‘The Odyssey’ Deep Dive

(phone ringing) - Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson and as the rosy finger, Dawn breaks over the wine dark sea. She has wise eyes, Athena's eyes. - It's Maui Rubin! - It's the God-like goddess-like Joanna Robinson. - I want to 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. - We are thrilled to share that the ring of our team of the Midnight Boys, Pew-Pew! - And House of R, we'll be returning to San Diego Comic Con this July. We're kicking off on Thursday, July 23rd at Whiskey Girl for a ring of our first 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 AM, come to our panel. Comic Con badge holders. Can find the Midnight Boys, Pew-Pew, and the House of R, correct. - In Room 5AB on the upper level of the convention center for a ring of our super group panel, we're gonna be discussing the franchises that have dominated a 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. (upbeat music) - All right, quick programming reminders. House of the Dragon continues up. Hey, so we've got the deep dives coming out. Whenever they come out and the talk of thrones comes out on Sundays right after the episodes drop. Let's stop 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 at Whiskey Girl. You do not need a badge for it. There's probably a, then you probably just watched an ad for this, but I'm just gonna say it again. - Just kidding. - Yeah. - And then our panel this Saturday morning, you please need a badge for that. Please, please come, please clap. - 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. - We have videos event. - We have videos. - 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. - Jeez. - What a time. - Yeah. - How can folks keep track of all the things we're doing? - Here's what I'd recommend. Follow House of R on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch full video episodes of House of R and the Midnight Boys. - Yeah. - Bue on Spotify. You should also follow the Ring of R Us YouTube channel. You can watch our episodes there as well. While you're at it, follow the new wish. - Outhouse of R. (laughing) - Social handles. - Outhouse of our pod. - Instagram. - TikTok. - This is where I have a great time over there, you know? So check out the breakouts from the pods. Some memes, some behind-the-scenes photos. Who knows what we'll post from common time. - I mean, yeah, I'm Tandy AGO. - Plenty to go on an email us. - [email protected]. - The inbox is always open. - The hot D emails have been out of control. The study emails are great. We got a couple out of the emails, but we're recording this a little early in the honesty 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 did take your advice sometimes listeners. - Shout out to bad babies. - Spoiler warning. - Yeah. - For Homer. Or Homer. - That's right. - Various dudes named Homer. The Illy 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. - Anything else? History. - If disputed history. - Troy. - Troy. - William. - Ulysses. - The Great Wishbone episode. - Based on the Odyssey. - That Simpson episode. That's Homer's Odyssey. - Oh brother, where are I, though? - Uh-huh, absolutely. The constant that episode of loss. - Oh god. - Oh god. - It's like, it's like, many times that. (laughing) - Oh man. - It's Friday afternoon. I have a coffee, a water, and I'm still quaffing needs. So, we're doing our best. - We're doing our best. - Here, the Holy Trilogy Tournity. We're doing our best. Should we go to the opening snapshot? - Let's do it. - Let's do it. (upbeat music) - 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? - Yeah. - Go by Homer. Score by Ludwig Gorenson. 172 minute run time. 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. - 96, 97 on Ron Tomatoes. - That's amazing. - 89, 5.6 on 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. 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 iMacs. - For iMacs, like 70 millimeters, 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. - Amazing. - Is it gonna get to a billion? I don't know. - Oppenheimer, dude. - I would like to see it a couple more times. Oppenheimer got just shy of a billion. - Roundup. - Yeah, okay. We'll get to 900 something million, sure. - Absolutely. - Yes, I believe. It'd be fun if it crossed a billion, though. That would be great. - That would be great. - Yeah. - $250 million budget to operate against not to mention the advertising budget. Quick, overall impressions of the Odyssey. Malau, 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, do you're like big picture thoughts about this movie? - I thought it was just fantastic. I mean, I love it. I actually had originally secured tickets for yesterday to see it in IMAX. So I was like, man, I'm gonna get to see this three times before we record 'cause 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 can't wait to go again a week. Well, 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 see it again already. I look forward to seeing this multiple times, not only in the near term here, but to 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 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 characters. That's literally time and also like the actual, 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 this movie I thought was like a genuine modern masterpiece. It's my favorite movie of the year. It's, we're gonna wait till I think reveal our complete Nolan film power rankings until the Oppenheimer pod, which in, let's just say it was the plan all along and not a product of me being the gravely ill and just deep distress and pain all week and not being able to get to that. We're gonna do that after and I think that will actually be interesting and fun to go back to that in a couple of 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. Like it's without question in my top five. No, no question. Is it in my top three probably? I think so. Where it goes in there, I don't know. Yeah, that's a hard part. I was 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. You know, the ambition of the IMAX filming 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 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 Doon 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 shout out, maybe I'll go up to San Francisco and see it on the Metronon because shout out the Metronon, that is still the biggest IMAX screen and I missed it for this movie. But like seeing it on the biggest screen possible with a full theater, the second viewing we went to was a full theater and just sort of like, just your at the movies is a movie movie. And it's just like, like I felt so lucky. I also think it's my favorite film of the year. I love "Projectile Mary," but like-- - Me too. - This, this is just extraordinary. I was always gonna love it. I think also doing our Nolan rewatch, we did really, really enhance 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 'cause when we came out of our first screening of this, you and I both were like, wow, there's a lot of "Oppenheimer" in this. - 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, the way that he reiterates certain themes for sure. But I feel like between "Oppenheimer" and "Otesy," these are the two movies back-to-back that feel 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, 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 a text has been translated and studied maybe more than any other. And to layer in this idea that, to me, feels innovative, 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 re-watch, other than "Oppenheimer" or addition to "Oppenheimer" or 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 pin and sit on a lot and all these other tokens that show. - To all the totems in this movie. - I love a totem, as you know, I love inception. I mean, I think the truth is, it's the entire. - All of it. - Filmmography, 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 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. - Yeah. Sometimes it was not, sometimes it was. - Sometimes I was like, "Hemesh Patel." I'm really excited. - Like, "Hemesh Patel 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 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 at, 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. I think 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 in 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 span 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, but this is I think one of the really undeniable ones. It somehow, to 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, I have enjoyed making a bit out of the response to the modern language, dad, daddy, in the trailers because I think I'm using to see like, pining for a daddy, become a meme and stuff. But actually sitting down to consume the movie, 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 in unleashing to the world. You can't have the lessons that end this movie, the 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 to the IMAX point, I mean, the visuals are, a lot of Nolan movies are beautiful. 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 astonishing. 