The Odyssey: An Intense Experience With a Strong Moral

By Anthony J. Paradiso

In late July I saw The Odyssey. I didn’t see it in IMAX but that didn’t impact my experience in a negative way — I really enjoyed its intensity.

I think most people went to see The Odyssey because they thought it would be an action film: the main character, Odysseus (played by Matt Damon) blinds a cyclops, battles the sea and kills the suitors who have invaded his home. However, this film was much more than that. The ending brought a tear to my eye because I realized that Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and Telemachus (Tom Holland) suffered emotionally during Odysseus’ 20-year absence and those actors portrayed the emotions of being Odysseus’ wife and son so well.

Below are the scenes that interested me the most and what I think the film’s main message was.

The Coastal Village
At the point in the film when Odysseus’ son Telemachus travels to the Kingdom of Sparta to ask Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and Helen (Lupita Nyong’o) for information about his father, Odysseus has been gone a long time. Telemachus and his mother Penelope are becoming more and more doubtful that he will ever return. Telemachus learns that it took Menelaus years to return home but finds nothing about his father’s whereabouts.

On his way home to Ithaca, Telemachus and his advisor, Mentor (Ryan Hurst), stop at a temple of Apollo in a coastal village to pay tribute. Everything about this location was interesting to me: the villagers, the temple on the inside of a cliff and Odysseus disguising himself as a beggar.

Penelope’s suitors have come up with a plan to assassinate Telemachus before he returns to Ithaca. They lure him and Mentor into the temple where they offer them drinks which turn out to be poison. When the assassins realize their plan has been found out, they draw weapons on Telemachus but Odysseus thwarts their plan and sets the temple on fire before leaving with Telemachus.

The villagers clearly held their temple in high regard but Odysseus shows a blatant disregard by setting it on fire. This action is consistent with Odysseus’ actions throughout the film as he does not fear the gods. After all, he knowingly broke the law of the king of the Greek gods, Zeus (Zeus’ law), by deceiving the Trojans with the Trojan Horse.

Zeus’ law was a moral code in ancient Greece that states that hosts must generously feed, shelter and respect strangers because any traveler might secretly be a god in disguise. Guests must honor their hosts in return.

It’s easy to say all of the misfortune Odysseus experiences is due to him breaking Zeus’ law but his fellow soldiers and officers broke it as well. So, why does Menelaus make it back to Sparta in one piece for example? This is one spot in the film which I find to be inconsistent.

Odysseus Encounters the Witch, Circe
On their return journey, Odysseus and his men encounter a tribe of giants, a cyclops and even their dead former comrades but no encounter is scarier than the one between Odysseus, his men and the witch, Circe.

When Circe allows Odysseus’ men to eat in her home, she feeds them a drugged stew that makes them shudder and convulse. Then one by one, she works their faces like clay into the faces of pigs.

To make a long story short, Odysseus comes to find his men and he encounters Circe. She is about to feed him the same drugged stew before he catches on and holds a blade to a caged raven which he has identified as Circe’s transformed sister. This gets Circe to finally give in and the two have a short yet revealing conversation.

Circe tells Odysseus that she turns humans into animals which reflect their values. Her goal is to reveal “truths.” She then turns the pigs back into Odysseus’ men and they depart.

The scenes with Circe are interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that she views human beings as savage creatures to be tamed instead of as her intellectual peers. Secondly, its place in the timeline of the film suggests that temporarily transforming the men into pigs is just what they deserve because of the massacre they carried out in Troy. The men are truly savage and by transforming them, Circe is more of a truth-seeker than she is evil.

Troy
The film crew shot the scenes inside the city of Troy on a set built around a traditional Berber fortified village in Morocco called the ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou. According to movie-locations.com, the set spanned 2.5 acres and included 60 structures that “were temporarily added for the film” including the Temple of Athena.

A lot happens in Troy. The Trojan Horse is dragged into the city through its main gate. The Greeks slip out of the horse in the middle of the night, set most of the city on fire and kill civilians. The one murder we see carried out is the Greeks beheading a Trojan priestess (Zendaya) in the Temple of Athena. But instead of showing her head fall off, the head of a statue of Athena falls off.

The camera then focuses on this statue head as it eerily shakes on the ground. We are shown this haunting image again at the very end of the film, when Odysseus is experiencing a flashback to Troy, which makes it a motif, or recurring element that repeats throughout a story to reinforce a central theme. Later in the film, Odysseus encounters the priestess again when he washes up on the shore of his home, Ithaca, and she is yet another reminder of the mistakes he made in Troy and on his return journey.

The Film’s Main Message
The Odyssey uses symbolism effectively to express its main themes. After Odysseus has returned home and to his status of King of Ithaca, we see a flashback of the Trojan Horse in the final frame of the movie. It was a very loud and powerful scene as we hear the flames roar along with narration and the movie soundtrack. It also reminds us that Odysseus will never be able to fully get over his tragic flaw, which was building the Trojan Horse.

The Odyssey is a deep emotional journey not for the faint of heart. There is lots of violence but no blood which I think makes it palatable to a wider audience. Overall, I highly recommend it.