TV/Movies Megathread

[Oexmelin]

It was entertaining enough, but for a movie based on chants, I found it singularly lacked poetry. I think Nolan, and many others, don't quite know how to deal with spirituality and supernatural beliefs - especially one from a time past.

It also had a hard time with the contrast between Odysseus and his men.  Odysseus didn't seem like a very impressive leader...

The dialogue was at times so jarring it took me out of the movie.

My colleagues in Film studies really like it - which I find very puzzling.

[celedhring]

My colleagues in Film studies really like it - which I find very puzzling.

Not surprised, there's a lot of catnip for film studies types.

And I gotta agree Nolan is doing interesting things film-language-wise in this and Oppenheimer. They're both pretty unique films in the Hollywood blockbuster landscape.

[Sophie Scholl]

...is it totally God/mythology/religion free? I haven't watched a trailer yet, but if it takes the same vibe as Troy, I'll be super disappointed. 

edit: Not surprised, but still disappointed.

[grumbler]

I don't see any issue with Odysseus having a spaceship. It's about home and the yearning for it and his journey etc so would work really well in a sci-fi adaptation.

So is Nolan's adaptation better or worse than the Coen brothers' adaptation?

[celedhring]

...is it totally God/mythology/religion free? I haven't watched a trailer yet, but if it takes the same vibe as Troy, I'll be super disappointed. 

edit: Not surprised, but still disappointed.

Hard not to be spoilerish here... but the supernatural elements of the voyages are all there. Circe transforming his crew onto pigs is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Also probably great PR for veganism, I don't think I'll be able to eat bacon in a while 

The movie then has a take on the role of divinity and the supernatural that's not the same as the original text (and it's a bit confused itself about what it's trying to say, imho), but the beasties are there.

[Sophie Scholl]

Nice!

[Sheilbh]

It also had a hard time with the contrast between Odysseus and his men.  Odysseus didn't seem like a very impressive leader...

So I've not seen it yet - but I will when I'm back near an iMax.

But this made me wonder - is Odysseus a good leader? I mean he starts out with 12 ships and returns alone on a ship not his own. And I think repeatedly the problem is his men do something stupid but normally they're not following his instructions because they don't trust him or think he's hiding something and is tricking them - and are they wrong to think that given everything else he does? If they did what Odysseus says they'd all be fine and get home very quickly. If they did what Odysseus says, they've not been paying attention to Odysseus

I think it's why the reception of Odysseus is so interesting. I think you get a sense of that "handle with care" in how he appears and recurs in Dante - who didn't have access to the Odyssey. Odysseus is in the 8th circle of hell for bad counsellors just above the centre, he tells of him convincing his men to sail on for new knowledge (in terms pointed at Dante himself): "you were not made to live as brutes/ but to pursue virtue and knowledge". And then I think of all the figures in the Inferno he is the one who recurs most. Dange recalls him in Purgatorio, in Paradiso. He is still, even as Dante is on those stages of his journey, Odysseus is there as a temptation coming back with his convincing rhetoric that is, fundamentally, a lie that will get you damned.

Certainly in the English speaking world he was not the major hero and the Odyssey was not the major epic until the 20th century. Far, far more emphasis was placed on the Aeneid (more accessible because more Latin readers than Greek) and the Iliad. The Odyssey and Odysseus are really recovered by the Modernists who absolutely love it - I think in part because it's a more fractured, disrupted text, it's a post-war world where there be monsters but also because I think of all the classical heroes and texts I think Odysseus is the one that stands out as psychologically complex and real. Which appeals to us and anyone post-Freud but is maybe less "instructive" for earlier generations.

I think that runs through Western reception of Odysseus. It's at the heart of the ambiguiuty in Tennyson's Ulysses (which is fantastic) that it is so persuasive and inspiring (Judi Dench reading a bit very well in the Bond film ):

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

But it is from the mouth of history's greatest liar ("that which we are, we are" - he's literally warning his audience - you know who I am, you know what I am ) and we know the people persuaded by him to follow him will die. It's tapping into the other myths of him doing one last fatal voyage beyond the pillars of Hercules.

I think it's all that which makes him the most interesting hero for 20th (and 21st) century readers compared with, say, Aeneas or Hector who are just boring

[crazy canuck]

...is it totally God/mythology/religion free? I haven't watched a trailer yet, but if it takes the same vibe as Troy, I'll be super disappointed. 

edit: Not surprised, but still disappointed.

Hard not to be spoilerish here... but the supernatural elements of the voyages are all there. Circe transforming his crew onto pigs is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Also probably great PR for veganism, I don't think I'll be able to eat bacon in a while 

The movie then has a take on the role of divinity and the supernatural that's not the same as the original text (and it's a bit confused itself about what it's trying to say, imho), but the beasties are there.

Nice!

Except it's not in the way that explains it through mythology or the gods. It's more like a fantasy movie that has magic in it.