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 the, you gotta 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 gotta 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. The thing I bumped on on Oppenheimer, which we'll talk about eventually on the Oppenheimer pod is the third act of Oppenheimer. There's a lot of people having issue with the third act of Oppenheimer. And that's something I bump on and feel more warmly towards as last time I watched it. The third act of this movie 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 the third hour hit, 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 some friends, I used that so loosely for the award-winning author we had on here. But 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. And what that unlocked for me, not just about in my anticipation for the Odyssey, but just sort of like how I then sort of tried to think about that idea and apply it to all of Nolan's movies. That was like a fascinating insight from Chris. When Arf Quang 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 what a beautiful sort of an ironic 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 are 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 felt like we had gone to school with like some of our smartest pals and then like it really helps me feel all the way in on this, a movie that I was gonna enjoy anyway, you know? - Yeah, I agree. It's been such a treat 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, that is the bringing up what Rebecca said about family. It makes me think to like not only is it interesting to compare this film Nolan's version of the Odyssey to the epic to 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 of years ago, the Ray finds 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 "To Let Me Kiss" 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 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 Bridget 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 of 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, the 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 and we go back to like the very beginning of the filmography, 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 blueprint 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 we're just 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 just defined in in in myth and legend and history as the man who's trying to get home. Yeah, and this idea of the sirens saying like, you don't really want to go home, right? And, uh, and why, and why, why would a man take so long to get home? Um, you know, in this version, he's beset by this other and other versions, he's just sort of like, I'll stay a year on Cersei's Island. Why not? You know, what I mean? Like what, what is the shillying and the shellying? And also, yeah, 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, 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. Um, this is my story. But like, I was thinking of a memento so much. I was thinking like the arc, not not being able to know yourself, but also the architect of your own. Yeah. Um, you know, uh, 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's so much that is revealed to us about Leonard later at the very end. Yeah. So that's, there's a real parallel there. Um, 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. Um, you know, insomnia, I think it gives us the memory, it gives us also kind of the he's, you know, could Al Pacino and insomnia just be eating lotus flower instead of not sleeping? Cause it's always sunny. Why not? I would say why not? I think we talked about the Batman stuff a little bit already, but that, you know, with Gotham. And we, we had such fun talking with Voss about Gotham is a character and Gotham is a really central aspect of the Nolan treatise and in exploring Batman, but there's also the like the Joe, 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, 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? Yes. You know, the, 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, 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 diceier in a way that I enjoy. Like, I think if you take Robert Eiponheimer and Adjacious and like 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. You know, is definitely something more, especially given how non-linear Nolan 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 a 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 or relationship, one show. Inception takes it into a like, what do you, what the world building aspect is it, of course, in the dreamscape. So it's there a little bit, but I think you're right that the the march towards something like, yeah, if you think of something like interstellar, which has so many tendrils in common with 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 what 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 of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and these easy young woman face face feeling off. That's Nolan's own daughter that he put in the movie and that's him like reckoning with like, what have we left behind for our children. So thinking about Odysseus and Penelope selling off to the sunset leaving telemicus behind to rule Ithaca, but like we broke the world. And now telemicus 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. 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 like it's interesting to think about an inception the way the kids are present as these like faceless. Yeah. Faceless merages 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 and limbo and the capacity to destruct. 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 low 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 the future in who broke the world's future generation in interstellar and tenant. You can't process Nolan's version of the Odyssey without thinking about those things because the, and I was just like really blown away by the end of the movie, like you said as well. I mean, I think the, the, the, the suitors, the, you know, the bow, the axis, 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. Lou Vigoren's in score. Holy shit dude. That's absolutely. We almost hit a new word. It's like, it's not even like score or composition, it was like a feral and a cardiac event. 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, the horse is the atom 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 and adapted over time is the source of your great shame and that you are aware. You couldn't go home because you're carrying that guilt, but then also the note of like, they won't remember. Civilization is going to fault what lesson is lost over time. 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, and the ages 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 then 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, do they remember the right lesson? Yeah, there's a moment in the home where Odysseus hears the story of the horse any cries. There's like a, there's a kernel or two that's there to inspire Nolan to be like, what if, because there's also many other ways in which Odysseus is like, yeah, I'm that guy, I'm that man. That's what I did. But like, I feel like if you were to make interstellar now, I feel like Makata'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? That 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 bowl, the bow at the Cyclops, you know what I mean? And in the text, it's a boast. It's a taunt. You know, 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 could 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 it's a matter of like, why did you do that? 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 Robert Oppenheimer, the womanizer, the liar, the guy who taunts Strauss in two different 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 at 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 it seems like-- That's a whole-- 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 bell in the eye example that you call out there so many moments in the movie where Odysseus is making such a clear and real-time mistake. And you're like, why? But it's so much more interesting, right, to show us the full totality of a man. And your coup 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. But also what are the mistomers? But also what are the 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 Coup 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, 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 on the version of yourself that the people who you hope miss you awaited 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, but I, I was thinking about Dunkirk. I mean, ocean stuff, certainly, just the sea. I mean, watching these men flail in the water, just trying to scramble onto the boat, you know. Still gotta say, the achievement on that front and the Odyssey and Dunkirk tapped here. 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 church and horse and it was underwater? I'm always, always, the stabbing through of the horse with the blade was just so the bullet's punching through it. 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 the horse before the sword comes back out. Silently wipe the blood off the sword before it comes back out, chills. Amazing. Community in Dunkirk, what does a community do? What can a community withstand? You know, that feels like a real parallel with Dunkirk and then also even in the height of some sort of monumental moment, 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 he do next, Joe? I know, it's a great question. We're here to go for a minute. 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 were meaning 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, 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, tenant is the most Nolan movie. If you talk to CR perhaps, he's like, Dunkirk is the most Nolan movie, you know? He talked to Van, maybe it's Endersteller. Like, I think-- I still think it's inception. You know, he talked to Malarubin, 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 most enchanted by? And where is that at the forefront, you know? A pal 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, Killie Murphy. That is an undeniable, like, god-tear performance. I think Matt Damon is great in this movie and actually one of the best things that he's done in a 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. 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 the story here. So I didn't walk out saying, like, oh my god, what Ann Hathaway did with Penelope is god-tear. Versus, like, Ann Hathaway and Understeller, I would say, is, like, god-tear. I think everyone was like, go to this movie. I didn't walk away saying anyone was, like, miscast. 