The Odyssean Journey of Nolan Towards New Meanings for Homer

Abstract

A few years ago, the meme about guys thinking of the Roman Empire at least once per day went viral; now, Classics is back on the Internet—and all thanks to Nolan’s The Odyssey. The complaints about discrepancies between film and poem suggest that most people were expecting a faithful adaptation of Homer. But Nolan never promised a step-by-step mise-en-scène of the Greek text: his is a retelling and should be assessed as such. Classical reception, after all, is a creative process in which each reinterpretation extends the previous work—which is exactly what Nolan does.