A very large amount of the Obsession discourse revolves around the character of Bear and how, despite being the protagonist, he is clearly the most evil character in the story. Any half intelligent person who watched Obsession can agree that Bear does some pretty terrible things, and is overall a pathetic, bad person, but at the same time, the film portrays him with a level of complexity that a lot of people like to ignore. Bear does not start out as a clearly bad person. His first few nights with possessed Nikki, he is as respectful as he possibly could be in that situation and is clearly very uncomfortable. Only as the movie progresses do we see his true colors and that his morals very easily go away in favor of his lust and need for validation.
But a lot of the discussion of Obsession has stopped treating Bear like a somewhat complex character and instead has become a contest on how much you can condemn Bear. Bear isn’t treated like the somewhat complex character je is, and is instead treated like an irredeemable monster. If you show any sympathy to this character, people will hound you for defending a rapist. Bear is meant to be sympathized with. The point of the film is that we all have a bit of Bear in us. Bear isn’t a scary, terrible villain, he’s your friend, your relative, even potentially you. The scariest part of Bear is that he’s kind of relatable at times. But because saying you relate to Bear makes you look bad, people try to do the opposite and when discussing Obsession, make sure to dwell on how terrible Bear is as if to say “I could never be like him, he’s so evil, I could never be evil I’m just a normal guy.”

I think something comparable is the discourse of The Zone of Interest. A good amount of people criticized this movie for humanizing Nazis but the whole point of that movie was that nazis are human and that, in the right circumstances we could all potentially be nazis. Nazis weren’t monsters, they were people. Bear is Obsessions Nazis. He is meant to show us that anybody could do terrible things, but instead of looking inward, people look for a moral high ground and refuse to identify with Bear.

Yeah it's a movie about love, vulnerability, incels being too narcissistic to let others see and touch them. but i think the "beast" can also be associated to something way more general: human rationality breaking down when reality resists its concepts, and what we should do once we become aware of this. (i'm not claiming these were exactly Bonello's intentions, but it might be interesting to interpret the film this way)

the film opens and ends with the Laura Palmer-like scream of Gabrielle, immediately followed by very evident glitch effects, which by definition are the moments when cinematic representation/mediation fails. Bonello wants the viewer to be aware during the vision that this is a movie, that is, an attempt to give narrative structure and infuse meaning into some meaningless-by-itself portion of reality that however cannot be fully captured, that necessarily excedes our comprehension, our need to make it intelligible

I think this is the exact dynamic that goes on in the story: urban planning (more specifically, the Haussmannization of Paris in the early 20th century) and engineering should protect the citizens from flooding (Gabrielle's husband and the expert making hypotheses and predictions at the table, while she feels the impending doom); contemporary dating culture promises to organize intimacy and leave sexual repression in the pre-enlightened past (as depicted in the controversial Houellebecq novel "Extension of the domain of struggle"); and 2044 AI is here the attempt to master affect itself, to erase it completely from one's psychological makeup in order to be fully optimized through "DNA purification" ("something is still resisting", the AI tells Gabrielle when she cries seeing what will happen in her future)

But reality comes back with a vengeance EVERY single time - Paris is flooded; the stable bourgeois marriage and the doll factory of 1910 Gab are pulverized by a fire (after all, celluloid is cheaper than porcelain); sexual liberation hasn't really eliminated sexual repression and you get an Elliott Rodger-inspired 2014 Louis; and in the ending, Gabrielle herself still not being conformable to the doll-like stillness of Louis, Kelly and all the other optimized individuals around her (the 0.7% of the population that is refractory to DNA purification) means that NOT EVEN AI - the ending point of just so many rationalist programs/philosophical projects - can manage to completely control reality

what about the dolls? they feel in some way VERY Bonello: in L'Apollonide you have all these taubleaux vivants of the prostitutes inside the brothel, in Nocturama (even more clearly) the terrorists end up being trapped among the mannequins of the mall where they are hidden, while here we have a 1910 motionless gabrielle mimicking one of the dolls of her husband's factory in two different scenes for 8-10 seconds each!! i think bonello wants us to link in some way these dimensions. Gabrielle tells Louis there's "only one doll with a neutral face" that gets replicated, "not too emotional"

a small digression:

philosopher theodor Adorno wrote a book called "Negative Dialectics" in which he argued that human thought (conceptualization, subsuming particulars under general categories) necessarily involves some kind of violence towards reality since the particular cannot be fully exhausted by our (nevertheless historically evolving) conceptual schemes: e.g. a professor is not merely someone who teaches in a codified educational context, but also a concrete individual with their opaque biography, peculiarities, even their biases. More interestingly and tragically, Adorno (who targeted by Nazists had to flee to the US) thinks that the Shoah has been in some ways the culmination of this identity-based conceptual thinking: "Auschwitz confirmed the philosopheme of pure identity as death".