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. Then, like, his actual performance in this film. Best director, best picture, though. Who does it 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, 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? What do you think about the performance front and, and, does it matter at the end of the day, whether or not there is, like, a performance in this movie that flew 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 week, but I also think Telemachus is a week character. So, like, by design, a week character, but also just like kind of a. - Yeah, he's 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. - Yeah. - He's a good cryer. And I had a better grasp of Telemachus being like so beta in the closing. - Yeah. - You know, then I did the first time I went through, but yeah, if I had to pick one, yeah. - Yeah, slightly weak spot. - I, I thought Damon was great. I had 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 just Matt Damon. Goodwill hunting, like sarcasm breaking through is. - How do you, how do you like the maples like present and accounted for in this? - Yeah. - But like kind of in a way that works for me. - Yeah, actually, you know, there's a charm there that is a necessary counterweight to some of the mistakes and decisions that we see. - I think, do you talk to Anne's in the set-club scene and also I think we're past that? - That was the one. - That was just like, that was really the one. - There he is. - It's like a little hunting. - Yeah, exactly. - It's a guy from Boston. - Exactly. - I'm fine with it. - Yeah, my favorite performance, I think that comfortable Marjo was Pattinson. - Okay. - I thought he was like amazing. (laughs) - 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 gonna talk about the juices law, the guest rights aspect and obviously the suitors do not care for the juices 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 toughs when he's just like, the spears, the spears, the shields, the shields. - Oh, I love that. - I was just like, 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 that point from either of them. But I just thought was so satisfying and obviously the moment when Odysseus thrusts his blade through in a very like thronesian. - Yes, slow. - He's gonna make you, yeah, feel, give him back his shame. That was great. So I thought he was just wonderful. - Yeah, this is, maybe it's just 'cause I recently saw the drama and I'm just like, that's the patents and I prefer more to this patents in, but he's good in the movie. But I think the thing they did with Antennaus that I thought was the most interesting was the flash is to him on the hunt with Odysseus. And he was younger and the very sharp job young man that they cast to clearly play a young Robert Pattinson, young Antennaus and sleep. 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, that great man we 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 gonna 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 are 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 obvious. But the introduction is, talk about like a work of scholarship right in what 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 quotes. 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 fifth and fourth 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. It feels listening to the performances. It 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 a roux. Issue 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. Yes. It's this version didn't exist when I studied in school. It's not, you know, we read this. It's Gerald's version, I believe. I couldn't remember what we read in school. Maybe it was maybe a month, maybe it was that. Fagals are Fitzgerald, I think, or the two other main, you know, but that language is much flourier in a way that I really enjoy. But then I also really enjoy this version she did. There's like a recent translation of Bae Wolf 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. [MUSIC PLAYING] OK, as Rebecca pointed out when she was on the tenant 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 this 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 no one is getting at here. So like, in his New Yorker review of the film, Richard Brody, the goat, really got hung up on this aspect of the film. If anyone's going to be contrarian about the Odyssey, it's probably going to be Richard Brody. Shut up, my guy. Always. But to Ms. Quote Rossi Park, now eventually, you do plan to have Greek gods in your Greek God story, right? So like this is-- OK, so 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 are witches here. There's like a giant whirlpool, who's a lady. There's the supernatural is here. The opening crawl says an age of apparent magic, though, which I think is a 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 Hermes is Flitten, Hither and Thither inside of the story. The gods show up. They are characters inside of the story. And so Nolan decides we're not going to do that. I'm going to say Zendaya is playing Athena, right? But Nolan may say otherwise, but I do think there is a definition of this film where you could say, is that actually Athena at all? And is that interesting? So there's this runner in the film of Telemica saying, you have wise eyes at Athena's eyes, to a number of characters, right? One of whom is mentor, the man who's training him, which is one of the guys is 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' face with this moment of just sort of like shock and recognition and sort of like glad home, 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 guys of Athena in the text is in this film a human person. And Odysseus says to Telemica, 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 her in the film, has taken the whole time, is this slain Trojan priestess? - Yeah. - 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 a 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 at home, challenging him sometimes, saying don't you recognize the cut, you know, like there are moments that are like, very Athena in the text, very Athena in the movie. Or, you know, in Shadow of Christopher Nolan for adding a dead girl to the film. to this movie where there isn't. - I don't 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 a parent, there are, it's either Poseidon's fault that they didn't get home and Poseidon is gently 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. Haven't mentioned, I managed to mention wishbone before Percy Jackson, but this is like another example of a modern text that asks, 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 written in 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 an 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, 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 Robbehoney saw this movie yesterday, texted me and he was like, we're in a current cat person dog person battle in our friendship. And he was like, gotta say, great dog maybe. We'll talk about that. He was like, I don't think a cat would have done that. I was like, my cat would have slid Antonias throughout. (laughing) Those scissors would be absolute jerky if my cat had been, anyway, shout out cats. You know, I'm obviously a cat enthusiast but shout out our ghosts now and always. Also love a dog. Love a dog. So I have to be either or Rob to say make it either. - No, why not, let's love all of the animals. Including the cattle that they were born to not to kill any. 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 whereas you noted 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 one of the first three books in the telekine. When you sense 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 shooters 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 Poseidon's dad. So this is gonna 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 the post-troy-huber said, 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 nature and civilization. What's your, what's your interpretation of Athena as she is represented here? Like do you, do you, again, I do think it's up to the viewer. Do you think that that's Athena or do you not? - I think so. I don't mind the alternate interpretation that he's like haunted by the spectra. I think he is haunted by the spectra. I think the fact that she takes the shape of the slain precepts 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 the chosen faith for his ability to lie in the scene out with, out with our play out with someone. That should be one of the themes for a survivor season is Athena and Odysseus, just the Odyssey. I mean, I kind of, they're all the Odyssey in a way, aren't they? They really are. So, you know, I think, and in general, I just really loved, that was an interesting, there's a lot overall of like, oh, this person is actually in like 47 seconds of this movie stuff with the movie. - We do part one the day of participation. - Yeah, and, you know, I mean, Lupita has five scenes, barely any screen time, you know, dynamite is always, but I thought what Zendaya did in those scenes. - This is fantastic. - What is amazing, and not only the performance, but 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, what don't you understand about the wind, and you know, the things around you, the elemental nature. - That doesn't understand thunder. - The colon response, you know, when he's questioning, so like, here's the next part of this, which you've already touched on a bit, but this idea of like, defy the gods except 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, perhaps before the war, but comes out of the war, despite having Athena right by his side, is like, maybe kind of not as much of a believer, because when they leave Cersei's island, he says, who gave Cersei her powers, your gods, 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 times she says, other things, any colon response, it 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 you really kiss, shout out to Hamesh Patel, who has a shit ton of screen time in this game. - Really? - You're really, really wonderful as always. - It is his final soggy moments. Bags Odysseus to pray to Poseidon, right? You barely hear him, but that's what he's saying, pray to Poseidon, all this 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 your understanding, 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 some place in this time who does not allow the changing of the lots 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-- and many eyes and many different stages of clarity, was so gobsmacking and it's execution. And it's just like, man, no, it was really the go. There's maybe no part of the movie that people are more familiar with. The 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, Cersei saying like, oh, they became what they always were. Pigs, right, like the beast inside of man. Look at 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 the, 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 God's name? Yeah, there's a shattering, a shaking of something, right? Of a foundation of civilization, but also of that. That faith in 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 too much about Penelope yet. That's the, you know, we do have the tripod of this family. We have Odysseus, we have Selema Kiss and we have Penelope and there are versions of this for all of them, but telemicus is presented as, and this is more about like generations and innocence. But he, as you know, did as the one who's like, wise eyes of Venus eyes, like looking for signs of the God. The fact that his belief has not been broken and shattered, despite, you know, the suitors and the intervention of the suitors and what is happening to Ethika. 