Christopher Nolan's „The Odyssey“ has been showing in German cinemas since July 16th. The film doesn't just retell Homer's famous myth. Nolan's Odyssey can also be read politically: as a critique of Western double standards. The US and its allies often wage wars in the name of democracy and human rights. In doing so, they repeatedly disregard international law. In Nolan's „Odyssey,“ it is the Greeks who break their own rules to plunder and expand their power. In the end, they must realize that their greatest barbarians are not their enemies, but themselves.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey whether it lives up to the cult director's earlier films remains to be seen. On the surface, the film tells the familiar story of Odysseus, the end of the Trojan War, and his subsequent wanderings across the seas – that’s it.
There isn't a special narrative twist this time, like in Inception or Tenet. Except perhaps that this film, too, is not told chronologically. However, Nolan has perfected his non-linear storytelling so masterfully by now that the jumping back and forth between the present and flashbacks (and a flashback within a flashback) is hardly noticeable.
The interesting thing about The Odyssey rather, it can be read as a political commentary—on Western foreign policy of recent decades. Warning: Spoilers!
Helena was just a pretext – The real reasons for the war
Right from the start, the film makes it clear: the Trojan War only has peripheral relevance to Helen. Yes, Paris abducted her from the Spartan royal house. But Nolan's Odysseus sees through the fact that Agamemnon is only as a pretext. In reality, it's about Troy's wealth and its trade routes. Helen provides the moral justification for a war of plunder.
That sounds familiar. In reality too, states like to morally justify their wars. But the real reasons for a war are usually different.
Before the US invaded Iraq in 2003 (a war that lasted approximately claimed a million lives), they warned: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and poses a danger to the entire world. Today we know that this was a Lie story War. In reality, it was about oil and power.
Nolan's film is about precisely this hypocrisy. It tells of what is lost when agreements and rules are only spoken about.
Nolan's Odyssey Politically Interpreted: Guest Right as an Ancient Version of International Law
The film centers on a concept that Nolan „Zeus's Law‘ is calledthe right of hospitality. The idea is: whoever knocks on your door receives food and protection. No matter who they are. Because any stranger could be a god in disguise.
In Nolan's film, the sacred and inviolable law of Greek civilization is guest-right. For in a world of scattered islands with no central power and no police, this law is the only thing that prevents strangers from killing each other.
One can interpret guest rights as an ancient precursor to international law: a set of rules that governs interactions between strangers. Anyone who breaks it doesn't merely violate a regulation. They destroy the entire rules-based order.
With the Trojan Horse, the Greeks break their own rules.
But it is the Greeks themselves who break this right of hospitality – with the Trojan Horse. In Nolan's Odyssey, it is not a brilliant war trick, but a perversion of hospitality. Odysseus turns a gift—the most sacred act of his culture—into a weapon. The Trojans accept the horse because their rules require it. And that is precisely what seals their doom.
What follows is a massacre. The Greeks plunder and destroy an entire city. Later, Odysseus says of this taboo violation that the Greeks had „everything that was once sacred between people is violated“. He realizes that with this trick he won a war but poisoned an entire civilization in the process. Because he showed that the rules are worthless. That they can be broken if you are strong enough.
How cold this trick is, is shown by the figure of Sinonplayed by Elliot PageThe common soldier delivers the horse to the Trojans, believing it to be a genuine gift. He was told the same lie as the enemy – so that he would sell it more credibly. Sinon dies in the belief that he is on the side of the righteous. Thus, the Greeks lie not only to their enemies, but also to their own people.
We are the Sea Peoples - Nolans The Odyssey read politically
Early in the film, a threat is mentioned that strikes fear into everyone: the Sea Peoples. Marauding bands who raid coastal cities. No one knows who they are. Telemachus dismisses them as sailors' tales, while Sparta arms itself against them.
Right at their first stop after Troy, Odysseus‘ men plunder an undefended village. The Village elders consider them Sea Peoples. Eurylochus, Odysseus's second-in-command, He dismisses it contemptuously: they are Greeks. – not barbarians. He could also have said: We are the West. We are the good guys.
What men really are, only one character in the film speaks out openly: the sorceress Circe (played by Samantha MortonHer gaze betrays that she herself has suffered from men like Odysseus‘ soldiers. She transforms the soldiers into pigs for their war crimes. „Do you think your commands changed their nature?“ she asks Odysseus. „They were always pigs.“
At the end of the film, it turns out there is no alien power. The Sea Peoples are the Greek soldiers themselves, who travel the Mediterranean after the fall of Troy, carrying the violence they unleashed there. They themselves are the ones everyone fears. In a key scene in the film, Odysseus, disguised as a stranger, sits before his wife Penelope and must admit this bitter truth to himself. „To burn down the walls of Troy was to burn down the whole world.“, he says.
Iraq, Libya, Iran – The list of Western war crimes is long
Whether this constellation can be transferred one-to-one to the present day is for each individual to decide. But the parallel is striking: the West has also been telling itself the story of its own civilization for decades—and in doing so, overlooks how often it has broken the very rules it wishes to uphold.
In doing so, the West often produces the very threats it fears: The Overthrow of the socialist Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh paved the way for the mullahs to seize power. The attack on Iraq enabled the rise of ISIS, etc.
A summary of the crimes committed by the USA since World War II in Asia committed, there are here. Here also a list of US illegal coups and intelligence operations in Latin America.
Are the gods just a hallucination? – Athena as Odysseus's bad conscience
Throughout the entire film, Odysseus seems to already have an inkling of his atrocities. This is embodied by Athena, the goddess of wisdom, played by Zendaya. She accompanies Odysseus throughout the entire film – silently, observing, sometimes reproachfully. In doing so, Athena could also just be a hallucination of Odysseus.
Because towards the end, we see the murder of a priestess in Troy in a flashback. She is also played by Zendaya. What Odysseus thought was divine aid for years might be the memory of a murdered woman.. His guilty conscience, which haunts him disguised as a goddess. Matt Damon describes the character in an interview as: „"She is the result of what he has done, and she lives in his mind, like his conscience."“
Whether the gods truly exist in Nolan's version is left open by the film. But if there are no gods, the interpretation of the entire story changes: then Odysseus’ wanderings are not a divine trial or revenge – but his attempt to run away from his own deeds.
Nolan says, The Odyssey is about “consequences”
One must The Odyssey One doesn't have to read Nolan politically. You can also simply enjoy it as an adventure epic. The interpretation suggested here is one of several possible ones – and Nolan himself is known to hold back with current political statements. „The entire movie is about consequences.“, he just says. Of consequences that occur with a delay and that one likes to forget.
But whoever watches the film this summer – while the West is once again bombing a foreign country, supplying weapons all over the world, and arguing about the legitimacy of its wars – will have trouble shaking off one question: What if the barbarians we fear are ourselves?
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