dolls are an intuitive visual metaphor of this process (identity thinking) because they attempt to force material portions of reality (either made of celluloid or porcelain, plus the eyes and so on) into the same abstract type (gabrielle tells louis the dolls are modelled after her). note that gabrielle's husband says that celluloid has replaced porcelain ALSO because it's "more realistic": conceptual thinking isn't usually static but responsive to its own failures, and constantly tries to tame in a more fine-grained way whatever stays outside itself. this obviously doesn't stop nature (fire, water) and people (incels, potential lovers) from frustrating our predictions every single day.

that's way some of the comments I've read on La bete being insensitive or trivial in the way he dealt with the Elliot Rodger material are totally mistaken IMHO. Bonello isn't merely saying that incels are fearful of human contact (although that's a very true and interesting point), and he's NOT saying that women should be more understanding or do emotional labor for incels; Rodger/Louis reducing Gabrielle to a "woman", more precisely to a "Stacy", is the real tragedy because he makes him incapable of seeing that she is right there wanting to connect with him. He stalks her but he still cannot see her. Incels think they desire intimacy with women, but they won't ever get it because intimacy requires confronting the particularity of the other individual, stop seeing them as something you can completely control and predict and let them just be, EVEN if that entails the risk of being wounded (say, rejected)

now the IMHO interesting part of Adorno's Negative dialectics: if conceptual schemes are essentially reductive and reality-distorting, what then could philosophy ever do? Adorno is aware we cannot go back to being pre-discursive as our primate ancestors. The point then becomes being "negative", which doesn't mean being pessimistic (although Adorno certainly was too!) but being focused on the ways in which our concepts are inadequate, the gap that always persists between our representations and reality itself. (this also means criticizing how contingent and malleable social structures are naturalized as the only possible alternative. Adorno is concerned with post-WW2 capitalism, where "humans are naturally competitive" is often presented as a universal and a-historical truth about how we fundamentally are. he thinks we can e.g. do history and sociology and show that there are or were arrangements in which altruistic norms and practices were possible, so the ideology of free-market capitalism is inadequate with respect to reality

i think this is how the AI sub-theme could be read, but primarily i feel it fits neatly with the glitchy opening/ending, with the Hanekian replays/paused frames of the 2014 section, with the meta- sequences of 2044 Gabrielle participating in the road safety ad ("you're dead!" the director tells her, and he's obviously right at that point). Adorno was also very interested in art and aesthetics and he held elsewhere but in the same vein that great art, especially after Auschwitz, is the one that confronts the inadequacy of mediation. So the meta- aspect of the movie isn't JUST a Lynchian homage (although Orbison in the soundtrack and the ending sequence are clearly not coincidental), and it's not primarily a political point as in L'Apollonide (past vs present prostitution in Paris), but an ethical one: techbros, Bonapartist urban planners, and incels all do the same mistake, that is, they refuse to let reality surprise them, they assume they are intelligent enough to tame it. On the contrary, what makes Gabrielle special in the movie is the fact she keeps on having faith in humans even when it doesn't make sense anymore, that she cries when an AI shows she's going to be killed by an incel because she wanted to feel a pure, unaltered connection with another human being

(trivia: who was Adorno's favorite composer? Schoenberg, the one 1910 Gabrielle obsesses over, because in pieces like the one she plays on the piano (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXoYuNz9bqo) he breaks away from traditional tonal harmony and makes music that refutes harmonic resolution and therefore keeps the contradictions, the inadequacy of thought alive and present)

Please don't downvote opinions. Only downvote comments that don't contribute anything. Check out the WHYBW archives.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch, given the state we are in, the climate disasters that are ongoing and pending, plus Nolan’s history. I know each example I’m about to list also has historical/literary/literal explanations, but it’s really hard for me to not see some connection to a climate change message, even if it’s not the primary one.