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 grapple with in her translation is she's like, telemicus 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 the story. So I'm calling this a crash course in Greek. First one is polytropus. This is the very first adjective that Homer uses to define Odysseus and the opening lines. And it's proven very difficult for modern translators to properly pin down. It literally means the man of many turns. Polytropus, many turns. And so some people interpret 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 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." Muse tell me how he wandered and was lost when he wrecked the holy town of Troy. Fagel says, "Sing to me of the man." Muse, the man of twists and turns, not complicated, but twists and turns, driven time and again, off course, once he had plundered the Hall of Heights of Troy. And Fitzgerald says, "Sing in me, Muse, "and through me tell the story of that man, "skilled in all ways of contending." The wanderer harried for years on the on end after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy. What I do love about these three different complicated twists and turns, skilled in all ways of contending, those three sort of different interpretations of Polytropus, 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. - Sure. - Wrecked, plundered, not conquered, not, you know, not, you know, haily all the conquering hero, not one of victory, not like whatever. It's like, they destroyed. - Yes. - Troy. - And that is something that I think is interesting from the very beginning, no matter how you interpret it, Homer, Odysseus is a man with blund 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 Polytropus idea, what version of this man is Nolan most interested in? Sinon, we hear Sinon say, "You lied to everyone, did you have to lie to me?" Yeah, I thought Elliot Page was really good in this role. Cersei calls him a liar, right? You're really kiss, you knew and you didn't tell us about skill and cryptists, right? - Right. - And the Trojan horses of course, the lie to end all lies. And then of course, Odysseus lying to himself, we'll talk about that more when we get to the sirens. - Yes. - Nolan has described him as quote, "an amazing strategist and a very wily person." That's what, 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 a given point? But we open the story, not with Penelope and telemocus, not with Odysseus on Colipsis Island, not this one. The other, we open with Odysseus's first victim, Sinon and his first lie, the horse. Like these crimes of Odysseus are right here at the very beginning of the story. But then it's 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, 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 Cersei," both of which I just think are absolute fucking masterpieces. Give this great interview to the New York Times book podcast, talking about the idea of a hero in ancient stories is not always an often not a virtuous person. Hero means warrior, someone who's real good at fighting, but not a noble person of like fine moral character. So what do you, 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 will hit next, but I, 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. Ayo Scott, there was an Instagram reel. I'm sure it was another form as well. I saw an Instagram, a very interesting examination of the language across translations and I was like, ooh, cool, this is interesting. Took a curiosity, took a look at the comments. Who knows how the algorithm works and what gets moved to the top and stuff, but there were a lot of people who were like, eat. Complicated, it's not right. That's not big mad at the Wilson translation. - There's a lot of bros who do not like the Wilson translation. - Which I, there's a lot of like bad faith stuff behind that, but then there's also a little bit of a, two other things. One, what maybe version of the story have you carried with you? - By the way, Christopher Nolan loves the Wilson. - Oh, I mean, that's the translation that like, yeah, leads to this movie, there's no question. And that's what I was gonna say next is like, I think that the, frankly, I was kind of one point, even though like, you know, people yelling on social media is not an indicator of the world. Like, I think they're, I was like, I wonder if people are gonna 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 mind. - I can't look at Twitter. It's just so personal and it's like, I don't pay attention to that. And I, you know, I even, 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, in the run up to the movie, all the like, oh, you know, the casting. And this is just obviously nonsense, - Absolutely. - But I'm saying is like, those people or bots or whatever they may be are like in the comments. Like I, 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, the mega people were being mad about it. 'Cause 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 synonymous with the problem anyway. - Troy is quite a, quite a poor film. - That's garbage. - Quite a poor film. So I don't mean. in any of the, like, bad faith nonsense that people speak more like the question of the complicated portrait of Odysseus, how would people in a modern context receive that? I'm 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 doesn't 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. The value of the hero's fate is never happy, which is also kind of in this context and one of the Wilson passages in the intro, you know, it's something 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 probably 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, I mean, this is men plunder immediately. They leave Troy, they've got a lot of, in the text, they've got a lot of treasure, they've got a lot of slaves on board, they've got a lot of women that they kidnapped and all this sort of stuff like that. And then immediately they start to plunder the various towns on their, on their way with a quickness. And so that's what makes it tanguously. Some of it, in the story, is a question of intention and need. 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 prompt, comes at the end, actually. Like, obviously, it's president, all of the trials. I think the, I think the polyfamous cyclopsie that you know, you know, that is a great example. And like, you know, the kind of pettiness of what he does. You won, you got out, that all your men did. Keep going. Yeah, you know, the literal stick in the eye and then the arrow and the eye, all of it. And, you know, then I think we end up feeling like pity for polyfamous, which is like a pretty amazing thing to watch. But at the end, and this is why I said, I thought it's for me a little hard to separate from what we hit next, when we be this transitions into it. Yeah. There is 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 into exile, right? That is a violation of, guess 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 the story kind of asks us to consider, well, what is the difference between the shooters 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. They're kicking Argos, which like horrific to watch. They're kicking like Wuzama. Awful. Don't kick like Wuzama. You know, and of course, the initial beggar we see at the beginning in 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 feed, 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 shooters have worked and leveraged for their gain at great cost, right? What version of that is Odysseus and our Odysseus is men inflicting on the places they visit and they travel upon? And then what does he do that? Violet, it's some sort of sacred thing, even though we want him to do it and are glad that he does. So Zinnia is the name is the Greek word for this idea of Zeus's law in Nolan's version, Gasterites in Game of Thrones, if you prefer. Zinnus means host, it means a lot of things, but it means host, stranger friend, foreigner. We get Zinnaphobix, Zinnophilic from that. Right. Basically, I agreed to feed in house you, you agreed to do me no harm during your stay. And Wilson talks about this in an 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 the core of almost every single one of the, you call them trials, but adventures, trials where we prefer to call it that Odysseus's men undertake in the book, polyphemous, violates Zinnia by like literally eating these men. He does not feed them, he feeds upon 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 polyphemous eating or Cersei and Hermione, et cetera, et cetera. Incredible sequence. What is so interesting to your point about this story is that, you know, in a black and white version of these stories, whoever violates Zinnia, this core idea of the social contract is a monster, but Odysseus and his men constantly violate Zinnia 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 thoughts are burning behind them, right? And there are these men being like, they're like, oh, we're carrying a terror. We're not the people, we're Greeks. We're, no, you know, but they're taking, because they can. And this whole thing starts, you know, Paris, our guy, the Prince Paris, Orlando Bloom, and the Troi movie, if you prefer, violates Zinnia in the very first place by going in a mental house and taking his wife. That's, 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 Zinnia 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 you mean? The bookend of the war, being this violation of Zinnia, which is what Odysseus is like, we broke the world. Like this is the behugest violation, is under the guise of the gods, 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. In 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. Harrowing, guess what? It's great. Guess what this movie rules? Anything else you want to say about Zinnia? I guess rights. Zeus's law. Over here. We covered it. I think we covered it. Again, very thrown, Zinn, as you said, you know, it's. Calypso. Yeah. A very hospitable host. It seemed great there. No, we have a very amusing text thread going with one of our colleagues, your shall remain nameless. Are we not going to name it? [LAUGHTER] It's like, that's you. You were going to think he's gone. Yeah, who do we work at this day, but I've been. Why go home? Actually, that's it. I'm with Calypso. Seemed great. Not enough shade for my taste. I would not stay on that version of Cliffs of Violet. In the book, she lives in a lush leafy paradise. Yeah. I would say they're perhaps forever, but not on the boiling shore with no shade. OK. Who lives who dies who tells your story? I apologize for the Hamilton reference there. As of 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? Could dream of a more Nolan arrangement. We have several narrators here in layers of the story to uncover. So as you mentioned, we get the story of the Trojan horse told in three acts, essentially. We get the horse, as experienced by Sinon, inside the horse, as told by Menelaus. And then the horse on fire is recalled by Odysseus. Yeah. It's masterpiece. This was really, really, really excellent. And for me, this is excellent no matter how you slice it. But for me, and you mentioned this connection to like momentum inside of this, how the telling of a 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 with the rope on the door app right? as the silent descent from the belly of the horse. - Is this the takeaway and the thing we should be focusing on now? 