, a beloved master. Sure. And then Odysseus and Calypso having each told themselves stories to forget, to repress, to keep the peace and their eight-year idol, you like the lotus leaf. You liked it so much. You ate it so. But I love it. So. Glish.

So funny. Were you thinking? about Cobb and Mal and Limbo with Odysseus and Calypso on the island? No question. I mean... Thinking about Leonard Shelby.

I'm often thinking about Leonard Shelby, as you know. I also think that the... And on the on the... on the... On the Cop and Mal inception front, you mentioned the totem tie earlier.

But the pin, that also ends up unlocking something for us about truths and lies, right? This idea that, like, you know, Telemachus is like, don't lie. She's a way of knowing, right? I don't know what it is, and it's merely this. An accessory that Odysseus could have lost at any moment. And also, like, I'm sure someone else, like, someone else probably has a pin that, like, they wear of Athena that someone could have said, well, this person had a one of a kind.

Wild stuff. But it worked, right? And so this idea that something in a land of lies and deceptions and myth making and the tradition of telling stories and telling tales and the muse, right? saying news. How do you know what's true? What can anchor you in that truth? Fascinating, really interesting. I mean, I love the metatextual aspect of that in that, what was the Trojan War?

Yeah. We're not completely clear. You know, there's been like archaeological research into this, but it's just sort of like, our idea of the Trojan War comes mostly from these stories, you know. Stories that were passed down. via the oral tradition and then it's just sort of like was there ever a horse right I don't know um Argos the boy who waited a little doctor who reference for you um thank you thank you for that I just want to clear the decks for you you again I did hear you crying during this and I want to like reach across yasi who was sitting between us and like I really almost reached across yasi to hold your hand um but adam was right there

so presumably your husband hold your hand those cook yeah we were doing doing a lot of this to each other um You know, I won't talk about it for long because I can't do it without weeping, but it was just beautiful. Actually, I was sitting next to Bill the first time I saw the movie who's a big dog guy. And he turned to me and was like, Murph would wait for me, which I was crying and very sad, but didn't make me chuckle and also was very sweet. You and Bill who saw where Sean and I were sitting and we're like, no, we're not going to sit with you by. This is simply not where you can sit in an IMAX. In an IMAX. You're like, I'm not sitting here.

Bill's like, I'm going with Mallory. As Mallory goes, so goes my nation, said Bill Simmons. Okay. The Argos stuff is perfect, gut-ratching, beautiful, moving, touching, sad. I loved it. This was, I think, the most, like, other than the thematic richness and resonance of the very end, the most emotional, and this isn't just I'm a pet lover, like, on-brand stuff for me. I thought it was the pairing of the moment between Odysseus and Argos with Telemachus.

watching it. I was like, this is so good. Holy shit. Not a fan of the tossing of the other puppies over the cliff. That's a no for me. You may have some notes. That was tough. Yeah, we've got some notes for the swineherd.

But, you know, it tells us so much, right? Argos is like, he's a good boy. He's sweet. He's cute. He's wonderful. But it's like a skeleton key for unlocking whether we should root for a character or not. because how do the treaters behave? How do they treat him, the suitors?

They kick him. Screenwriting 101. Save the cat. Exactly. Save the cat. Odysseus saves that puppy. Don't kick the dog. Don't kick the dog.

And, you know, to see him out there with Odysseus on the hunt, you see the time that they did share, however brief it was. And then this idea that he has waited and waited and waited and lived so long to die in this final moment of the return, the ag, what that tells us about the agony of waiting, but also the need to wait and the willingness to wait and the ability to wait for someone you love was so beautiful. But then there's also the like, it's a touch. It's like a, he knows. It's the clarity, right? And that's why Tamalicus witnessing this is like, undeniably, this is my father. And they have already been through this. He doesn't mean an Athena pin. Exactly. And they've already been through this, this circumstance, this thing together at the temple.

but it's not until he sees Argos respond to Odysseus that he knows for sure. There's no question in a land of questions. Who is inhabiting another form? Who is walking around in a guy's who was trying to deceive or achieve something? It's like Argos knew that was his dad. It was just so sad and so good. It's beautiful. Really loved it.

Cute dog. Very cute. Very sad. Fuck those. Fuck those guys. When Cory Hawkins, who plays one of the suitors, who was particularly cruel to the dog, when he gets an arrow in the neck, like, our theater was just like erupted. All right, you mentioned disguises. Anyone can wear the mask.

It's fascinating mask work from the Batman Bain guy in this movie, right? So, like, for most of the film, as I mentioned, the Trojans are, like, heavily masks. We don't see their faces. It's only when Odysseus is recalling his sin that we see some soldiers without the mask. on and then we see other innocence and then of course we see Zendaya's beautiful face. Agamemnon,

this is a fascinating one to me. Okay, obviously this armor is an incredible piece of work on a lot of the posters that's sort of like golden vertebrae on the back of this incredible armor design. Again, real Vader energy from our guy Agamemnon.

But even when he arrives home as greeted, bath, anointed, we're mostly on the back of good old Benny Safdi's The curls It's only when he's killed by Clytemnestra And even then she's got her hand

Of her like part of his face It was really just like The top of his face And I had a bunch of people Asked me when we got out of the movie They were like, who played Agamemnon? And I'm like, well I just saw Oppenheimer So I'm here to tell you that's

Those are Benny Safte's eyebrows I've seen them recently Yeah What's your read on this On this cloaking of Agamemnon? It was almost I'm a Benny fan It was almost jarring to hear him.

