Mer Méditerranée - Sète (1857), Gustave Le Gray
Hard to believe we’ve made it to the end of Odyssey Week! You probably don’t know, but I’ve planning to do this for months, ever since I learned that Christopher Nolan’s movie would have its official release today. That’s why — obviously — I wrote each of these five pieces the morning before I sent them. Duh.
And now here we are at the finale. The Odyssey the Movie comes out today, except that really it came out last night. I saw it with my parents and my 13-year-old daughter; to avoid spoilers, I won’t put my reaction right here — but you can follow this footnote1 to find out what I thought. Instead of a review, I wanted to include some Odyssey-related books and movies I love, for those of you who are looking to deepen your experience with the poem. This isn’t absolutely everything that’s out there — that list is infinitely long. But it will get you started on your own epic journey.
After The Odyssey
O Brother, Where Are Thou?
I’ll be bold: This Coen Brothers movie is the best adaptation of The Odyssey, period. Set in Mississippi in the 1930s, it follows escaped convict Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) as he tries, accompanied by his dunderheaded fellow escapees (played by John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson), to reach home, recover his stolen loot, and reconcile with his estranged wife (Holly Hunger). Along the way, they encounter sirens, a one-eyed Bible salesman, and Baby Face Nelson, and somehow wind up recording a hit record, “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Ulysses is the epitome of the silver-tongued tale-teller, a man who knows he has the gift of gab and uses it to avoid the harsh truths of what his actions and his absence have done to his family. Homer would unquestionably approve. Plus, the soundtrack rocks.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
As I wrote yesterday, Zachary Mason’s 2007 novel spins Homer’s tale out in all directions, imagining alternate beginnings, middles, endings, and postscripts to the epic — not to mention alternate points of view. Part Calvino, part Borges, it’s inventive, sharp, and entertaining, adding depth to The Odyssey with every chapter.
An Odyssey
This memoir by Bard professor Daniel Mendelsohn (who I interviewed the other day) is about his complicated relationship with his aging father, who one semester decides to audit his class on The Odyssey. You can see the book as a great way to explore the epic in greater depth (Mendelsohn’s explanation of the puns at play in the Cyclops’s cave is enlightening), but it’s also a moving story about fathers and sons attempting, in their own weird ways, to understand one another.
Circe
Rewriting Greek myths as modern novels is a bit of a cottage industry now, thanks to Madeline Miller’s 2011 The Song of Achilles. But her 2020 Circe is the better work, not only giving life and depth to the witch who famously turned Odysseus’s men into pigs but also imagining a (messy) future that knits together her family and his.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Steve Martin and John Candy’s hassle-filled (and hilarious) journey home to Chicago for Thanksgiving is as classic a tale in our time as The Odyssey was in Homer’s. Always worth a rewatch.
The Return of Martin Guerre
I haven’t seen this 1983 movie since junior high (!), but it has stuck with me ever since: Gerard Depardieu plays Martin Guerre, a 16th-century French soldier returning to his village after nearly a decade away at war. He’s accepted by his wife — tentatively, if I recall correctly, then whole-heartedly — but questions begin to crop up. Is he really Martin Guerre? After four decades, it’s probably time I rewatch it, too.
The Return
Both Daniel Mendelsohn and Zachary Mason recommended2 this 2024 rendition of The Odyssey, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. The twist: It is entirely about Odysseus’s arrival back on Ithaca, where the suitors are attempting to marry Penelope and kill Telemachus. It’s definitely interesting: While it nails the rustic poverty of Ithaca and the horrifying-but-quotidian nature of violence in the ancient world, and while the visuals are spectacular in a way Nolan’s Odyssey can’t quite match, it’s a little quiet for me. Everyone in Homer’s Odyssey is a talker, none more than our hero himself, whereas this movie’s silences go on far too long. Still, it’s worth a watch, especially in contrast to the bombast of the new Odyssey.
Interstellar
If you watch only one Christopher Nolan movie about a father attempting to return home to his family across the vastness of time and space, make it Interstellar.
What’d I miss?
Like I said, this is only a brief and incomplete list of what to read and watch after The Odyssey. Do you have favorites, either so well-known you’re aghast that I left them out or obscure treats you’ve been gatekeeping for decades? Let us all know in the brand-new Trying! community: This is a built-in forum where you and me and everyone else who reads this newsletter can discuss more or less anything we like. The functionality literally launched yesterday, so go check it out! 🪨🪨🪨
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1 My verdict: Meh. Nolan made some smart choices — in what he calls an age of “apparent magic,” the gods are all but absent — but he spends too much time on the fairy-tale adventures, and not enough on the politics, storytelling, and social relationships of his world. (Somehow it feels both rushed and draggy.) Worse, his decision to frame the epic as merely an antiwar story, with Odysseus a guilt-ridden warrior, is easy and, in the end, boring. It turns Odysseus into a drudge, robbing him of the cleverness, charm, and bravado that earned him his millennia-old reputation. Matt Damon, I know, can do that kind of thing, but here he’s just dutifully reading his lines. If you’re a completionist, go check it out, but otherwise, watch O Brother, Where Are Thou? instead.
2 More or less.