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, I think the belly. - No, no, no, I mean, I know that. - Yeah. - The horse, the head part, I'm not sure, but the belly is definitely like, you know, we took a ship. - For sure. - We took a ship. - Yeah, no question. - 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 it's male, mental a** is turned and we get the exit from the horse and the desperate bid to open the gates. I'm moving towards the score. It's giving us a cardiac 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 will they get the gate open in time and oh my god, they have to get the gate open in time. And then they do. And then in walks, fucking Darth Vader, Agamemnon, and we'll find out what happens after that. But just that vision of Agamemnon is in itself, like, oh fuck. But still, we are rooting for Odysseus and his men to win in that moment. The guy, you know, the cleverness of the trick. 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 people we see milling about in the absolute calamity of the war itself, the battle itself, there are no human figures on the Trojan side of this story. Rose Burns not here. Yeah. Yeah, but like, you know, Paris isn't here. Prime isn't here. Hekiba isn't here. Like none of these, 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, my 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 brought. And inside of that mentallyist storytelling sequence, you know, the film itself constantly is asking you to interrogate who's telling this story, right? Mentalist talks about gossip of Odysseus Somsay. Somsay. Somsay is rich, Somsay is poor, Somsay this, Somsay that, right? So who's telling this story is a Travis Scott? Is it somebody else? Actually, I thought the Travis Scott stuff worked really well. I wore my Travis Scott's today. One of my pairs of Travis Scott, of course. A.J. One lows to, I had quite a great thought that was super effective. But Helen's incredulity, righteous, factory, you know what I mean? Like, there's just a constant, like we hear Mentalist's origin. What she's telling for Odysseus's 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 out there. Yeah. And let's not worry about the rape and desecration of Troy. Right. Unsurprisingly, I thought that Bertol was great. Mentalist 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 a 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. We can't recommend it. We got an email from a listener this morning who saw on my tweet about how the movie is trash. And he's like, but have you watched the director's cut? It's very good. I'm not going to. Well, I have. I've got my recent life theme my time. But I texted you in van. I was like, I really forgot that like mentalist has just gone in the chiffy in that version of it. It is bizarre. The mentalist telemicus stretch in the text is such a fascinating insight into all of the themes that you just outlined in these corrigreek ideas. Zeus's law, guess, 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? It's really interesting. But also the tales that Menolaya 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 Menolaya's account of like, how many other people have some version of this? 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-- A bombastic. Yeah, boastful. And then we caught 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 cameras like overheat after five minutes or so 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. I didn't crushed it. Amazing stuff. 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 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. There are also ways in which the scarring looks like a cracked statue. 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 the righteous nature of this thing, very effective and powerful. I liked that we then got the additional beat of the, the bird hunt. Oh, I like that. The next day, not only because we have the hunting parallel then 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 guidance. Right. You got, yeah, exactly. And the like horror killed his, killed his own mom, mom, which not every text has that detail. So like this deliberately puts that in there to sort of give a text as Clytemnestra being the one who kills. Exactly. So to have that there as a, a warped version of the Penelope telem again. 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 God's destroyed, who has, 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, I'm just like, I'm basically 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 to Lemakus 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 do. 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 Tenoas's repeated lie I wanted 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? Sinon saying, in the flashback when Odysseus is like, why did I have to, why did I have to be you here with the horse? And Sinon says, you know, tell my father how well I did. Quote, feel free to add some stuff. Yeah. That got a chuckle. Oh, it's really funny. But like the delivery was really funny. But like the thin line between later, Sinon will be like, you're a liar. Yeah. That same character says, feel free to add some stuff. So the thin line between a liar and an embellisher. Like what's, you know, what is, what is it right? When is it wrong? Yeah. Penelope and, and you may as in 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 League. You liked it so much. You ate it so-- But I love it. So Lish. Were you thinking about Cobb and Malin 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 Cobb and Malin exception front, you mentioned the totem tie earlier, but the pin, that also ends up unlocking something about for us about truth and lies, right? This idea that like, you know, telemacus is like, don't lie. She's a way of knowing, right? I don't know what it is. And it's merely the, and accessory that-- Odysseus could have lost it any moment. - And also, like, I'm sure someone else, like, someone else probably has a pin that like, they wear a pathina that someone could have said, "Oh, this person had enough." - One of a kind. - Oh, one of a kind. - Wild stuff. But it works, right? And so this idea that's 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 muse. - What, how do you know what's true? What can anchor you in that truth? Fascinating. - And really interesting. - I mean, I love the meditextual aspect of that in that. - Yeah. - What was the Trojan War? - Yeah. - We're not completely clear. There's been, like, archeological research into this, but it's just sort of like, our idea of the Trojan War comes mostly from these stories. - Yeah. - 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. - Argos, the boy who waited. A little doctor who referenced for you. - Thank you. Thank you for that. - I just want to clear the decks for you. Again, I did hear you crying during this. - Yeah. - And I wanted to like, reach across Yasi who was sitting between us and like, "I really almost reached across Yasi to hold your hand." But Adam was right there. So presumably your husband hold your hand. - That was cooked. Yeah, we were doing a lot of this to each other. You know, I won't talk about it for a long 'cause 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. He was a big dog guy and he turned to me. It was like, "Murph, we wait for me." Which, I was crying and very sad, but didn't make me. Chocolate also was very sweet. - On Bill who saw Roshan and I were sitting and we're like, "No, we're not gonna sit with you by." - It was just simply not where you sit, and I'm ex. And I'm ex. You were like, "I'm not sitting here, Bill's like, "I'm going with Mallory." As Mallory goes, "It goes with my nation." So Bill Simmons, okay. The Argos stuff is perfect, gut-wrenching, 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 telemicus watching it. I was like, "This is so good." Holy shit. Not a fan of the tossing of the other puppies over the cliff. - Not great. - That's a no for me. - You may as you have some notes. - That was tough. Yeah, we've got some notes for the swine herd. 