“These men, who are supposed to be “brave” and “capable,” don’t really seem to have their wits about them.” (Painting by Arnold Böch)
By Lana Schwartz | lana.schwartz925@gmail.com
(Spoilers ahead for the newly released film The Odyssey)
I am very, very well aware that The Odyssey – the newly released Christopher Nolan film that people are paying arms and legs to see in IMAX – is a film about war. War is bad for the people its perpetrated against and bad for the people who commit it. History is cyclical and no matter how many times we think we have learned our lesson, we forget the stories of the past and thus are doomed to rewrite them.
All of that said: I walked out of The Odyssey thinking to myself, Some people should not leave their hometowns.
While, again, I understand that Odysseus and his men were soldiers who traveled to Troy to fight a war, it didn’t seem much like they were cut out for the world beyond Ithaca. After unleashing hell onto the Trojan people, they set sail for Ithaca, and face hell of their own. Trial and tribulation and trial and tribulation in the form of a Cyclops, a witch who turns the men into pigs, sirens, giant men in armor (I Googled and apparently they’re called Laestrygonians), and even more! It is a two-hour forty-five minute movie, after all.
These men, who are supposed to be “brave” and “capable,” don’t really seem to have their wits about them. They trust all the wrong people. They take from those they shouldn’t. They don’t listen to advice, nor are they capable of talking themselves out of any situation. Anyone with an ounce of street smarts would’ve bumped Odysseus overboard the second they escaped from the Cyclops. In fact, anyone with half a brain would not have ended up in these situations in the first place.
The lesson here, I believe, is that some people really should know their limits. If you can’t handle the challenges associated with foreign lands, or don’t want to make an effort to understand their people or creatures, then you have no business leaving Ithaca — literally or metaphorically — in the first place.
Lana Schwartz is a writer who was born and raised in Queens and today lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared on The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney’s, and more. She is the author of the books “Build Your Own Romantic Comedy” and “Set Piece.”