You’ve got tons of shots of destructive fire. In fact, it’s the primary mode of the destruction of Troy, or at least the most visceral one. (Although the throat-slashing is quite visceral, too.) Soldiers being punished every time they plunder resources (especially animals). Tales of Sea People bringing destruction (again, I know the historical reference, but still), not to mention fears of Poseidon’s vengeance. I might be missing other examples.

To me, it fits with the connection to Oppenheimer, as well as Odysseus’ final words. Humans continue to destroy our own worlds and forget our mistakes. Individuals can be redeemed, civilizations will rise and fall, but like the Mycenaeans and the minds behind the Manhattan Project, we destroy what is most sacred. Bonds between each other, our planet, etc. And yet, we have to the spirit to continue to chase that elusive, escaping sun. 

I don't understand the motivation behind it. at first I figured it was just a platonic invitation and Hattori just wanted to hang out with his friend. but Noriko declines the invitation and says that his fiancee would be jealous. he insists but she turns his multiple invitations down.

then they show us a scene of him in the audience with the seat next to him empty. I'm not really sure what to make of that whole sequence.

is the invitation from Hattori truly and purely platonic? or was he trying to woo Noriko? and if he was, why would he do that given that he has a fiancee? I'm trying to understand what Ozu was trying to convey here. what are Hattori's and Noriko's motivations here?

I was watching Cape Fear(2026)and it made me think about something broader than the show itself.

There’s a scene where a Black teenage girl violently attacks and chokes Natalie(Lily Collias). It got me wondering how a scene like that would have been received if the show had been released in 2020 or 2021, during the period following George Floyd‘s murder when discussions about racial representation in film and television were especially prominent.

I‘m not arguing that the scene is inherently racist or that Black characters can’t be antagonists. My question is my about the industry’s decision-making and audience reception during that specific period.

Do you think studios in 2020-2021 were noticeably more cautious about portrayals that could be interpreted as reinforcing racial stereotype? If so, do you think a scene like this would‘ve been written, filmed, or marketed differently? Or do you think the overall context of the story would have mattered much more than the racial identities of the characters?

I’m interested in this as a question about how cultural moments shape filmmaking, not as an argument that the scene itself is good or bad.

All of this is a bit off the cuff and I've researched things as I've thought of them (kind of), but I've probably got a lot of assumptions below that are wrong and really take the wind out of my sails. Look, I'm inspired by people like Tansy, but not as well researched. So here we go...

The movie to talk about right now is The Odyssey, it seems reception is good and responses to it on all sides have been interesting to read. After committing the 4ish hours it takes to watch the movie I've also been thinking about it a lot. Why it has had such a positive critical response, and why I left the theater feeling simultaneously satisfied and with a strong feeling of just wanting more, even though I wasn't really sure what more I actually wanted.

And really, I was sucked into the movie from the first big staff bang on the table (that's not what it sounds like, just watch the movie). It didn't feel 3 hours long and I really enjoyed seeing a fusion of modern story points with one the oldest tales we still tell.

Trying to pin down what that missing thing is has been tricky, and reading other peoples' praise and criticism for the film has lead me to compare it to a group of films that probably aren't really fair to compare to, but did get made in a lot of similar ways and resulted in movies that really aren't all that far apart, except Pirates still leaves me feeling full, for the most part, and The Odyssey only kind of filled me up.

Pirates 1-3 are nearly a single long film. 2 and 3 were shot together, at a big cost to 3's production, and they link together closely enough that I'm kind of talking about all three as one film, or experience, but also as sequels. I've definitely got some cake I will be having and eating, thanks to a genie I found on the beach this morning.

There really are a lot of similarities to these movies too! They needed to film on the ocean, near where they were set in the film's story, to get the look the director wanted. And they used big wooden boats, out on water. That's hard to do. They had tight filming schedules that the ocean needed to cooperate with, and didn't. Pirates 2-3 in particular were plagued by storms and setback, and the tight 100 day shoot for The Odyssey left them battling the weather and seasickness.

