A complicated man, simplified: On fidelity and its discontents in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026)
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is less an adaptation of Homer than a translation into Nolan's own cinematic language. Magnificent in scale and visually faithful to the epic, the film replaces divine intervention with psychological trauma, moral ambiguity with emotional clarity, and Homer's elusive trickster with a guilt-ridden modern hero. The result is a powerful film that honours the poem's grandeur while simplifying the very complexities that have kept Odysseus endlessly fascinating for three millennia.
Bentley’s ghost gets Wi-Fi: Homer, Horseplay and Odysseus in therapy
Scandal is not a modern invention — it is one of the oldest debts owed to Homer’s estate, payable, it seems, in perpetuity, by anyone brave enough to touch his verses. Wind the clock back to 1715, when Alexander Pope (1688-1744) — golden-tongued, ambitious, freshly ink-stained from the first volume of his Iliad — found himself cornered not by a rival poet but by something far more lethal: a philologist. Richard Bentley (1662-...