I think he's quite a compelling performer. His performance in The Curse is one of the most bat-shit things I've ever seen. Quite excited to talk about him in Oppenheimer. When he talks, when he finally, because I was like, oh, they have decided to not have Agamemnon speak. Which I think would have been actually quite an interesting decision. It is discombobulating in the best possible way when he speaks in the Haiti sequence, which was, So good. Guess what?

This movie rules. Fucking amazing. The river of fire and you're like, oh, this is in the light. Incredible. Drinking the blood, very creepy. All of it. And the harrowing, you know, this isn't for their ears. Who is entitled to a prophecy and what do they do with that information, you know?

And it reminds me, I'll get back to Agamemnon a second. But to go back to what you were saying earlier with, you know, the sun god and the cattle. There's like a version of it in terms of how we process Odysse. his sense of self and morality where like he could say he's giving he's like well you wouldn't have you wouldn't have made that choice if I had told you and so I had to let you make the choice so that we could get through the path that like would allow us to get through there's a version of it where he can almost like justify it to himself as I gave you free will right so there's always the gods give us the exactly yeah there's always that layer there um the agamemnon

there's the cautionary tail aspect, right? The return home in disguise so that you do not suffer the same fate that I suffer. There's the character design I thought was incredible. So when we hear him talk, on the helmet front, the golden vertebrae that you noted, this is real to me like, now I did not have this response in real time,

but a lot of people did. It's a real like, let's all wait and see the movie reminder, I think. Oh, did people not like that poster? No. Oh, I missed it. There was so much like, What is this design? Oh, well, oh.

What is this? That's not how the armor should look. Like, all that. Sorry. I didn't see it directly off of that design, but like, oh, yeah, I saw all the costing complaints, the armor design complaints, and blah, blah. And I'm like, this is a myth. What are we doing?

Yeah, there's that, right? Just the kind of heightened quality of it. Yeah. But also the fact that it made him, to your Vader comp point, distinct among his army, very appropriate for that figure for that character. Do you think mentally is like, where's my sick armor? bro. I think Menelaus was exactly where he needed to be, which was... In the belly of the horse. Yeah, exactly. And talking about the piss and the shit, as he so

memorably did, recounting it at the feast. So when he talks, when Benny Safdi speaks, when Hekhamn speaks, and I'm like, that's just a dude. It's just a man in a can, you know? And it's so, it's so effective. Do you think that would have been even more? more so if we had seen him like with the helmet off in that sequence. I'm not trying to question Nolan. You're a perfect person and all of your choices are great. I like that you have the kind of grandeur and the enormity of the thing that you cloak yourself in to tell yourself and other people you're powerful. And you understand how it would work when the gates open and he is towering two feet over everyone around him. And they're like hovering, like they're floating forward. In a, in a

very, a visual that ends up kind of mirroring the shades chasing Odysseus and his men off the shores of Hades. I love that moment because, I don't know, maybe some people did a close watch of the trailer and they figured that out. But when I watched the trailer, I thought that was just like Odysseus leading his men on a charge. And when it's him running from his dead men, incredible. So good. Incredible. All right, the piggy men in their disguises, of course. Back in your disguises.

This was, dude. Okay. Can I just ask you a kind of dumb? film question. Literally, how did they do this? Make up. But how? Make up.

And so it's like an interesting, but how? It's an amazing way. I think there are a lot of, a lot of different aspects of the film where you could point to and say, but how? And then there's an answer. And that's, I think, one of the things about this that's so impressive. And Nolan is very proud of this as he should be, the practical aspect of his filmmaking. And like, and there's a ton of digital effects, and he'll talk about that too as well. Yes.

And, you know, the way that they managed to get the IMAX cameras on all of the places and things they need to be the use and the mirror. The actors had to look at. That was that shit. There's like a three or four minute little feature at. I think it might not, is it actually like on the IMAX YouTube channel or something? I might have been. I don't know. Or is it the I see.

I saw Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland talk about it in interviews. They had a little feature out about how they did the mirror thing. I watched that and I was like, how does this, how is this movie coherent? You couple that with knowing that, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the. film rail only runs for the three to five minutes like you said and like I don't know how they achieve this and then the practical the practical effects and the number of places where uh makeup or building a set and a structure in a physical location or a costume achieves a sense of uh texture and tactile quality and reality in a story that opens with apparent magic there's a ton of movies where

you have plenty of excuses to use CGI, the Odyssey is certainly one of them. Right. And the commitment to having the makeup pulled on their faces to give us the effect of transforming human into pig was fucking amazing. I can't wait to watch all the behind the scenes on this. Ton can be achieved with practical effects and makeup. I'm sure was assisted with digital. Like, I want to give credit to the digital artist who I'm sure helped clean stuff up. One of the, you know, we'll come back again to the witch, of course, we will.

But one of the things that I was, like, so fascinated by in that sequence was the, like, whatever sea, like, eel or whatever it is they were supposed to be eating that's, like, white sort of translucent thing that looked like a, that was, like, hard and looked like a tusk that they were, like, gobbling down. But, like, it was sort of, like, rigid and looked like a tusk before they became pigs. I thought that was incredible. Helen's cracked face that we already mentioned was this the face that launched thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Iliam. Shout out, Chris. from Marlowe. And then Odysseus, who shows up and claims Sinon's name. And we should say, Sinan is not a character that shows up in Homer's story, shows up in the Anian and a bunch of other versions. And in fact, like, Sin on the Liar is sort of like how he is repeated and remembered in Shakespeare and Dante and all these other things. And so, like, this depiction of Sinan is different.

