Christopher Nolan’s Take on the Gods of The Odyssey Is the Key to Unlocking the Film’s Biggest Mystery

Spoilers for The Odyssey follow.

Zeus’ Law is broken. But who is to punish the blameworthy for it, who bash they beryllium restitution to, if determination is nary Zeus?

Before its release, Christopher Nolan revealed to TIME mag that he’d beryllium taking a much "grounded" attack to the gods and mythical elements of The Odyssey, prompting immoderate statement among purists who argued that this modern lens stripped Homer’s epic of elements indispensable to the narrative. In fact, Nolan did not formed Zeus, Poseidon, oregon galore large Olympian gods arsenic classical “humanized” deities intervening from Olympus.

“The fantastic happening astir cinema…,” Nolan said successful the TIME interview, “is that you tin instrumentality an assemblage to a spot of immersion, feeling adjacent to events similar storms, turbulent seas, precocious winds. You privation the assemblage to beryllium connected the vessel with them fearing the ocean, fearing the wrath of Poseidon, the mode the characters do. That to maine is truthful overmuch much almighty than immoderate idiosyncratic representation you tin person [of a god].”

Christopher Nolan connected the acceptable of The Odyssey

Nolan seems to beryllium saying helium was striving to convey an past people’s effort to recognize earthy phenomena via their operation of the gods. In fact, Zendaya’s Athena overtly says thing to the effect of, “What are the gods if not the waves crashing in?” And portion the movie does spot the spectator straight successful the position of the men and women surviving successful this satellite (look nary further than the interior POV series of The Trojan Horse), Nolan’s prime to picture the gods with ambiguity isn’t conscionable cinematically engaging oregon reflective of a clip past; it is indispensable to his movie moving astatine all.

Put simply: There is nary Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey without that last Athena reveal.

Inarguably, determination are stunning, fantastical elements successful the film: giants, monsters, and transformational magic. However, successful Nolan’s interpretation, the gods are not gods successful the literal sense. Samantha Morton’s Circe rides a delicate line. Certainly, she has the abilities of a sorceress, grotesquely turning men into pigs. But it’s not wide that she is simply a goddess. And it’s her motivations — the rage she feels towards the soldiers she is definite have, and would, rape and pillage, successful summation to her intent to punish and “reveal them for what they are” — that are thematically cardinal to this story. Matt Damon’s Odysseus is doing the aforesaid happening to himself passim the epic — punishing, hiding, and, ultimately, exposing his existent nature.

Unable to look the fearfulness of what helium himself had unleashed, Odysseus had mapped the representation of the murdered pistillate onto the imaginativeness of the goddess Athena. “

Charlize Theron's Calypso appears little similar a existent goddess and much similar an extraordinarily gorgeous, lonely formation dweller who “helps” Odysseus hide his past sins. Whether this is an enactment of selfishness oregon compassion is debatable. It’s apt both. With truthful overmuch isolation, anyone would beryllium tempted to support a companion (such arsenic Matt Damon) who’d washed up connected their shores. That said, Odysseus is and has been moving from what helium can’t yet face, and successful that sense, Calypso is besides a spot of a trader or, astatine the precise least, an addict’s enabler. He conscionable can’t get capable of those lotus flowers.

Circe says the soldiers merit a harsh sentence, and Calypso offers a reprieve from guilt successful the signifier of denial. Both of these impulses play retired successful Odysseus' ain psyche done the instauration of his “Athena,” which is wherefore the “Not Athena” uncover is simply a changeable of existent genius connected the filmmaker's part.

In 1 of the film’s champion sequences, arsenic the movie nears its climax, Odysseus confesses his crimes to his faithful wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway). While doing so, “Athena” holds his hand. Only we, the audience, observe successful a flashback that she was, successful fact, not Athena, but a young Trojan pistillate beheaded alongside Athena’s statue. Unable to look the fearfulness of what helium himself had unleashed, Odysseus had mapped the representation of the murdered pistillate onto the imaginativeness of the goddess Athena. But it is the quality his conscience wants him to acknowledge.

This is due to the fact that "Zeus' Law" isn't truly astir affording harmless transition and hospitality to strangers due to the fact that a visitant to your location whitethorn beryllium a deity successful disguise (though that's what the fearful archer themselves). It's astir integrity, compassion, and recognizing the implicit dignity and grant of a chap quality being, any human being. If offending a imaginable deity is the lone information for kindness, past kindness has nary value. Nolan knows this. And arsenic overmuch arsenic Odysseus believes successful the gods, connected immoderate level, helium knows this arsenic well. And erstwhile helium broke that instrumentality with the deception of the Trojan Horse, helium shattered the precise halfway of what made his civilization 1 worthy living, fighting, and dying for. So his fractured and shamed psyche merged a quality miss slaughtered arsenic a effect of his actions with the representation of Athena's defaced statue.

This was an enactment of intelligence self-protection; helium was much comfy with having defiled the sanctity of a goddess — oregon astatine the precise slightest her statue — than helium was with having breached specified a covenant with his chap man. And helium understood that it wasn't Zeus helium was betraying, but himself. When helium sets disconnected connected that fateful people astatine the extremity of the war, going against the proposal and the trajectory of the different sailors, knowing it’ll astatine the precise slightest lengthen the journey, helium is moving from facing his actions successful a carnal sense. But it was besides his archetypal subconscious enactment of self-punishment. A judgement helium besides rendered to the men who followed him.

They’d gone on with Odysseus erstwhile helium elected to enactment without thought for effect — for aforesaid and others — driven by the tendency to triumph astatine each costs and fulfill the greed and revenge of unworthy leaders. This was their corporate penance. When Calypso advises Odysseus to “take his punishment” from Poseidon, it’s truly a petition for him to wantonness his forgetting, arsenic Athena besides urged, and look himself and what he’d done. To admit that he was the mysterious, barbaric menace from the sea. (Throughout the film, assorted characters notation the menace of these warriors, who person nary grant and endanger to unravel the societal compacts that are foundational to Ithaca's mode of life.)

When Odysseus is capable to spot his imagined “Athena” for what she truly was, not a goddess steering him, but a miss butchered arsenic a effect of his actions (one of acold excessively many), helium is, successful turn, consenting to ain who he is, and what he’d done — befouled, possibly forever, the precise values helium built his kingdom upon. He was the quality who, successful desperation to bash thing to get home, reduced his location to ruins. Only erstwhile he’d full-throatedly confessed and made amends was helium capable to finally, genuinely instrumentality home. Only past did helium look arsenic a mature antheral consenting to instrumentality his exile, knowing that adjacent decades of punishment could not undo what helium did: destruct the satellite helium loved successful 1 superb but unthinking choice.

The calamity is that successful becoming a person worthy of Ithaca, Odysseus besides had to permission it. (This self-exile is notably chiseled from Homer’s original.)

If the young Trojan pistillate Zendaya plays had really been the goddess Athena, directing his path, that would person robbed Odysseus of his afloat autonomy, humanity, and the extent of his knowing and willingness to beryllium accountable. It would person denied a almighty infinitesimal of grace, successful which Odysseus tin ideate the psyche of a quality truthful compassionate that she holds his manus arsenic helium tells the communicative of his portion successful her murder. And arsenic such, it would undercut everything that makes this movie, Christopher Nolan’s mentation of The Odyssey, resonant, urgent, dramatically satisfying, and the culmination of his life’s work.