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. - 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 is so beautiful. But then there's also the like, it's a touch, it's like, he knows. It's the declarity, right? And that's why Tamellicus witnessing this is like, "Fundeniably, this is my father." And they have already been through this. - He does need an Athena pin. - Exactly. And they've already been through this, this circumstances 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 was walking around in a guise, 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 Hockens who plays one of the suitors, who was like, particularly cruel to the dog when he gets an arrow in the neck, like, our theater was just like erupting. - Yeah. (laughing) - All right, you mentioned this guy's is, anyone can wear the mask. It's fascinating mask work from the Batman Band Guy in this movie, right? So like, for most of the time as we mentioned, the surgeons are like heavily masked. We don't see their faces. It's only when Odysseus was calling 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. Haga Memnon. This is a fascinating one to me. Okay, obviously this armor is an incredible piece of work on a lot of the posters that sort of like, golden vertebrae off the, on the back of this incredible armor design. Again, real Vader energy from, from our guy, Haga Memnon. But even when he arrives home, his greeted, bathed, anointed, were mostly on the back of good old Benny Safty's. - The curls. - The head. It's only when he's killed by Clytemnestra. And even then she's got her hand of her, like part of his face was really just like, the top of his face. And I had a bunch of people ask me when we got to the movie, they're like, who played Haga Memnon? And I'm like, well, I just saw up and I'm right, so I'm here to tell you this. This is Benny Safty's eyebrows. - I've seen them recently. What's your read on this, on this cloaking of Haga Memnon? It was almost, I'm a Benny fan. It was almost jarring to hear him. I think he's like quite a compelling performer. His like performance in the curse is one of the most batchet things I've ever seen. Quite excited to talk about him in Oppenheimer. When he talks, when he finally, 'cause I was like, oh, they have decided to not have Haga Memnon speak, right? 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, oh, this movie rolls. - Fucking, I'm 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 then the heroin, 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 the reminds me, I don't get back to Haga Memnon a second, but to go back to what you were saying earlier with the sun god in the cattle. And there's like a version of it in terms of how we process Odysseus's sense of self and morality. We're 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 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 illusion of free will. There's always that layer there. The Haga Memnon, there's the cautionary tale 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 a 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 there was 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 like about? - That's not how the armor should look. - Oh, sorry, I didn't see it directly off of that design, but like, oh yeah, I saw all the costing complaints that the armor design complaints above on. I'm like, look, fucking sick, and I'm like, this is a myth, what are we gonna do? - Yeah, there's that, right? Just the kind of heightened quality of it, 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 mental A is like, where's my sick armor, bro? - I think, I think mental A was exactly where he needed to be, which was the belly of the horse. - Yeah, exactly, and talking about the piss on the shit, as he so memorably did recounting it at the feast. - Um, so when he talks, when Benny Savdie speaks, what heck, I'm not speaking, and I'm like, that's just a dude, it's just a man and a can, you know? And it's so, it's so effective. - Do you think that would have been even 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 in all the forces of grandpa. - 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 to feet over everyone around him. - Okay, like, covering, like, their floating forward. - 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. - Yeah. - And when it's him running from his dead men, - Incredible. - So good. - Incredible. - All right, the piggy men and their disguises, of course. Back in your disguises. - This was shit. - Dude, how? Okay, can I just ask you a kind of dumb question? - How literally, how do they do this? - Make up. - But how? - Make up. - But I, and so it's like an intro, but how? - It's an amazing way. I think it's a. There are 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 there's a ton of digital effects, and he'll talk about that, too, as well. Yes. And the way that they manage to get the IMAX cameras on all of the places and things they need to be the mirror. The mirror actors had to look at. - That was talked to each other. - Back shit. There's like a three or four minute little feature at, I think it might, is it actually like on the IMAX YouTube channel or something? I might have been-- - I don't know. I saw Ann Hathaway and Tom Holland talk about it in interviews. - They had a little feature at about how they did the mirror thing. I watched that, I was like, how is this movie coherent? You couple that with knowing that the, you know, the film reel only runs for the three to five minutes, like you said, and I don't know how they achieve this. And then the practical effects, and the number of places where a makeup or building a set and a structure and a physical location or a costume achieves a sense of 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. And the commitment to having the makeup pulled on their faces to give us the effect of transforming human into big 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 it was assisted with digital, like I want to give credit to the digital artists who I'm sure helped clean stuff up. One of the, you know, we'll come back again to the witch, of course, you will. But one of the things that I was like so fascinated by in that sequence was the, like, whatever see, like eel or whatever it is, there was a meeting 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. That was incredible. Helen's cracked face that we already mentioned was it's the face that launched thousands of ships in burnt, the topless towers of Iliam shout out, Christopher Marlow. And then Odysseus who shows up and, and claims Sinon's name. And we should say, Sinon is not a character that shows up in Homer's story, shows up in the Aenean and a bunch of other versions. And in fact, like Sinon 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 Sinon is different. But this is a character that Nolan plucked from other tellings of the tale to put in here. But like Odysseus is taking on Sinon's name. Athena as the priestess. Telemacus 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, 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 in her stellar is this like incredible, you know, physical performer, if you've seen Lee Jin or just like a number of his 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. So good. But like the evolution again, it's sort of like the, the story of the horse in three parts to like meet polyphemous as like just this wordless monster who gobble, you know, we see just like chunks of guy come out of his mouth. Supergirls. And then we like hear him talking. He speaks, right? And then later on the ship, that beast was the son of Poseidon. So so peeling back the 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 worse Jack Quaid. I knew every single actor. Who's the human of this sequence? Because I'm Dr. King. So yeah, so doing that with the Cyclops as well, this sort of like, you know, telling the story of this creature's humanity. Now, does he go right into eating a disassessment? 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? There are invaders in his home. They're eating his cheese. That cheese was 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. 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 has heard. 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. The 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 to make sure that it's not dudes. But it's also, but it's also very sweet. It's like a very sweet, it's like a very sweet. He's like, he's checking that it's not his turn to speak at all. 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, a few Jackman would tell of this movie. I finally saw that movie. Oh, so good. The life of my god. I knew I would love it, but out of what I watched it, it's streaming now. Yeah. Jeez, did I cry? Yeah. What a great movie. Yeah, amazing. Oh, good script. Oh, the telemache. As you mentioned, the first four books of the Odyssey, it's about telemicus. Our guy. So no one's like, bet. Got it. I'll guess better, man. What this serves to do, narratively. Yeah. Among other things, is put this ticking clock on Odysseus's journey home, right? Every misstep, every step back, every, I'll just fuck Cersei for a year on the silent. Everything that Odysseus does, there's parallel at home. The suitors are at home. There's only so many nights, Penelope can unwed that tapestry before someone, meagoth, narks 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 gotta get home. You already talked about the modern language and how it works for you. I gotta 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, mom, dad's coming back. Not my favorite. The rest, 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 to that, because it was pretty great. Really, really good. That's not about Annie Hathaway. Penelope. What do you think? I think it has no king if I need Snow King. I thought, I, you know, I mean, I love her, like, the fairly, the slightly tantrum-y way. She says, I want Odysseus as she storms out of the room at one point. I thought she was great. 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, uh, the pods. Um, you know, we spent a good amount of our time chronicling the, uh, in Oppenheimer specifically, I would say, a gin bottle could play the role of Emily Blunt's character. Wow, um, could a gin bottle ride on a horse that well? I guess it's properly strapped into a salad just along, so slosh. The way that Kenny Oppenheimer was, I've at least sloshed it on her face off stuff. Um, you know, Penelope is, uh, 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, uh, 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, oh, this is a good return in a scene, of course, he said he would return, I, you know, um, 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 interstellar, and what's wonderful here, um, you know, to see the genuine connection and affection between them, I love that. 