But this is a character that Nolan plucked from other tellings of the tale to put in here, but like Odysseus taking on Sinon's name, Athena as the priestess, telemachus, and mentors various assumed identities and costume changes along their journeys. And then you mentioned this, the polyphemous sort of like, we feel for him. I love this evolution. Okay, to go back to the practical effect thing, you know, I saw this in the trailer. I was like, that's Bill Irwin, which is so excited because Bill Irwin, who we talked about when we did Interstellar, is this, like, incredible, you know, physical performer, if you've seen Legion or just like a number of his, like, like, live theater work in clowning and stuff like that. He's just like this incredible

physical performer has always been. And so to hire Bill Irwin to play the Cyclops and the incredible makeup job they did on the face with the like sideways eyes and the sideways nose, like, so good. But like the evolution, again, it's sort of like the story. The story of the horse in three parts to like meet polyphemus as like just this wordless monster who gobble, you know, we see just like chunks of guy come out of his mouth. Super gross. And then we like hear him talking. Yeah.

He speaks. Yeah. Right. And then later on the ship, that beast was the son of Poseidon. So peeling back the, the eventual humanizing. So similar to like the Trojan soldiers who are, who show up as these masked anonymous figures. Like when they first show up. in that very first scene.

Yeah. I was like, surely they're going to take those masks off. And those are going to be actors we know, right? Like, you know, surely, like, I just watched Oppenheimer. I knew every, like, where's Jack Quaid? I knew every single actor in Offen Island. Who's the Hugh Man of this sequence is. Dr. Heemann.

So, yeah, so doing that with the Cyclops as well, this sort of, like, you know, telling the story of this creature's humanity. No, does he go right into eating a disease as men? He sure does. Well, let me just throw this out there. Also, what's he going to do, not eat them? Would you reason with any? They're invaders in his home.

They're eating his cheese. They're eating his cheese. They're eating his cheese. That cheese looks delicious. I'm sure it was quite fresh and salty. I thought that the on the save the cat, don't kick the dog from it. Yeah. And have we seen him eat a couple of the men at this point?

Yeah. Have they had to do the math on how many are going to try to escape at once because they know some of them are going to get eaten? Do they know he needs one before bed? Yeah. A couple. Two bites of men. The sheep know to come in. They know to go out. He's tending them with care, his herd. And this, after he has been cruelly jabbed in the eye by a burning stick, burning piece of wood, before he's shot in the eye with an arrow. Sweet little, like, the nuzzling, you know, and again, the cleverness of Odysseus did they put the wheat, the grain. You think that was nuzzling? He's just feeling them. He's counting.

He's checking. sure that it's not dudes. But it's also, but it's also very sweet. It's like, very sweet sunfire moment. It's very sweet. He's like, he's checking about it's real been, trying to speak out of the cave. It's like real sheep detective stuff right there. You know, it's like reading to them at the end of the night. Oh my God. Hugh Jackman would kill in this movie. I finally saw that movie. Oh, so good. Delightful. Oh my God. I knew I would love it, but add when I watched it, it's, it's streaming now. Yeah. Geez, did I cry? Yeah. Oh. What a great movie.

Yeah. Amazing. Ooh, good script. Oh, the Telemachy. As you mentioned, the first four books of The Odyssey, it's about Telemachus, our guy. So Nolan's like, bet. Got it. All against Spider-Man.

What this serves to do, narratively, among other things, is put this ticking clock on Odysseus's journey home, right? Every misstep, every step back, every, I'll just fuck Circe for a year on this island, everything that Odysseus does, there's peril at home. The suitors are at home. There's only so many knights Penelope can unweigh that tapestry before someone via gnax on her to Robert Pattinson. You know what I mean? Like, again, who among us? I mean, honestly, who among us?

It just puts urgency on him, which is like very interstellar, right? It's just sort of like there's a ticking clock. You got to get home. You already talked about the modern language and how it works for you. I got to say, I'm a man, mom, dad's coming back. Didn't love it. Not my favorite part of the movie. I'm a man. I'm a man. Mom. Dad's coming back. Not my favorite. The other side of it. This is just more about the idea than the language and the screenplay.

But the withering, like you think you're ready to be king. You can take over for your father. You're a child. Yeah. Every time Penelope. Penelope thriving. Eviscerated Telemachus. It was pretty great. Really, really good. Let's talk about Annie Hathaway. Penelope. What do you think?

Ithaca has no king, Ithaca needs no king. I thought, you know, I mean, I loved her, like the fairly, the slightly tantrumy way. She says, I want Odysseus as she storms out of, out of the room at one point. I thought she was great. I mean, I love Anne Hathaway. I think she's just a wonderful, a wonderful actor. And I thought she was great in this role. I, you know, we've done the whole, the whole rewatch minus Oppenheimer.

and we did watch Oppenheimer. We did, yeah. We, the pods. You know, we spent a good amount of our time chronicling the... In Oppenheimer specifically, I would say, a gin bottle could play the role of Emily Blent's character. Wow. Could a gin bottle ride on a horse that well?

I guess it's properly strapped into a saddle. It would just sort of like docile along. Sort of slosh. Tough. The way that Kitty Oppenheimer was definitely sloshing on horseback. Stuff. You know, Penelope is a rich character and has so many interesting decisions and choices to make.

And the presentation of the suit. On the one hand, Penelope is in this terrible, terrible, unenviable circumstance of not knowing, not knowing, believing, needing and wanting to believe, choosing to believe to hope, you know, the idea that Odysseus could return. Faith. In unseen forces. He said he would return. You know, did we get the full sex scene? No, but...

I really loved that scene. I thought it was so wonderful. By the way, I mean, Anne Hathaway, we've never had a single Anne Hathaway complaint inside of a Nolan movie. Nolan's best actress, I would say. No question. Yeah. I mean, she's been fantastic three times now, right? Wonderful Catwoman.

