The Odyssey is the best, the boldest, and the most-hyped movie of the summer. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve read about it; if you haven’t read about it, you’ve seen the trailer; and if you’ve seen the trailer, you probably saw the movie. 

The critics have taken the movie seriously.  Multiple articles and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The TLS, and The London Review of Books. The poet A. E. Stallings (TLS) and the translator Emily Wilson (LRB) went one-on-one in the literary boxing ring. Stallings is an enthusiastic and groupie-ish fan ( in a good way; I’m a groupie, too), while Wilson objects to changes from Homer’s Odyssey and drily mocks the film (in a funny way!).

Since the movie opened in July, Emily Wilson’s popular translation of the Odyssey (2017) has sold a million copies. She has popularized Homer, and let us hope the classics classes are full of Homer fans this fall. My own favorite is Robert Fagle’s literal but elegant translation (1996). My professor’s favorite was Richmond Lattimore’s, which, he thought, was closest to the Greek.

There are many translations, all slightly different, and the movie is extremely bold in its differences from the poem.  In Homer’s epic Circe the witch is known as “the nymph with the lovely braids” or “Circe skilled in spells.” She lives in a palace, with many handmaidens. Circe in the movie (Samantha Morton) is haggard, middle-aged, tricky, and lives in a hut. Morton’s interpretation of Circe is brilliant, a woman ordinary on the surface but full of power.  No one could call her “the nymph with the lovely braids.”  It’s a new, different interpretation of Circe. And it’s perfect for the movie.

Homer’s Circe turns the men into pigs by stirring “her wicked drugs/ to wipe any memory of home.”  In the movie Circe feeds them a grotesque-looking stew, which makes them oink, and she twists and turns their skin to make them pigs.

Some critics have complained that Christopher Nolan, the director/writer, omits the sex scenes. There are not what I’d call sex scenes in Homer’s epic. Occasionally someone “mounts a gorgeous bed.” That’s about it.

But I did find a few lines in Fagles’ translation.  

Circe says to Odysseus, “Come, sheathe your sword, let’s go to bed together, / mount my bed and mix in the magic work of love -. We’ll breed deep trust between us.”    

The actors’ interpretations are splendid:  the most memorable characters are Samantha Morton’s Circe and Matt Damon’s Odysseus. Damon’s Odysseus is quiet and still, even contemplative, though in battle, or in the Cyclop’s cave, he is a “man of twists and turns,” a strategist, and a general.

But it’s the Trojan Horse scene that haunts me.  This black structure of a horse looks less equine than like something I. M. Pei might create in a black mood. Inside the horse, Odysseus and his men are jostled, unable to get a hold on the walls, and one man dies. Finally, in the deep darkness, while the Trojans are sleeping, the Greeks climb out of the horse and unlock the gate so their army can enter the city and attack. And then there’s a moment: Odysseus walks alone toward the city, seeming contemplative, almost regretful, and then rushes forward. Perhaps there is a moment when he realizes what he has wrought..

And I want to add one observation.  In Book X of Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus’ men approach Circe’s palace, there is a reference to Penelope and her loom. Circe is singing as she “glided back and forth/ at her great immortal loom, her enchanting web/ a shimmering glory only goddesses can weave.”  Is Circe, like Penelope, weaving while she waits for an Odysseus? She is a better weaver than Penelope.