Zeus’s Law

Earlier this week, I saw Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster rendition of Homer’s epic, The Odyssey. I tried to get tickets a few weeks ago, but the film’s popularity, my desire to see it in on an Imax screen, and my family’s difficult schedule meant I had to wait, but it was worth it. Because I have paid attention to critics’ reviews and because I am somewhat familiar with both the ancient story and the director’s other works, I went to see the film with definite expectations, yet, despite all the hype, certain aspects of the film—especially the role of religion in Nolan’s adaptation—caught me by surprise.

While it may seem silly to offer a spoiler alert for a 3000-year-old plot, I am aware that some of you will want to see the film completely fresh. If that is the case, you may want to skip this article entirely. For what it is worth, although basic plotlines and some aspects of Nolan’s adaption will feature throughout this piece, I will keep those distinctive elements that I think could spoil someone’s enjoyment of the film for the end of what I write, and I will let you know before I get to them.

First, as a reminder, The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’ tumultuous voyage home after the mythic Trojan War. That war was said to have been waged by the Achaeans (or Greeks) against the Trojans after Paris, a prince of Troy, took Helen, the wife of Menelaus, who was the King of Sparta, back to Troy as his own wife. As depicted in Homer’s The Iliad, after ten years of unsuccessfully besieging the city, the stalemate was broken when, at Odysseus’s suggestion, Achaean soldiers hid inside a wooden horse that the Trojans took into their city as an offering to the goddess Athena. At night, Odysseus and his companions snuck out of the horse and opened the city’s gate, allowing their compatriots to vanquish the enemy.

Of course, because this is Greek mythology, the story is significantly more complicated than that. Helen is not just the wife of a jilted Spartan king. She is also the daughter of Zeus. And the Trojan War, while described in earthly terms as a conflict that resulted from the actions of a jealous husband, also has its roots in a dispute among the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. And, to complicate the situation further, their argument over who among them was the most beautiful was itself the result of a trick played by Eris, the goddess of discord, who was angry for having not been invited to a wedding.

Although my classics teacher would shudder to read this oversimplification, when the goddesses asked a human to settle their dispute, he chose the goddess of love as the fairest among them, and, as a reward, Aphrodite caused Helen of Troy—said to be the most beautiful woman in the world—to fall in love with him. As you might guess, that man was Paris, which means that the war which began after he and Helen eloped, was not only the ego-project of a jealous husband but also the consequence of Athena and Hera’s own anger and resentment.

For those of us who are more familiar with the religious landscape of Judeo-Christian culture than that of ancient Greece, the idea of gods and goddesses interfering in human affairs to settle their own petulant arguments seems strange. Our God is above all of that. Perfect and complete in holiness and power, the God of Abraham is not subject to a wounded ego or a besmirched reputation. The psalmist may wonder how long God will withhold divine mercy from those who have offended God and have since repented, but the biblical portrayal of God in anthropomorphic terms rarely shows God in a staged drama that only engages humanity in a secondary or consequentialist way. Instead, our scriptural texts bear record to God’s saving work and grace—the history of God’s love for God’s people.

One of the challenges of translating The Odyssey into a film that contemporary moviegoers can enjoy was finding ways to show how the pagan deities are constantly shaping the narrative without doing so in ways that the audience finds unreasonable or off-putting. In Nolan’s take, most of the divine influence upon the characters happens without a visible manifestation of a god or goddess. A violent storm coincides with the invocation of Poseidon’s name, for example, but Nolan chooses not to show us an image of the vengeful god of the sea, instead allowing the audience to wonder how direct the divine cause and effect really are.

One aspect of Greek religious life that pervades the film is what Nolan calls “Zeus’s Law.” Over and over, characters are reminded that they must offer hospitality to strangers just in case the stranger is one of the gods in disguise. This is a loose adaptation of the ancient concept of xenia, but Nolan pushes the concept beyond what would have been expected of ancient Greeks. Instead of merely providing a meal to a stranger, the characters wrestle with what it means to treat others as they themselves would want to be treated. Several religious commentators have noted that, with Nolan’s spin, Zeus’s Law feels more like Jesus’s teaching from the Sermon on the Mount than an approach to ethics that would have been familiar to Homer, and, given the director’s recent films, that Christianization may be more than an attempt at cultural relevance.

Although I will not directly reveal any of the semi-surprise moments that unfold in Nolan’s film, I do want to discuss some of the specific ways he explores the psychological effect of war and the parallel cultural decline, which may feel to some like spoilers. If you want those insights to come as a surprise when you see the film, stop reading now.

Unlike Homer’s main character, who quite enjoys the reputation he has earned in war, Nolan’s hero struggles to come to grips with what has taken place on the battlefield and during his long voyage home. In the end, Odysseus’ return and subsequent victory over Penelope’s suitors is depicted as emphatically as it is in the Greek epic, but Nolan does not allow Matt Damon’s character to relish in it. While Homer’s Odysseus does battle with the gods on his way home, Nolan prefers to show him fighting off personal demons and haunting memories to great and compelling effect.

Repeatedly, Damon’s character rejects his comrades’ eagerness to mindlessly attribute their misfortune to the gods while still navigating the challenges presented by them. At times he even sounds like a post-modern critic of naive religion, but I do not think Nolan is trying to peddle a preference for Judeo-Christian monotheism. Instead, he seems eager to show his character’s desire to wrestle with existential forces rather than simply exist as a pawn in the deities’ game. By creating a character who endures psychological conflict as well as divine opponents, Nolan left me with a sense that he believes contemporary religion has something important to say about war, violence, hospitality, love, revenge, and cultural decline.

More than that, I think Nolan wants the audience to wonder whether cheap, thoughtless adherence to cultural expectations—especially those reinforced by religious institutions—are actually what is most wrong with society. Without giving away the main character’s particular crisis of conscience, I can say that the very enemies that he and his countrymen are most worried about attacking their homes and their way of life turn out to be themselves. And the way that Nolan portrays Odysseus struggling to accept the pervasive religious framework all around him while also confronting his own participation in it makes me think that Nolan is worried that the unholy marriage of Christianity and the political quest for earthly power may be our biggest threat.

In the end, The Odyssey is a wonderful, entertaining adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. Interestingly, despite faithfully following the prescribed plot, the title character may represent the most significant departure Nolan makes from the original. To say that this film is Christian or even that it features distinctly Christian aspects would be untrue, but the way it grapples with what it means to be a person of faith in a world in which for so many the practice of faith is no longer identifiably faithful is a powerful reminder of the need for all of us to return to the foundation of what we believe about God, ourselves, and the world around us. There is hope in Nolan’s telling of the story, but that hope is not found in what the characters have accomplished but in what is beyond their control—the promise of a new day.

Yours faithfully,

Evan D. Garner