Great and interstellar. And was wonderful here. You know, to see the... genuine connection and affection between them. I loved it. In that sequence is really important because you understand why she is, there's the practical aspect for both of them, but then there's also the real, like, this is the person that I love. I love how that scene starts where she's just, like, lying on his, like, on his back in this way,

and they're already, like, rumpled. They've already been, like, rolling around. About to get more rumpled. Yeah. Yeah. Really great. So I loved having that to carry us. And, you know, so there's the, like, okay.

I get these people out of my house. I believe he's going to come back. I need to believe he's going to come back. I don't want to marry any of these guys. And there's the horror. Not even you, Rob Pattinson. Not even you. But I got to say, here's what I'll say about Robert Pattinson in this movie.

Really handsome guy. Oh, yeah. Not at this movie. And it is nothing to, you know, they didn't like make him look disgusting. But it's just by virtue of his character. And it's sort of like the way that Rob is sort of like physically embodying him. Yeah. Yeah, you're sort of supposed to be repuls.

Yeah. There's like enough of the charm. when you see him with like the Mia Goss character to understand that people could be smitten, but... There's something about, like, Robert Patton's mouth has always looked like it has too many teeth in it. Really worked in his vampire era. And I like that about it. It looks greater in the Batman Cowell, like all this sort of like that. But there was just like a way, it's like the way he's leering and eating and all and sort of stuff like that.

It's just like repulsive. Also, by design, real dipshit haircut. You know? Yeah. Real dipshit haircut. I have some hair notes for Rob. So, you know, we're supposed to feel the threat of this incursion and this violation and this ticking clock, undeniably. That's balanced with the fact that Penelope, in a way that is kind of shocking, has a level of control.

And there's a level of the absence of control, the need to spin the literal yarn and the story yarn of the deception of unwinding the shroud. but there's a part of you when you're reading it and when you're viewing it that's like the fact that we even for this long get to fend off the moment of choice feels like a relief which is like sick and wrong to say but I think true and probably certainly true for a lot of the women who are consuming the story and so for you to feel all aspects of that like the the fact that Penelope is unable to do the thing that she wants to was just to continue waiting. Then there's the like, you know, in the unreality, like, front,

there's, I think that how long are you going to be able to get away with the deception of the shroud is one of them for a while, certainly. This is true in all versions of the adaptation. Do you not know that that's your husband's voice is like always one of them? Sure. And so there's the interpretation of when does she clock it and what does she do with that information? Right. Yeah.

I will say I love that hood design on a, like, really. good hood design of like, slightly, slightly plausibly, covers his face, plus he's so much older, you know, so much grayer than when last she saw him. It's really for me the voice. Like, so in, in the return, this is with all of the versions of this. You love the return. You love the return. You want to talk about it. I just, um, I just really recently watched it. So it's very fresh in my mind. And also I do love Ray Fines. And I was like, how I was, I was, that Juliette Bonoche looks like the ageless goddess of all time. Just incredible.

She's doing a lot of in that scene. Come into the light. They're trying a little bit more actively to cover for the fact that it is totally implausible that even with two decades passing, you wouldn't recognize your husband. But it's all worth it because we get the scar, the leg scar. And the fact that there is like something undeniable, It's another version of, you know, Argos and the touch.

It's like, so when Penelope says, the moment has come, I'll make my choice, there will be a challenge. Is the one who can actually do it. And it's like very, you know, I like to think that she knows that, right? Hmm. I'll be interested to rewatch it and think about sort of like when, and I was, I don't think I have an opinion. on when did she know and what did she know? You know what I mean? Because yeah, there was there was a moment when like she's like so hopeful. And then the hope is lost. And she like turns away. And so is it like, is it like, that's not him? I thought it was maybe him, but it's not him. I wanted it to be him. Or is it like,

he's not he's not the man that I married or like, what is it? I will say this. I forget which person said this on the way out of the theater. I think it was after the second viewing. So maybe it was like Kitty Walsh or something like that. But they were like, like, they were like, like, oh, they gave Penelope a Barbie feminism speech. And I was like, I can't disagree with that. Like, they liked the movie, but they were like, it was a little bit Barbie feminism speech. And I was like, yeah, I don't disagree. Would we prefer that to all the characters are either called the blonde or dead or a gin bottle? Yes. I think we won. Is this Nolan's first horror movie? Okay. So like we've watched all of the Nolan films. I feel like this is the closest we got into the horror.

I mean, Oppenheimer is horrific, but is it a horror movie? But when you watch the chunks of Ithikin men fall from Polyphamus's mouth, and then the whole Circe sequence, which is the body horror, and then the catapocyst baby, it's an underworld journey, the underworld sequence, the like dabbing of the blood and all of that. I think it's so funny. My really good friend is taking her young son. who loves Greek mythology and has read the graphic novel of Odysseus and is really excited and was like correcting on her on like skill and cryptis and like all this sort of stuff like that but she was like she's like is Charlie going to be scared.

Yeah. And I was like maybe the Circe stuff might scare him. I was like the polyfamous stuff is like a little, it is scary. But like the body, the extended body, it goes on for a while. And again, I think the Circe stuff is the most unsettling by far. And I think it's fantastic. Yeah, it's great. I love this depiction of Circe's.

I think Samantha Morton is amazing in this performance. Really, really, really, really good. Her, like, like, Catwoman-esque sort of like, oh, don't hurt me, don't hurt me, sort of, like, moment. So good. When the urelicus shows up and stuff like that. We get along better this way, iconic. Oh, yeah, with her sister as a bird. That's really, really, really good laugh.