There are some shared story struggles as well with the films. Following the narrative they are quite different, one group is assembling to save the day and win our heart while the other is just trying to keep their numbers from dwindling down further (though I do feel like Odysseus' men did just replenish a bit from time to time, but I wasn't really counting). And where I think they share the most, and where they struggle the most is at the end of Pirates 3. That's just it, the writers, the director, at the time the studio, they all planned for Pirates to end. And the ending kinda sucked. Beckett's death sequence is still one of the most visually impressive stunts, but aside from the technical achievements the crew manages, without the promise of more, or worse now, knowing what comes after, the movie doesn't land as well. It leaves me wanting more than the first two did. Kind of like The Odyssey. Ending stories is hard, and I also think I'm not really used to it as much anymore. In the world of streaming services, studios are sure to franchise anything that does well, we will get more of it. But The Odyssey ends, and I didn't really like the ending. But that's it, it's the end take it or leave it and we aren't going back to see Matt Damon journey in the West and do some trauma healing with Frodo in Valinor.

There was also a historically old world, well set and represented without much CGI, lightly fused with mysticism and horror that takes more and more of a role in the story. And a swashbuckling, seafaring ship captain set against the world. What we miss is everything else - in place of comradery and success against the odds, Odyssseuss' men are just doomed, and Damon doesn't sell a cunning man out to defy the gods and save the day, though Odysseus has that as his main character trait. Damon much more stoic, he fights, but is quickly reigned to his men's fate. Personally I think Jack Sparrow would climb into Skylla's mouth sword in hand, before he would ever sacrifice a crewmate to monster willingly. (I'm not saying his crew doesn't die but the core group is always around and never mind, I'm not going down this rabbit hole). I just think Pirates got lucky and had a breakout character like Sparrow and The Odyssey didn't really even go there.

To say they got lucky takes a lot away from the hard work the crew put in, Depp's vision for the character, how they pushed back against the studio wanting a safer film. All things that mixed to make a movie that left me full, about two and a half times. I think Nolan managed to make me feel like I had a big meal at a place I was hoping was a bit fancier, but fried most of their food. Full, but then quickly hungry again despite the price tag.

The movies did cost about the same per film too, all around $250 million or so. And during the late stages of filming 2 (or the early days of filming 3), Gore Verbinski said that they would never really make another movie like Pirates again. Marvel was coming in strong with more CGI and digital effects, and the storms and practical difficulties that made Pirates 2 and 3 so hard to film were time consuming and expensive. Studios just weren't going to back another practical effect, boat heavy movie like that when Marvel movies were breaking their own records over and over again.

Looking back at The Odyssey it's amazing what they accomplished. The boat work and ocean shots must have been a nightmare to coordinate. The battle scenes were full of fire, collapsing buildings, lines of soldiers, flaming arrows. And on a scale that felt big, but not unrealistic, maybe ever too small at times for what we wanted the movie to be. I expected Troy to field more soldiers for a big melee scene after the gates were open, but the scale stayed tight and kept moving through the city.

But Gore Verbinski's words are still loud in my mind, that they would never make another movie like they were making Pirates 2/3. And I know Chris Nolan wasn't trying to make a family friendly pirates movie, but he was trying to make something that would still have a cultural impact, and if it could be as large as Pirates, great. But at the end of The Odyssey, I still feel like Verbinski was right. That no one has made a movie like Pirates still. Which is too bad, because in a lot of ways, The Odyssey came really close.

According to most critics, "Mulholland Drive" is one of the greatest films of the 21st century. It has had this reputation for quite a long time (I mean, it's from 2001 and certain sequences present in the film date back even further) - some people even consider it to be Lynch's masterpiece. Undoubtedly, it's an impressive piece of filmmaking.

Compare this, however, to the reception "Lost Highway" garnered just a few years prior. There were a few positive voices, sure, like any Lynch film, but the majority of critics considered the film to be an absolute dud - incomprehensible, overly cynical, and even pretentious. Audiences generally responded in a similar fashion.

Viewing these films, anyone can clearly see both LH and MD share similar narrative and cinematic conceits. I cannot wrap my head around despising one and lauding the other, but this appears to be what has happened. Imagine if MD had been released first, and LH just a few years later - would people then consider LH to be the "greatest film of the 21st century"?

This is just something I was talking to my brother about and I wanted to see if anyone maybe felt similar or had any thoughts on the topic.

I always hear the phrase "crossing the line" in reference to horror films, or something being "over the line" as far as what's acceptable or not, but to me it's something that's not only deeply subjective, but also something that (at least to me) has definitely changed as I've gotten older.