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, well, I love how that scene starts, where she's just like lying. on his back in this way, and they're already rumpled, they're already about to get rolling around. - No, it's about to get more rumpled. - 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 gonna come back. I need to believe he's gonna come back. I don't wanna marry any of these guys. And there's the horror. - Even you, Rob Pattinson. - Even you. - But I gotta say, here's what I'll say about Rob Pattinson in this movie. - Yeah. - 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 sort of like the way that Rob is sort of like, physically embodying him and just sort of like. - Yeah, you're sort of supposed to be your pulse, you know. There's like enough of the charm when you see him with like the me and goth character on your skin. - There's something to be smitten, but. - There's something about like Rob Pattinson'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 great on the Batman Cowell. Like all this stuff like that, but there was just like a way, it's like the way he's leering and eating and all this sort of stuff like that, it's just like. - Also, by design. - Real dipshit haircut, you know. - Yeah. - Real dipshit haircut. - I have some hair notes for Rob. (laughing) So, you know, we're supposed to feel the threat of this incursion and this violation in 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 that 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, it'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 fact that Penelope is unable to do the thing that she wants 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 gonna 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. - So there's the interpretation of when does she clock it and what does she do with that information? - Right. - I will say, I loved that hood design on it. Like really good hood design of like slightly plausibly. Covers his face plus he's so much older, you know, so much greater than when last he saw it. - It's really for me the voice. Like so in-- - Behind this grain. - Yeah, in the return, this is with all of the versions of this. - You like the return. - You want to turn it around? - I don't, I just watched it. - I just really recently watched it. - That's very, to the impression of my mind and also I do love Ray Fines. And I was like, I was, that Juliette Benosh 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 like cover for the fact that it is totally implausible that even with two decades fasting, 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 touches. Like, so when Penelope says the moment has come, I'll make my choice. There will be a challenge. There he is. The one who can actually do it. And it's like very, I, you know, I like to think that she knows that, right? - 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, like I can't, and she like turns away. And so is it like, is it 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 Wall, sure. Someone like that, but they were 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 dead bottle? Yes. Okay. 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 horror. I mean, Oppenheimer is horrific, but is it a horror movie? But when you watch the chunks of Ithacan men fall from Polyfumus's mouth and then the whole source sequence, which is a search history horror. And then the on the Catapasus baby, it's an underworld journey, the underworld sequence, the like dabbing in the blood and all of that. I think it's so funny, my not funny, my, my really good friend is taking her young son who like loves Greek mythology and has read the like graphic novel of Odysseus and is really excited and was like correcting on her on like skill and cryptus and like all the sorts of like that. But she was like, she's like is Charlie gonna be scared? Yeah. And I was like, maybe the Cersei stuff might scare him. I was like, the Polyfumus stuff is like a little, it is scary, but like the body, the extended body, it goes on for a while again. I think the Cersei stuff is the most unsettling by the horror. And I think it's fantastic. Yeah, it's great. I love this depiction of Cersei's. I think Samantha Morton is amazing in this performance. We're really, really, really good. Like Catwoman asks sort of like, how did herbie don't hurt me? Sort of like moment when, you realize it shows up except like that. We get along better this way. I can't help it. Oh yeah. With her sister has a birth. Really, really, really good. This version of Cersei in the text is a hot as, it can not be hot as fuck in Chantris, 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. When is he gonna do? Is that thing? Is there something else to do? Are you gonna not fuck the hell with? I mean, come on. What's, how's the dragon time? Anyway, this Cersei's much more in line kind of with Madeleine Miller's depiction of her sort of, but like closer to in terms of like, Cersei is a woman who has been assaulted and traumatized and like, when these men show up, she is like doing some preemptive transfiguration because she has, when Odysseus asked in the army, they would have. They would have because men have, you know. What is their nature? Look at them. Look at them. Know your own men back in your disguises. And also the singing, like how is she singing when she's like transforming them? Yeah. So, so good. And then the underworld. So, I just wanna read this section from the Emily Wilson translation because it's just like, Christopher Nolan's like, yeah, I've been in it. Oh yeah. Screenplay, right? Quote, I took the sheep and slit their throats above the pit. Black blood flowed out. The spirits came up out of Arabus 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 if let me think about it. And many men cut down 40 and battle by bronze spear is still dressed in armor, staying with their blood from every side, they crowded around the pit with eerie cries. I just thought the sequence was incredible. And again, I thought, I thought Elliott Page was really good throughout. I love the choice to like sort of have the blood kind of like burble from Sinon's mouth as he's talking, sort of like spitting the blood. Theresa's also incredibly spooky and wonderful. And I thought it's 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 heaty stretch and the thirsty stretch really do stand out. I quite like the polyfumus stretch as well. It was all good. The thirsty stretch just talking about that made me think of another thing I loved about that sequence 'cause 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. Right, so and Odysseus is on the hunt, right? They have left him behind. Is it you should stay? Is this a mutiny? That's up to you. - No. - We who are still alive. - Amazing. - Eurelica says. It'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 watch. get to because Hermes isn't here to be like, "Hey, exactly, exactly." Here's a special thing to choose, 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 in a questioning of, it's like, you know, because it's honorable. Honorable. 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 Haney's stretch, similarly, is like the two confront the loss. The specific lion deception was sent on, but more broadly, this field of the dead, 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? 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 on 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 Elpinor, yeah, I love all this. And to talk again about the absence of the gods, to remove Hermes from the Cersei 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. Or sort of like him figuring out in this tense teta-teta with this witch how he can survive and clocks the bird and all these other things. And so it's cunning. I think that's just like a much richer version of the story. Seeing their rings. They wouldn't love without them. Yeah. Another totem. That's right. Okay. Nolan's first musical. I mean, here we are. Okay. Drinking sequences. To me, there's only, to me, there's only two options and it's either Odysseus we're calling what actually happened to Troy and the treasure Norse bring. Or what happens here and it's not just because it's a musical. But like the sirens. We see the decision to dampen the audio and audio as Eurelicas puts the wax in his ear. And the decision to like 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 Andorr. Yeah. Like we don't hear the horror we in the streaming we see what it does to Bix. Great comp. Really good. Tough. Mary. The score though, the the the the the the Gorenzen score here, the the sort of harmonic, another Oscar coming for for Ludwig. How could I mean, yes, I would kind of amazing how many Oscars is about that word me I would, but. See what what Hans digs up for doing three true. But the the choral ascension, you hear it again when Odysseus 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 of my friend Cara Warner was sitting on the other side. They were like, you took notes the entire time. Also, they look demented because I'm not used to taking notes that are so I was impressed because I I could see over Yasi, but I was like, how yeah, I could not do that. It's super 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 you learned it and were there five that I could not read? Yes, because I was like, I have no idea what I was thinking in this moment. Oh no. But this is what I wrote down because this 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 and this is like where I almost cried because like that is to your point earlier, this great point you made earlier about the universality of this story. When you read the best poetry that you read uses very specific language to pluck the bowstring of universal truth, something that we all feel and articulated 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, Christopher Nolan had this in him. I was talking to Rob Honey 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 they were like, well, I'm gonna know what you most can't have is what you already had and lost, I think this is like an absolute lethal bit of writing from Christopher Nolan. 