This version of, so Circe in the text is, uh, A hot as, canonically hot as fuck, enchantress. Who, again, Odysseus has to have sex with and then stay for a year and have sex with her for a year. He's got to. What is he going to do? There's something else to do. Are you going to not fuck the hot witch? I mean, come on.

What's, House the Dragon time? Anyway, this series is much more in line, kind of, with Madeline Miller's depiction of her. Sort of. But, like, closer to, in terms of, like, Circe is a woman who has been assaulted and traumatized. And, like, when these men show up, she is, like, doing some preemptive. Right. Transfiguration because she has. Right. She's like, when he, when he says, he's asked, did the harm you.

They would have. They would have, because men have, you know. What is their nature inherently? Look at them. Know your own men back in your disguises. And also the singing, like, how she's singing when she's, like, transforming them. Yeah. So, so good.

And then the underworld. So I just want to read this section from the Emily Wilson translation because it's just like, Chris Rennelon's like, typing it into screenplay, right? Quote, I took the sheep and slit their throats above the pit. Black blood flowed out. The spirits came up out of Erebus and gathered around teenagers, girls, and boys, the old who suffered for many years and fresh young brides whom labor destroyed in youth. Would you say it's a battlefield for women?

I don't know. Something I think about it. And many men cut down, 40 in battle by bronze spear, still dressed in armor stained with their blood. From every side they crowded around the pit with eerie cries. I just thought this sequence was incredible. And again, I thought Elliot Page was really good throughout. I love the choice to, like, sort of have the blood kind of like fervable from Sinan's mouth as he's talking,

sort of like spitting the blood. Teresi is also incredibly spooky and wonderful, and I thought it was fantastic. I agree. This was all really great. It's hard. I think we would need distance to maybe power rank the sequences in terms of how much we love them. They're all so good. It's such a crowded field in the very rich and full three hours we got.

But the Hades stretch and the Circey stretch really do stand out. I quite like the Polyphemus stretch as well. It was all good. The Circey stretch just talking about that made me think of another thing I loved about that sequence, because we have the horror, we have the assessment of nature, what is lurking within. It's a very Lord of the Flies kind of thing, right? You love to think about Piggy. Always.

Always. We're passing the lion. The lion, the tiger. Jaguar. And Odysseus is on the hunt, right? They have left him behind. You should stay. Is this a mutiny?

that's up to you. Who? We who are still alive. Amazing stuff. Eurellicus says. He's like, we who are still alive. I'll make sure we have something to eat no matter what. Goes on the hunt.

Now, this is an effective way to tell us what is happening and to tell Odysseus what he is about to walk into. Because Hermes isn't here to be like, hey. Exactly. Exactly. Here's a special thing to chew so you don't get transformed. The arrow hits. And when he walks up, it's a man. Okay, great.

That's all very effective. What else happens in that sequence? The twanging of the bow. The twanging of the bow, which we have been primed for. And there has been a challenge to and a questioning of. And it's like, you know, because it's honorable. Honorable. And so you have these little countermeasures.

But then the question to that of like, but it's a hunt, right? All of that is just so rich and so good. I think the fact that this version of the story is so aware of the questions that we will have, of the conundrums and quagmires we will carry as audience members, is like really expertly calibrated. The Hades stretch similarly is like to confront the loss. The specific lie and deception with Sinan, but more broadly, this field of the dead. Yeah. And the ones he left behind and didn't bury. And that pledge.

And then to see at the end that he will honor that pledge, right? You know what I love about this? And again, we'll talk a bit about Odysseus and exile and stuff like that. And whether it's canonical or not, it kind of is. But what I love that Christopher Nolan wisely did was like make it Penelope's idea in the first place. So it's not that Odysseus shows up and is like, okay, babe, we got to go. Right. You've waited all this time, but now it's time to go.

She's like, oh, my idea? No one's like, don't worry, it was her idea. The road trip was her idea. Yeah, but Elpenter. Yeah, I love all this. And like, to talk again about the absence of the gods, to remove Hermes from the Circe incident, gives Odysseus then, again, on his wits alone,

the opportunity to get himself out of, a situation. It's not magic licorice that Hermes has given him that makes him immune to the drink. It's just sort of like him figuring out in this tense tete-a-tete with this witch how he can survive

and clocks the bird and all these other things. And so like... His cunning. I think that's just like a much richer version of the story than like... Seeing their rings. They wouldn't have left without them. Yeah. Another totem. Okay. Nolan's first musical.

I mean, here we are. Okay. When you're talking about ranking sequences. To me, there's only, to me, there's only two options. Okay. And it's either Odysseus recalling what actually happened to Troy and the Trojan horse burning. Or what happens here and it's not just because it's a musical. But like, the sirens.

Yeah. We see the decision to dampen the audio and audio as Eurelius puts the wax. in his ear. Great. The decision to not have us fully experience the siren song is so smart. And that's just like one of those moments where it's like, it could never match up to what our imagination of what the siren song would be. It reminded me of Bix and Or. Yeah. Like we don't hear the horror in the screaming. We see what it does to Bix. Great comp. Really good. Tough. Very. The score though, The Gorinson score here, the sort of harmonic. Another Oscar coming for Ludwig?

I mean, yes. I would. Kind of amazing how many Oscars he's about to have. Were it to me. I would, but we'll see what Hans digs up for Dune 3. True. But the choral ascension, you hear it again when Odysseus first sees Penelope. And you hear it again when he first sees Penelope.

And you hear it again when he's recounting what happened at Troy. And so, but this is the, this is the text that caused me to bring a notebook to our second view of the Odyssey. And Yasi was sitting on one side. My friend Kara Warner was sitting on the other side. They were like, you took notes the entire time. And also, they look demented because I'm not used to taking notes on the dark. I was impressed because I could see over Yassie that. But I was like, how?