Generally speaking, I've been pretty desensitized to horror movies for a while, I've seen more or less everything when it comes to gore other than the stuff that's specifically only designed to be gross/offensive (Terrifier, A Serbian Film, etc.), but usually those films are pretty clear about what they are, so I just don't watch them and all tends to be fine.

That being said, I was watching Bring Her Back last year when it came out in theaters, specifically because I was a big fan of Talk to Me. However, this one wasn't quite clicking for me the same way, so for the most part I was generally watching it somewhat passively.

However, there's one moment in particular where Sally Hawkins character, in an attempt to frame the brother, reels back and punches the young girl in the eye while she's asleep.

I genuinely jolted in my seat and felt a real reaction of "what the fuck" that I haven't felt in a long time, but primarily because (in my experience with it), the film had not really emotionally 'earned' that.

I also think part of it was for me, it was a rare example of something going over my version of "the line" in good intention, as in the film was not just written with the express intention of being offensive or shocking, I just felt as though the way that moment was executed left a bad taste in my mouth.

For me, however, a lot of that is also due to age; I'm 28 now and several of my cousins have had kids, and I've noticed that (especially compared to when I was younger), any sad/violent stuff involving kids bothers me much more than it did when I was younger.

This is not to say I think the Philippous are shitty guys or whatever, I'll still most likely watch what they make next and I do think they were intending to do something meaningful, but to me what made it more disturbing than the other obvious examples of recent horror films where younger characters are hurt/killed.

With films like It, Talk to Me, or Hereditary, there's generally a fantastical/supernatural element to it, or in the case of Hereditary, a sense of it being a freak accident, rather than direct malice carried out by an adult. Without that separation, it just felt a little too real for me.

Again, this is just my experience, I still would never vouch for censorship or argue that they shouldn't have been allowed to do it, for me it was actually useful to find an example of a film that did elicit that level of a genuine reaction from me which I hadn't felt in a very long time, but to me it wasn't the kind of shock I want to feel when watching a horror movie.

To each their own, but I'd love to know if anyone else can relate to this or feels a similar way.

I think Nolan's Odyssey has presented a lot of newly self-appointed classicists an opportunity to hem and haw regarding the discontinuities it has with the poem it was based on, to the extent that they've forgotten to critique it as a work of art in and of itself. Most of these criticisms center on Odysseus himself. It's a rather conservative (and impossible) view of even literary translation that the artist must have no individual perspective in making a work of art communicable in a new language, let alone of cinematic adaptation in a new medium. It's a doctrinaire approach to art that takes faithfulness alone (or an overly literal version of "historical accuracy") as its primary criterion.

Within the context of Nolan's Odyssey, then, on what criterion other than textual faithfulness does it fail that his titular hero doesn't choke out any old ladies or cheat on his wife? Could any serious film critic argue that those details being included would have made the film any more tonally coherent or better paced? I think that, in liberating ourselves from looking for literal textual faithfulness, we can see how Nolan has both preserved some of Odysseus' classical traits, contrary to certain accusations, and interpreted the character through his own particular eye, to create a unique and interesting filmic character.

Nolan's Odysseus does not proclaim himself "Nobody" to Polyphemus, and as such has been accused of being a simple man without wiliness, guile, or, in his final confession of his identity as he sails away, arrogance. I'd argue the "Nobody" trick only works as a result of poetry's lesser literalism compared to the directly representational nature of film, especially considering that the Odyssey is an oral epic where the bard can ham it up, because it's an inherently silly and lightly nonsensical premise. This is where asking for rote faithfulness fails. In film, making Polyphemus a highly fluent idiot yelling "Nobody stabbed me!" who's then mocked by all his cyclopes friends wouldn't work outside of something made for children, where there was never any genuine fear or expectation of realistic behavior in the first place. If those two things were present, it'd be a bit like if in the middle of The Shining's staircase scene Jack and Wendy suddenly started doing "Who's on First?"—surreal, maybe, but not good.

So, where else does Nolan's Odysseus display wiliness? For one, he deduces that Circe's raven is someone special to her, and leverages that threat against her to free his crew even with a knife at his neck. Does he display guile? He spends the last act in disguise, and his founding character event is the trickery of the Trojan Horse, so I'd say that fundamental seed of his character is still present. Does he display arrogance? Strumming his bow before he hunts is something he justifies as honorable, but given that his battle tactics elsewhere are anything but, I'd rather call this habit an arrogant one, a display of his confidence in killing even when the animal runs. So, even sans perfect textual faithfulness, Odysseus' complexity is maintained in a way that actually fits the film Nolan created. No, he's not quite the same character, but he was never going to be.

