The Odyssey: By Someone Who Actually Read The Odyssey in College

Fair Value of the Odyssey: $6.00. Nolan’s Odyssey is a bit like Penelope’s suitors- while initially entertaining, it overstays it’s welcome.

Apparently the Divine Punishment for Treachery and Genocide is getting to spend seven years on a beach getting high with Charlize Theron. I obviously need to start desecrating more temples. But Calypso (Theron) is a welcome In Media Res means for a bedraggled bush-bearded Odysseus (Matt Damon) to begin explaining the events of Christopher Nolan’s latest chapter of his great and ongoing saga, Let’s Send Matt Damon Very Far Away (earlier Nolan episodes of this series include Interstellar and Oppenheimer).

Plot Summary: Do I really need to explain the second oldest plot in Western literature to you? Who am I kidding, you’re all illiterate barbarian sea peoples, of course I do. Sneaky guy does a sneaky thing to win war, then gets punished by having to spend the next decade wandering across the Mediterranean. With seven of those years being hanging out with Charlize. Such punishment. Can Odysseus recount his story fast enough to be able to finally make it home so that he can murder Antinous (Robert Pattinson) and all the other celebrity bachelors trying to marry Penelope (Anne Hathaway) to win the very first season of Love Island?

I would now like to engage in a bit of pedantry to respond to the various Kultur-Kampfers pissing around on the internet. Skip this part if you don’t like lectures from historians:

Apparently, there are some people that are very upset that Helen of Troy was played by Lupita Nyongo. I was more upset about Christopher Nolan’s decision not to cast a half-divine one eyed giant as Polyphemeus- this cyclopean erasure of Hollywood (along with not casting actual sirens, sea monster, or cannibalistic giants) needs to stop.

But we know that Helen can actually be used as a metric for society’s commodification of women. If you want to cut to the chase, 1 Helen commands a rate equivalent to USD 20206 $638,615.38 per day. Pedantry below:

In atonement, I re-read Chapter 2 of the Iliad (Lattimore translation) in order to properly tabulate the catalogue of ships. One further precaution: Thersander, the leader of the Boetians, is said to have led 50 ships with 150 men each; by contrast Philoctetes of Methone led 7 ships with 50 oarsmen; between these two we get to an approximated average of 100 soldiers per ship. If there are any economic historians that can provide a good estimate of the inflation of Hellenic Drachmas between 1200 BC and 400 BC, please let me know.

A. The Beauty of Helen of Troy was sufficient to launch 1,000 ships of Achaeans to fight for 20 years. EDIT: More specifically, Book 2 of the Iliad specifies 1186 ships.

B. Per Thucydides, we know that the cost to build, pay, and maintain a fully crewed trireme in the time of the Peloponnese Wars was 6000 Drachma.

C. EDITED- Citing Kathryn Waterfield, a Pentecoster (50 oar) was said to cost 28% of the construction of a Trireme Citation: Waterfield, Kathryn. “Penteconters and the Fleet of Polycrates.” Ancient History Bulletin Volume 33 (1-2), 2019. THEREFORE: Assuming each Achaean ship (1186) was a Pentecoster (cost in the time Polycrates 1680 Drachmas per pentecoster) the total cost of the Achaean expedition was some 1,992,480 Drachmas.

C. Extrapolating from known records of classical Greek wages, the purchasing value of 1 Drachma was roughly equivalent to $100 US Dollars.

D. Thus, a full value of Helen would be $199.24 Million Drachmas/ year (equivalent to USD $199,248,000 / year), at a total of $1.992 Billion USD being the approximate full Helen (10 years).

E. A Milli-Helen, therefore, is approximately $199,248,000 per year. Assuming a six day potential work week of 52 weeks (312 possible working days), a daily Helen rate would be this means a daily Mili-Helen is a rate of USD $638,615.38 / day.

F. Lupita Nyongo was paid $1.5 million US Dollars by Christopher Nolan, and her performance as Helen runs for roughly 5 minutes of the total screen time.