Yeah, I could not do that. You write big and you use a lot of. lines to delineate your thoughts? Do you know shorthand? No. And then I went home and typed up the notes. Should you learn it? And were there five that I could not read? Yes. Because I was just like, I have no idea what I was thinking in this moment. I don't know. But this is what I wrote down. Because this absolutely rocked me. This is what he recounts the siren song as being. All the things you wanted to be, all the things you wish you never wished for. Then there's a section that I didn't fully transcribe, this delicious, delicious itch, you go to scratch.

And then this is the part. Told what you most want is what you most can't have. And what you most can't have is what you already had and lost. Told me I didn't want to go home. What you most can't have is what you already had and lost. I, like, almost started crying. This is like where I almost started crying. Because like that is, to your point earlier, this great point you made earlier about the

universality of the story. When you read, the best poetry that you read uses very specific language to pluck the bowstring of a universal truth, something that we all feel and articulate it in lyrical language that you're just sort of like, wow, I never would have been able to articulate this. But this thought of what you most can't have is what you already had and lost is like something I could then start to enumerate all the things that I often think about that I already had and lost. That is, you know, unrecoverable and how that is like one of the most painful type of yearning that you can have. And then to top that with told me I didn't want to go home is just like, I just thought this, like I did not know.

Presser Nolan had this in him. I was talking to Rob Mahoney about this last night because we were both like, I didn't know Christopher Nolan could write like this. Like this. And I was like, do you think he was particularly needled by that anecdote that he keeps telling about his, have you seen this? Where he told his son that he put his Oscars away while he was writing The Odyssey because he didn't want to be like whatever. And his son was like, you didn't win an Oscar for a screenplay? Incredible stuff. So do you think no one was like, well, I'm going to now.

what you most can't have is what you already had and lost. The screenplay is phenomenal. Structurally, the language. I thought this was like an absolute lethal bit of writing from Chris Van Hollen. Yeah, this hit me hard as well. I think that it's a good encapsulation of a lot of the pursuits of his adaptation, stylistically, but also in terms of like thematic intent and resonance. You know, you have the distinct.

and circumstance, right? Everyone else will put wax in their ears, but Odysseus is special. So he's going to try to do something different. There's like a little bit of the brash quality of timing the mast, because then I get to hear it and no one has heard the song, right? Yeah. So there's like, there's version of the story where he needs to have his ears out so he can give his men instructions, even though how do they hear him when they have wax in their ears? I don't know. Yeah, the one we crash in test was like, they were sealed. They were so like, I think here, this shows us something purposeful, right, about a character who, even after the fall is still, and a lot of moments that we've gotten post-Troy of the hubris and the brash qualities

and the I will do this thing, I will test the limit of human endurance and human capacity and what will I find on the other end? Will I find the limit? Will I find a reckoning? Will I find, a reckoning? will I find an emotional truth? Will I find a universal truth? I thought this captured this so effectively. I had a similar reaction to you, just like kind of what this unlocks for each person viewing it about the nature of longing and regret

and like appreciation, you know, appreciation in real time for what you have. And because I think the story in this version, the story in general, this version of it, you know, gives us such a nuanced and layered view of the idea of the idea of home and what you think you deserve and when, you know, what you are able to receive and ready to receive and willing to receive and when? It's, you know, no one watching the movie is

like the king of Ithaca and going to be the subject of... Well, I am. Homer has been looking for a third text, so Joe's up. The Joanna ad. Doesn't roll trivially out. The Joanna. Well, let's workshop that. We're going to work on it. The Robbinsy, but that sounds like Jodicy. So that's not. Maybe you're swimming with Robinson. We'll think about it. Okay.

We'll get back to it. Yeah, send us some ideas. Another Emily Wilson quote here. The poem promotes but also questions its own fantasies and ideals, such as the idea that time and change can be undone. And the notion that there is such a thing as home. Yeah. Where people and relationships can stay forever the same.

The whole part of that is gorgeous. That was in relation to the ending. Yes. Or, yeah, when is like, when is he home? Yes. And that's reflected in this movie when Penelope's like, are you home? And he's like, not yet. Yes.

Like, what is actually waiting for you when you find it in any of these respects? And so even just the choice for Nolan to keep the sirens and the aquatic life in the distance and focus on Odysseus's screams and cries and whales, that's. That is what he's interested in capturing. The fact that there was like hot naked babes and also sea lions, I felt like a real like nod to the mermaid myth of like it was just manatees. Like was it just actual sea lions and did you hope that it was hot naked babes singing to you? Where were you on the Svarez a merman theory for all those years? You were pro? Super pro.

I want to show you a painting. Sorry, this is not great podcasting. I have this art book that my sister gave me years ago called From the Deep. Morgan. Called from the deep. And it's all of these, there's like a bunch of depictions of Circe. It's, it's, it's all these, like, beautiful pre-raphalite paintings of, uh, water-based stories. Um, so there's a lot of nymphs, a lot of, like, whatever.

Um, but there's a, there's a lot of Odysseus and the Sirens. And this one by Draper is my favorite, mostly because of like Odysseus's face. Oh, yeah. His eyes, you know, these like hot, naked ladies, clad and kelp are sort of climbing board the ship. And he is just like... But not cloud and munch kelp. It's deraining. Not clad and much kelp, folks.

Storraining to get to them. I've always loved that painting. That is amazing. Yeah. Wow. One of my faves. All right. Speaking of which, a bizarrely unhorny odyssey.