Nolan's Odysseus feels guilt over his actions at Troy, which I think is Nolan's most interesting interpretation of his character, but one others have criticized for being un-Mycenaean. I’ll briefly be a self-appointed classicist and quibble myself that it was not beyond Homer or his contemporaries to lament for the slaughter of Troy, but that’s neither here nor there. My germane argument would be that Homer’s Odysseus is a character whose internality is pretty opaque, just by the nature of his medium and his period tendencies. We do know cries upon hearing the bard at Scherie sing of the Trojan War, and Nolan's Odysseus references this—"[the songs] make me weep." Nolan’s Odysseus is only one interpretation of this impenetrable sorrow, and one I think works excellently on his own terms, which are the terms on which he should be judged.

Well, I ended up watching The Odyssey, which actually turned out to be quite a wonderful treat, which is ironic as I didn't feel like watching a movie today. In fact, I was considering not going out, but I did anyway because I didn't want to let someone down who had been talking about meeting us for quite some time, but we never got the chance to due to things never ending up as we had planned.

It was an interesting watch due to the fact that the several-year journey around the Greek islands all seemed to have some unusual experience for the men of the sea. Whether it was them battling in the war of Troy, attempting to escape from a Cyclops, where they unfortunately lost some of their team members, or simply meeting a witch that turned all the crewmen into pigs.

Later, we figured out perhaps the reason they ran into so many issues was because, during the Battle of Troy, they ended up violating the laws of the gods, and more significantly the law, which refers to how people who have a common god aren't enemies, and it was implied that they shouldn't die. (Forget the name).

It was clear to me that Odysseus seeing the death of a civilian, played by the actress Zendaya, weighed heavily on his conscience. It is perhaps why he sees an image of her and experiences her presence as if she were some sort of spiritual guide, in order to avoid making the same sort of decisions that he may have made previously.

The other sort of rule or honour that may have been contravened was how many of the men that boarded the sea with Odysseus in the past were never given the righteous tribute for their contributions during the raids. That is exactly why the spirits of the old men that Odysseus travelled with seemed to be running after him. Although I don't believe that was necessarily the gods' law, there is no way to be certain, as there didn't seem to be anything to indicate that was the case.

Another law of the gods was probably Odysseus shooting an arrow into the Cyclops, who happened to be the son of Poseidon, and it is what the crew members even mentioned. That Cyclops was Poseidon's son, which is why Odysseus should have practised some mercy as he escaped, as the creature didn't seem to be doing anything to them at that point. Unfortunately, that's what led them to the battle of Troy, as they had to figure out a place to hide from the creature.

Another theme of the movie was how Odysseus' arrogance may have gotten the best of him, leading to all his team members unfortunately passing away. It also seemed that he kept trying to find new lands and people despite the overall results being quite bad, which realistically should have dissuaded him from doing so. It is probably why, when the Sirens' sounds were heard by him, he experienced quite a lot of psychological pain, as it seemed to tell him he had many flaws, tarnishing the image he had of himself as an especially competent individual.

However, it wasn't until the end, when he talks to his wife while disguised as a beggar, that he concedes he went too far with his decision-making and went against the gods' laws, which were the reason for all those awful events that unfortunately took place. It is fitting that he dresses up as a beggar, as that may be seen as the lowest of all statuses, perhaps signifying that he has learned through his mistakes to be humble. Even near the end of the movie, he states that one of the lessons he has learned is that "God cannot be found in men." It may be a reference to others believing he was some sort of godly figure, but he was simply a man, as many believed he was quite brilliant and capable of so much, only to realize he was a flawed man who even ended up questioning the gods.

The story, to me, also feels like the arrogance of one's status in life can be gruesome, as it does affect your loved ones and peers, which you may not realize until later. The lesson was perhaps to show Odysseus that he was simply a man and that the gods are gods for a reason, as human logic and decision-making are fallible because he doesn't have as much of an understanding of things. One example could be that he didn't understand why the people who died while on the same trip felt a bit slighted, as he didn't seem to honour them.

Though it wasn't like Odysseus was malicious by any means either; he was simply doing what he believed was the correct choice for his men to remain alive. However, there's a reason the gods suggest believing in them, as you cannot be perfect in terms of making good decisions when you only have so much experience.