G. In Vanity Fair, Lupita Nyongo describes her time working on the film as ‘a few days’- which is generally taken to mean 3-5 days.

H. Extrapolating therefore, Lupita was paid approximately $300K-$500K per day of work that she did acting as Helen.

I. Therefore, even at the best possible rate ($1.5 million dollars for three days or 500K per day of work), Lupita Nyongo’s value, as measured, would be 780 Milli-Helens, or .78 Helens.

J. We have now determined Christopher Nolan’s exploitation: Lupita Nyongo’s pay, for her performance measured over labor involved, is only 78% of the equivalent rate for the actual

If we’re using pentecosters and not triremes, then Lupita is actually getting paid a better rate, even if she is still technically a sub-Helen (or really, 7.8 deca-Helens) by Nolan’s budget.

HOWEVER HERE’S THE STINGER AND THE SPOILER:

Lupita Nyongo actually plays both Helen of Troy and also her identical twin sister, Clytemnestra of Mycenae. As Queen of Mycenae and wife of Agamemnon, leader of the Achaean Greeks, Clytemnestra’s value (though not nautically assessed) can be argued to be at least equal, if not greater than, the value of Helen of Sparta/Troy, daughter of Leda.

So actually, in doubling the role, it’s actually Lupita Nyongo that’s getting one over on Christopher Nolan, pulling in a double play that actually puts her in the range 1.56 Helens (or Helens and Cytemnestras, specifically). By comparison, assuming their nautical launch rates are also their SAG rates, Helen and Clytemnestra’s comparable appearance and commitment would actually be in the range of USD 2026 $3,831,692.28. That’s movie magic for you- Nolan managed to get $2.3 million under budget just by using one black actress instead of two half human half-swan demigods.

Also, I found Lupita’s beak and feathers to be very plausible and fetching. Who says that Helen, Daughter of Zeus couldn’t be a black swan? Huh?

Back to the Plot: For their hubris, the gods punish talented film-makers by making them deaf to the pleas of their editors. Coppola, Scorcese.. sooner or later everybody hits a point where their self-regard is larger than their capacity to collaborate or receive constructive criticism, and it’s at that point where you get three and a half hours of sweaty men groaning on a boat.

Which, hey, if you’re into that, good for you. I will say that this Odyssey is probably the best depiction of what sailing the seas would have been like in the days before compasses or modern navigation and communications was like.

And that’s Nolan’s Odyssey: it intermittently sprints and stumbles, some brilliant set pieces rapidly ebbing before the Game of Thrones esque A plot about Telemachus (Tom Holland) and Penelope trying to figure out a means of resolving the rich and powerful suitors who conspire to take the throne of Ithaca.

At a deeper level, Nolan’s fighting an uphill battle in trying to explain the concept of Ancient Grecian virtues like hospitality to a modern audience. And it’s the dialogue, not the spectacle, where Nolan comes short- for all of the talk of The Law of Zeus, there’s never a point where we get to appreciate the custom, because all that we see is the abuse, the loopholes, and the contraversion of the customs of hospitality. Nolan is trying to make the argument that the Bronze Age Collapse truly began with the collapse of etiquette.

I empathize with Nolan, I do. Like him, I feel like a citizen of doomed Atlantis, watching the inexorable waters rise up over a beloved place. This particular outing of the Nolan troupe suffers from three short-comings: editing and pacing that make the middle more interesting than the end, bad sound mixing and scoring (I am sorry Ludwig Goransson, but your score really failed to match the grandeur of the cinematography), and bad lighting. Like a lesser version of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Nolan’s film commits to firelight and torchlight to the detraction of the epic. Let Apollo back into movies! Let things be bright! There are brilliant flashes in Nolan’s Odyssey, but the totality does begin to feel like a punishment inflicted by the god’s upon modern audiences, and their appetite for the epic and the legendary. Just because Odysseus spent ten years at sea doesn’t mean we have to feel the same way after your movie, Chris.