Okay? So after breaking the seal on the explicit sexual content with Oppenheim, which we will eventually talk about, Nolan is back in the in the chase lane. Yeah. Which is a fascinating choice given the fact that the Trojan War was started, because among other things. Paris could not keep it in his pants. That's right.

An act of lust. Also, Agamemnon and his trading route wishes. But, you know, in the text, Odysseus fucks at least two women on his way home to faithful Penelope. Cercy for a year. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Calypso for several years. Nearly a decade.

Nossica, if you're inclined to really between the lines. Possibly the Trojan queen, heck you're in a far more disturbing fashion. I would not call that consensual. Here we have some chaste handholding between Odysseus and Calypso to sort of like Feeding some wilda sleeves. Just their fingers tangling as they walk along the surf and that's about it. Some sexy naked sirens in the distance. Some side boom for Manhathaway.

Yeah. I suppose that Adisie who fucks his way home would undermine Nolan's aim to tell what he is described as a, quote, middle-aged love story. Yes. But what is your thought about this like unsensual version of The Odyssey? Interesting question. question. Three quick thoughts. Great. One, I do think that the Penelope and Odysseus on the mattress so clearly in love and in lust with each other was pretty sexy. I agree. Two, to your point a moment ago about not exactly consensual, hard to introduce a lot of sex into the Odyssey and not have a lot of rape.

And you know what? I don't want it. Dramatic tonal shift coming here for point number three. My God, lash yourself to the mast. The winds are changing. You can't convince me that you liked it so much, you ate it so willingly. It's not the horniest thing that's ever been in a Nolan movie. Sorry.

Sorry, Florence Pugh riding a fully closed man in an interrogated. scene? Okay, great. To the monsters were the monster. I love you. You're a very special person. To the monsters were the monsters. This is the conclusion. Okay. So like, here's the deal. The honesty doesn't have a really great clean ending. Again, it ends like five different times.

It's a real return to the king energy here. Is there met a commentary in there about like when is, when are you finally home? When is it finally done? We fight. We fight We fight the suitors. We fight the suitors family. You know, like blah, blah, on and on it goes.

In Homer's version, there isn't really exile for Odysseus, though there is some indication of like an ongoing wanderlust. There are some other versions of this story where Odysseus goes into exile. So this is what Nolan has decided to do. And he wraps this idea up in this, like, history lesson from Christopher Nolan, right? about the mysterious Mediterranean dark ages that roughly followed the Trojan War. Again, I had some great time reading some intellectual articles. I find it fun as I...

I don't usually do that. Yeah, as I age to either learn or maybe remember new things I once knew this. Maybe I knew this, but I didn't remember that I knew this. So at the end of the story after Odysseus cops to break in the world with the atomic bomb, aka the Trojanors, he talks about the collapse of civilization and written language briefly disappearing. The guy is an entire profit. Yeah. I just loved this.

I thought this was fantastic. Here's a quote. From a scholarly text. Something went terribly wrong. Calamity swept through the Mediterranean and most of the leading civilization, Mycenaean, the Minoans, the Hittite Empire, and Anatolia, toppled, leaving entire cities abandoned and destroyed. The circumstances surrounding the collapse are perplexing. So it's like this great mystery.

What happened in this dark age that? stretched between, so like the Trojan War happened, hundreds of years pass, and then we get Homer's works. Right. So like, this wasn't not recent. Like, he wasn't like, Trojan War happened yesterday and here, thus I have written. Wasn't filing on deadline. Sure wasn't.

Okay. Great. The circumstances surrounding collapse are perplexing, but several problems probably put too much stress on these civilizations. Greece is plunged into the dark ages as connections among cities broke down and written records virtually disappeared. Odysseus gets to be a prophet. He's like, we're going to have a dark age. Civilization will rise again. And she's like, why sing, master? And he's like, because the written

record will go away. Kind of a weird thing for Odysseus to say, but that is historically what happened. Right. The people from the sea, which is this runner where it's like, oh my God, you're the people from the sea. Those were real. Quote. Oddly, accounts of hostile sea peoples and Egyptian documents reveal wars with the traveling group whose true identity remains a mystery. Wherever they were from, clashes against the sea peoples probably delivered a critical blow to civilization that were reeling from other issues. Climate change is like a big thing that they said perhaps was responsible for the dark ages. But this idea that like Christopher Nolan is like, okay, what happened after the Trojan War, this mysterious Mediterranean dark age, nobody knows what happened or why civilization collapsed? And he's like, what if it's this great sin?

this great sin of the Trojan horse. What if Odysseus broke the world? Batman and the Joker. And also see people. Yeah. I mean, this question of the mistaken identity or like, are they actually the seen people, but also then the larger like, well, what do you inspire others to do? Just it's, yeah.

I mean, the dark night very present is connective tissue and text to that idea. Civilization does rebound, though. Don't worry. And Homer. We're back. a bunch of guys credited his Homer, Wright the Elliott in the honesty. Exile, not death.

Made me think of our guide Dr. Jonathan Crane. Sure. Yeah. Always. Death by exile by that, you know, always raised up. Oh, man.

Really, you can't go home again. Energy. That ice looked pretty thick. It did. I don't know. What about sliding on your belly? What happens if you put a flare on it? Not great.

I smell. It's true. You can't go home again. Save the shire, but not for me. we know this song very well. Anything else you want to say about the ending or about the Odyssey that we haven't gotten to?