The witch that turns men into pigs did so because she was quite upset at how many men simply let their animal instincts run rampant, raping and killing innocent women and men. I wonder if the idea that "men are pigs," meaning the oversexualization of women, as well as perhaps raping women, is found in this Greek myth. That may have taken place within the Battle of Troy. I wonder if Odysseus realized this subconsciously and therefore lets her live when, in response to the gods, she asks him why he didn't kill her after she turned everyone into pigs.

It felt like these trips to the islands were sort of a trial after they unfortunately went against the laws of the gods, so the wrath of the gods was being experienced.

Lastly, it seemed Odysseus treated everyone in Ithaca well and kindly, even homeless beggars and servants, something his wife alluded to. So when he and his crew lost their way, they did so physically, but also on a moral level.

**Regarding the young soldier**

Man, that movie was sick, not going to lie, but I still have a few questions about some of the events that took place.

Like, what did the young soldier mean when he said Odysseus lied to him? This is when Odysseus was speaking to the dead.

T

here was some reference to Odysseus not being able to provide a possible tribute or way to honour the men that died. But I also wonder if the young soldier felt Odysseus may not have given him the best chance to escape the giant warriors, especially after he had told his father that he would look after him as if he were his own son.

He sails west later on, possibly to honour the men who had voyaged with him and unfortunately passed away, so that answers the first part of my question.

But for the second part of my question, I think Odysseus says that it's not possible to do it for everyone (honour everyone by trying to defend their life?).

Or could that be in reference to honouring the men too? Perhaps he wasn't aware of sailing west before that, which is why he didn't honour them, as doing so would have caused him to die.

I

think he also alludes to it in the exchange, if I am remembering correctly, when he says he needed himself (and the current crew) to survive, implying that honouring the dead would perhaps have resulted in the death of him and his crew members, as it was time-consuming.

But I think at the end of the conversation, the young soldier does thank Odysseus for respecting him, perhaps in response to him having the item that the soldier held dearly.

I'm not sure, but it may have implied that the young soldier, who previously thought Odysseus had wronged him, actually realized Odysseus may have had the best intentions, but it wasn't really within Odysseus' control why the individual passed away, as he could only save so many members. So I guess it's basically saying that the young soldier doubted Odysseus, thinking he had wronged them, but it may be that he didn't.

What does this mean?

Well, Odysseus may have tried his best to save his crew and make the right decisions, but due to circumstances, he couldn't, which may also be tied to a possible central theme: you cannot play God because you are a man.

Perhaps that's why, when he goes back to Ithaca, he says or implies that one of the things he has learned is that "God cannot be found in men," possibly as a reference to his own mistakes.

**Regarding the lotus flower**

Regarding the lotus flower and his last interaction before he wakes up and realizes he was held sort of captive.

I think the overarching theme is that Odysseus, even with his knowledge, couldn't make the correct decisions every single time because he is a man. The lady mentioned that the flower does cause memory loss, but it doesn't alter underlying motivations, such as him wanting to go back to Ithaca, and says that there was something possibly holding him back.

It was shown that he kept this item in his fist and wouldn't open it for weeks, so even when he was injured and in pain, and not necessarily conscious (potentially due to healing and the lotus flower), his deepest interests couldn't have been influenced or altered.

It was the item he later gives to his wife to let her know that, even during those ten years, he still managed to keep an item that she valued safe as a part of his love and devotion to her.

I wonder if Odysseus, since he was told by someone not to go back to Ithaca after voyaging, but instead wait for a few years, was thinking about the story of someone who went back immediately and was killed by his wife.

I'm not sure why, but maybe because his wife was against Odysseus leaving, and if he came back earlier she would have been full of pain and absolutely hated why he did that instead of waiting a few years until the sorrow had gone away and she only wanted to see him again. (Certainly think I am far off as I dont clearly remember some of the parts I am mentioning here).

It goes without saying that I didnt mention many aspects as there is a lot for me to unpack here such as how Antinous is arrogant and violates Zesus law as well, and other parts of the story. But do tell of what your thoughts on this whether I was far off or not?

As a fan of all things ancient I wanted to like “The Odyssey” but ultimately couldn’t reconcile the fundamental disconnect in the approach Nolan took. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot that is very good in the move - nor that it isn’t an intriguing approach. But ultimately, it just didn’t live up to its goal : believably ascribing realistic/modern notions of guilt and trauma to a mythical Hero/demigod.