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 distinction in circumstance, right, everyone else will put wax in their ears, but Odysseus is special. So he's gonna try to do something different. There's like a little bit of the, the brash quality of timing of 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. They were sealed, they were sealed, but yes, 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-troit 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 an emotional truth? Yeah. Well, 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. Because I think the story in general, this version of it, you know, gives us such a nuanced and layered view 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, I'm going to be the subject of, well, I am. A Homer has been looking for a third text, so Joe is up. The Joanna ad. Doesn't roll. The Joanna. Well, let's workshop. Yeah. We're going to work out. The robbing. You want to see that? We want to see that. We want to see that. We want to see that. We want to see that. But that sounds like Joe to see. So that's not. Maybe something with Robinson. We'll think about it. Okay. We'll get back to it. Yeah. Send us some ideas. There are 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. That was a relation to the ending. Or, yeah. When it's like, when is he home? Yes. Yes. - That's reflected in this movie when Penelope is 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 a choice for Nolan to keep the sirens and the aquatic life in the distance and focus on Odysseus's screams and cries and wails. - That's, that's what he's interested in. - The fact that there's 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. - Sure. - Was it just actual sea lions and did you hope that it was hot naked babes singing to you? - Where were you on the as various a merman theory for all those years? You were pro, super pro. I wanna show you a painting. Sorry, this is not great podcasting. I have this art book, my sister gave me years ago, called From the Deep, called From the Deep. And it's all of these, there's like a bunch of depictions of Cersei. It's all these beautiful, perafelite paintings of water-based stories. So there's a lot of nymphs, a lot of like whatever. But there's nymphs. - Great, but there's a lot of Odysseus in the sirens. And this one by Draper is my favorite mostly because of Odysseus's face. 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 I clad and much kelp. - It's draining. - I clad and much kelp folks. - Straining to get to them. I always love that painting. - That is amazing. - Yeah, wow, one of my faves. All right. So you give which a bizarrely unhorny Odyssey, okay? So after breaking the sea on the explicit sexual content with Oppenheim, which we will eventually talk about. Nolan is back in the in the Chase Lane, which is a fascinating choice given the fact that the church and war was started because among other things, Paris could not keep it in his pants. - That's right. An active lust. Also Agamemnon and his trading route, which is, but, you know, in the text Odysseus bucks at least to women on his way home to Faithful Penalty. Cersei, for a year. - Yeah. - I mean, yeah. - Calypso for several years. - Nearly a decade. (laughing) - Nostika, if you're inclined to read between the lines. - Yeah. - Possibly the Trojan Queen, Hecky Burnham, far more disturbing fashion. I would not call that consensual. Here we have some chase hand holding between Odysseus and Calypso to sort of like, - Feeding some lotus leaves. - Just their fingers tangling as they walk along the surf, and that's about it. Some sexy naked sirens in the distance, some side boob for Manhattan away. (laughing) - Yeah. - I suppose that Odysseus who fucks his way home would undermine Nolan's aim to tell what he is described as a quote middle-aged love story. - Yeah. - But what is your thought about this like, an unsensual version of the Odyssey? - Interesting question. Three quick thoughts. - Right. - One, I do think that the panellopean 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. - Correct. - And you know what? - Don't want it. - I don't want it. - Yeah. - Jurassic tonal shift coming here for point number three. (laughing) - Wait, my God. - Lash yourself to the mask. - To the winds are changing. (laughing) - You can't convince me that you liked it so much. You ate it so willingly. - It's not the harniest thing that's ever been in a Nolan movie. - Sorry. - Sorry, Florida's Pew riding a fully clothes man. - In a interrogation scene. - Okay. - To the monsters for the monster. I love you, you're a very special person. To the monsters for the monsters. This is the conclusion. Okay. So like, here's the deal. The Odyssey doesn't have a really great clean ending. Again, it ends like five different times. Real return to the king energy here. Is there a meta commentary in there about like, when is, when are you finally home? When is you finally done? We fight the suitors. We fight the suitors family, like blah, blah, on and on. It goes. In Homer's version, there isn't really exile for Odysseus. So there is some indication of like ongoing water lust. 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 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. I don't usually do that. Yeah, as I age to like, either learn or maybe remember new things I once knew this, but I don't remember that I do this. So at the end of the story after Odysseus cops to break the world with the Atomic Bond, the Trojan Wars, he talks about the collapse of civilization and written language briefly disappearing. Hey, guys, an entire prophet. 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. So like, this was not recent. Like, he wasn't like, Trojan War happened yesterday and here, thus I have reason. Wasn't filing on deadline. Sure wasn't. Okay, great. The circumstances surrounding collapse are perplexing, but several problems to 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. So a distance gets to be a profit. He's like, we're gonna have a dark age. Civilization will rise again. And she's like, why sing master? And he's like, 'cause 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 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? There's a 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's Batman and the Joker? And also see people. Yeah. I mean, this question of the mistaken identity or like, are they actually the sea people but also the larger like, well, what do you inspire others to do? Just, it's, yeah. I mean, the dark night very present as connective tissue and text to that idea. Civilization does rebound though, don't worry. And Homer. We're back probably a bunch of guys credit as Homer right the idiot in the honesty. Exile, not death made me think of our guide, Dr. Jonathan Crane. Sure. Yeah, always death by exiled by that, you know, all the same man. Really, you can't go home again. Yeah, I don't even think pretty thick. It did. I don't know. What about sliding on what happened in your belly? What happens if you put a flare on it? Not great. I smell. 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 got, too? Boy, I had a lot of fun discussion. I had a great time. I think the last quote I'll read, I think just like, take a sound. Sums up a lot of what you just did 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 decided, 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 interest in engaging with that. I think it is like something that could go so, so, so wrong and be a version of what we see before a lot of the characters in the story, which is like a heuristic pursuit of something you should. and 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. - As 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 on this movie. But guess what? It's sick. - That whole story is just amazing. - I also say the sort of 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, Gorenzen'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. Let's say you can give three Oscars 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, Dune Messiah. And we're like, it's time. - Yeah, right. - Let's do the return of the gang, 11 Oscars, here we go. Accounting for that possibility and hoping our heart right now, this is the best picture winner, best director. Let me say this. I haven't seen nearly as many movies this year, so I don't know how I'm going to come in. - There's a ton of competition in the first half of the year. Like Project Hill Mary, something that we're talking about. - Which I adore that movie. I really like Bone Tumple. I wouldn't put Project Hill Mary up against this, but we haven't even hit the thick of Oscar season. - Yeah, so who knows? But I think this will be, it's hard to imagine that's not remaining, a very strong contender for a picture nominated. - Yeah, no question. - Obviously. How is this not going to be a 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 that adapted screenplay. Cinematography. - Three. - Three. - Edit it. - You were allowed three. - Edit it. - You were allowed three, you have to 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 performances. - I think it's really gonna depend on how Damon's playing in, and he's already playing and actually very, there's already this narrative of like, oh my god, Damon hasn't done anything that's good and so long, and don't we like to remember our movie stars? And wouldn't it be nice to give him an award for that? So again, I don't think, I think Gosling's better than in Project Home Area than Damon is in there. - I would give Gosling the Oscar for best actor, for right now. - But maybe it'll be Timmy. - But it's gonna be a narrative or not. And I, Timmy has shown himself ill-equipped to play this play, but it's just a great moment. - I think, you know, Damon's on for move on. - I forget Amy Puller's podcast and being charming as hell, like he's already playing it. And he knows, he's gonna know to like, go away for a little bit, like Michael B. Jordan didn't and then come back, that's the move. It's a great move. All right, to three. I just think it's gonna win more than three Oscars. - I don't care, this is the prompt. (laughing) - 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 wanna say cinematography, but score is very tough, not to pick. 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, the 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 three. Okay, we'll see you for Oscar season. We'll see you from our house, the dragon. We'll see you for the list at 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 ringsy Lord of the Ringsy stuff in the fall and Dune and lanterns. Doomsday, have you heard of it? To play face? We'll see you soon. Thank you too, our crew. - That's right. - All of whom we'll make it home. - I hope so. - Yeah. - Our, our dinner at Cal. Jacob Cornett. Scott Lee. Carla Sheriboga. Am I missing anyone? Because I'm doing a play. - Good birthday, boy. - Show me a dinner on Happy birthday, my y'all. - Happy birthday, my y'all. - We'll see you soon, bye. (upbeat music)