Boy, what a fun discussion. I had a great time. I think the last quote I'll read, I think just like, take a sum. Sums up a lot of what you just said at the end, but also, why make an Odyssey movie at all? Why make an Odyssey movie at all? What do you have to say about this story

that's been told so many times? And why do we keep retelling stories? And why is it worth thinking about that given what you just cited, what we hear from Odysseus at the end, about the fall and about what will be lost and what will be rebuilt? So this is also from Wilson. In Greek mythology, memory is said to be the mother of muses. Because poetry, music, and storytelling are all imagined as modes by which people remember the times before they were born. So that's why Christopher Nolan makes movies. right? That's why we watch them. And the fact that he is making movies, original stories,

that will become a version of that for other people in the future and also reinterpreting texts and stories that people have been sharing and passing down and tweaking and translating through a different lens, the lens of their language, their region, but also their temporal moment and perspective is just an incredible thing to think about. And I just really admire his interested in engaging with that. You know, I think it is like something that could go so, so, so wrong and be a version of what we see befall a lot of the characters in the story, which is like a hubristic pursuit of something that you should not have attempted. The fact that that is not what happens here. Blessed by the gods. What a treat to be us on the receiving end of this.

I can't wait to see what movie he makes next. I don't know what it will be. Maybe it'll be super small. You know what I think is really funny? Is we did this whole podcast and I wrote all these notes and we did not dedicate a section to the massive fight scene that happens in this movie. But guess what? It happens. It's sick. That whole stretch is a bit. Just amazing. I also say the sort of like ritualistic way that he bends the bow to get to string it. Incredible.

Some real like Robin Hood stuff going on there really good. Love it. And again, Gorinson's score during that fight scene is another cardiac event. Absolutely incredible. And yeah, the plucking of the bow being like part of the score. Genius. I would, okay, yeah. Electric. Let's say you can give three Oscars. Okay. To this movie. We reserve the right to change our mind because my hope is that Dune 3 is like undeniable, you know? I would like to see Dune crown for the achievement of those three movies. Yeah, that is my, even after seeing this, that is my hope.

That we sit down for Dune Part 3, Duna Messiah. and we're like, it's time. Yeah. Right. Return to the King in. Let's do the Return of the King. Eleven Oscars, here we go. Accounting for that possibility and hope in our heart.

Right now, this is the best picture winner. Best director. Let me say this. I haven't seen nearly as many movies as you, so I don't know if I'm equipped to comment. There's not a ton of competition in the first half of the year. Like Project Hail Mary, some people we're talking about. Which I adore that movie. I really like Bone Temple.

I wouldn't put Project Hill Mary up against this. No. But we haven't even hit the thick of Oscar season. Yeah, so who knows. But I think this is, this will be, it's hard to imagine this not remaining a very strong contender for picture. Yeah, no question. Obviously. How is this not going to win best director? Okay, so picture director. Director feels like even more likely to me than picture. And Ludwig. Score? I think this has a real chance at adapted screenplay.

Cinematography. Three. Editing. You were allowed three. Editing. You're allowed three. You have to be. pick three. I haven't thrown out any performances, but I think all of those are more likely than a win for performance. I think it will be nominated for quite a few of the performances. I think it's really going to depend how Damon's playing in and he's already playing in actually very, there's already this narrative of like, oh my God, Damon hasn't done anything this good in so long, and don't we like to remember our movie stars? And wouldn't it be nice to give him, like, an award for that? So like, again, I don't think, I think Gosling's better than in Project Calmerie than Damon is in this. I would

give Gosseling the Oscar for best actor currently. For right now. But like, but maybe it'll be Timmy. But it's going to be, it's going to be a narrative or not. And I, you know,

Timmy has shown himself ill-equipped to land this plane. Maybe this is the great moment. I think, you know, Damon's on for him. From one deep. For him, fucking Amy Poller's podcast and being charming as hell. Like,

he's already playing it. And he knows, he's going to know to like go away for a little bit like Michael B. Jordan did and then come back. That's the move. It's a great move. All right. So three, I just think it's going to win more than three Oscars.

I don't care. This is a prompt. God, you're mean. I could say one, but I'm giving you three. What if they do some of the split stuff with this and Dune, you know? Yeah. So like, I'm not asking you to put a bet down. I'm just saying you're allowed to give out three Oscars for this great movie.

Which three are you prioritizing? We're not putting any money on this. Picture, director, and, I kind of want to say, cinematography, but score is very tough not to pick. Yeah. What are you picking? I think I would do screenplay, editing, score, and cinematography. Okay, great.

We can share. So you did screenplay, score cinematography. You have awarded those three Oscars. Screenplay, score, and cinematography. You have presented those trophies. I will present the trophies for pictures, director, and editing. Great. Fantastic.

Six Oscars and none for you, Dune 3. Okay, we'll see you for Oscar season. We'll see you from our House of the Dragon. We'll see you for the Listat finale. We'll see you in San Diego. We'll see you in Baltimore. We'll see you here in Los Angeles for an as yet unannounced event in August. And I don't know, some ring-sy, Lord of the Ringsy stuff in the fall and Dune and...

Lanterns? Doomsday, have you heard of it? Clayface. We'll see you soon. Thank you, too. Our crew. That's right. The squad.

All of whom we'll make it home. I hope so. I know. Arjuna Rick Powell. Jacob Cornett. Scott Lee. Carlos Chiroboga. Am I missing anyone?

The birthday boy. Show me a dinner on. Happy birthday, my guy. We'll see you soon. Bye. Now playing on Netflix, The Hawk. From the mind of Will Farrell. Oh, Mama.

I'm back. Comes a new original series. Get ready. Get ready. That's it. Did I stutter? When an iconic pro golfer. Lonnie? Hawkehawked!

Takes one last swing of greatness. You were a big shot golfer. I still am a big shot golfer. No one. Dad, I'm the Hawk now. We'll stand in his way. That's how it's done. The Hawk, now playing.

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