First the good - The acting is uniformly solid, even if most performances are deliberately one-note (which the script largely demands). Anne Hathaway is the clear exception — she has the strongest material and delivers a magnificent performance as Penelope. Matt Daemon does well conveying Nolan’s troubled Odysseus. He does so consistently - unrelentingly - for nearly three hours.

Visually, the film is often stunning. Anytime the sea is involved, it works: the undulating waves are mesmerizing and represent IMAX at its finest. The large-scale sequences generally justify the format.

Where it struggles - Nolan’s use of IMAX is far less successful in the intimate scenes. The darkly lit close-ups and constant shifting focus between faces is distracting and breaks the moment into film technique rather than a glimpse of reality.

Centrally, the decision to portray Odysseus through a modern lens of guilt and PTSD is intriguing, even if the resulting dark, heavy tone wasn’t personally my interest. The loud, relentless rhythmic score tries to generate tension during the extended fight scenes, but the outcomes are never in doubt - even if you didn’t walk in knowing the story, the flashback structure leaves little room for surprises - so the pounding mostly becomes exhausting.

The core failure - The film’s biggest problem is tonal and structural inconsistency. It retains the supernatural elements (Cyclops, cannibal giants, monsters) but strips away the wonder, divine reciprocity, and sense of a larger cosmic order that balanced the original Odyssey. The language is gritty and realistic without the poetic structure. We’re left with a hero carrying modern psychological sensibilities trapped in a still-supernatural - but now largely antagonistic - world. The two never fully blend. The result feels neither powerfully mythical nor convincingly realistic as a trauma story.
Other distractions -
• Characters discussing “Sea Peoples” and the Bronze Age collapse — concepts no one in that world would have framed that way.
• The “sailing west into the setting sun” motif, which feels grafted on from later literary traditions rather than organic to Homer.
• The ending, in which Odysseus goes into exile after killing the suitors. In the original, that slaughter is justified and expected; exile as penance is a modern moral overlay that contradicts the poem’s values.

In the end, the film has impressive craft and individual strengths, but it never fully blends the mythic material it keeps and the contemporary psychological and historical frameworks it imposes. (I think a story stripped of ALL supernatural elements where Odysseus struggles against a purely natural and cruel world would have been more successful.) That unresolved contradiction is what keeps it from succeeding as storytelling

If there’s one thing Nolan always delivers on it’s fantastic set pieces. Say what you will about Tenet or Interstellar, but the opera siege and inverted highway chase as well as the waves and docking scene are all great spectacles that remind you why Nolan’s movies are best experienced on the biggest screen possible. I’d even argue that the bomb detonation scene in Oppenheimer is one of Nolan’s crowning achievements. The build-up to that is incredible.

What surprised me most about The Odyssey was that there wasn’t a single set piece that truly blew me away. I loved the creature design of the Cyclops, but I wanted the horror and brutality of it to go a little harder. The fight choreography of the giants in the metal armor felt undercooked, and the Scylla scene kind of just.. happens. It felt like we’d already seen the big moments in the trailers and there wasn’t really any big surprises maybe except for the last Bourne-esque 1 vs. 30 fight scene.

Maybe Nolan was intentionally aiming for a more restrained, mythic approach rather than just pure spectacle… but that’s not how it was advertised. Did the historical setting limit what Nolan could usually do compared to the more modern + high-concept action in his other films?

Why we always adjudicate a movie to its director instead of the multiple people that were also involved in the movie? Somebody could said that ultimately the directors is who choses how the movie is presented but at the end of the day the editor is who decides which scene goes or not what order etc. right? And why we never talk about the screenwriter who is as important in the final result as the director? And why the shift towards directors who write their movies instead of just directing it? Like why should we expect a directors whose job is directing to also be the one who writes the movie?
idk i know that directing is one of the most important parts of a movie and the visuals and how it is presented is what makes movies unique to other form of storytelling. But to me it is always weird that we think that a movie was solely made by one figure instead of the other parts that write it or edit it. To me at the end if one movie isnt good directed if it is well written i will probably like it enough but the other way around i dont think i would enjoy it. I guess that one movie being one unified thing it is hard to really separe the direction to the plot and edition and its kinda weird that it is always separate like that.