Synergy to Synastry: Greek Lore Movie Club: The Odyssey (BONUS) Podcast Transcript

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Renee: You're listening to Synergy to Synastry, the podcast where two corporate girlies call to follow their intuition, take you on a journey of self-exploration through metaphysical modalities.

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Renee: Now, let's get into the episode.

Renee’s First Impressions & Experience of The Odyssey

Hey everybody, during the Greek Lore miniseries I tossed out that when the Odyssey came out, 

I would watch it and I would consider recording my thoughts 

and sharing as a bonus episode, which is exactly what I'm doing today. 

We ended up having to wait three weeks after the movie came out in order to actually go see it. 

I am recording this the day after finally watching The Odyssey. 

The first section of today's episode. 

I'm going to give some initial thoughts. 

I'm going to try to keep that as spoiler free as possible, but then when I start doing more of 

the in depth analysis and comparing to the original text of the Odyssey or reviews from 

translators, I will be spoiling it. 

The running joke out there is how can you be spoiled when the text is 3000 years old? 

But still, if you don't want to hear those spoilers either about

what was included in the film or not included in the film, or aspects of Homer's original 

text, feel free to come back to this one. 

I had contemplated reading The Odyssey and more specifically the Emily Wilson translation 

ahead of going to see the film and especially once I knew I was going to have three weeks. 

But I decided not to do it. And I don't necessarily regret doing that, but it it would kind

of been helpful for the discussion because it would have been more fresh. 

I did put a hold out for it. 

Now that I have seen the movie, I will definitely rewatch this film at the point that it comes 

out on streaming. 

But I'm very glad that I saw it in an IMAX. 

And for anybody who hasn't and you have the time scheduling an opportunity because there's only so many theaters across the country. 

It's a 3 hour film, which is a big commitment and there's only so many showings. 

So the combination of all that does make it a little bit tricky. 

So I'm glad I was even able to finagle what I did watching it on the big screen and basically 

HD version of film. 

I mean, it was awesome. And they had the little shaking, vibrating seats, which was kind 

of fun because at some point I was like, oh, it feels like a little back massage. 

So I was enjoying it, the little cloud that was hanging over this viewing. 

I was trying to be smart because like, oh, it's three hours is a long time. 

Let me chug a bunch of water. And I had an hour and a half of lead time. 

And I was like, oh, I'll definitely go to the bathroom before then. 

That way I won't have to during the film. 

I went to the bathroom right before the movie started. 

Nothing. 

And probably an hour into the film, I was like, Oh my gosh, I totally have to pee. 

So I was holding it for two hours. 

The Odyssey’s Acting, Visuals, and Effects

So back to the actual film. I thought the acting was really excellent. 

Pretty much anytime Tom had twinkly eyes, I had twinkly eyes. I thought Anne was amazing. 

There was a few scenes I was like, there's the Oscar nomination, it's coming, I can hear it. 

And also John Leguizamo, I expect he'll probably get nominated too. 

He did a really, really good job as well as the whole cast, like everybody did a good job. 

And of course our girl Circe, Samantha Morton, who was in The Walking Dead, it was so funny. 

There's like 3 different Walking Dead people. 

She was so good. So she's definitely going to get nominated. 

Another thing that I noticed about this film and very much appreciated, it wasn't pitch black. 

TV and movies nowadays are so dark. They're all in this grey gradient scale. 

I can't even see what's going on. 

And what I have heard over the years is part of that is due to how movies are filmed, namely and using these digital cameras. And they're trying to consider how things are going to show up.

And I'm like, well, can we figure out how it's going to show up so everyone can actually

see with their eyeballs. 

It's like the inverse of when you're driving around and everybody's headlights are too bright. 

It's the opposite of like turn the lights on in the movies. The movies are too dark. 

And all this side rant to say I did not feel that way in watching the Odyssey. 

Now we'll see how it differs when it comes out and streaming and being able to watch it at home. But at least when we were watching in the theaters, I was actually very aware of how much color there was. 

Even when they're out on the boat, it's a storm and they're in the water, you can still see what is happening even though it's very dark. 

That in part can be attributed to the use of the IMAX camera. 

Overall, what I had in the back of my head the entire time was having watched a few different interviews with Christopher Nolan, and he had outlined some examples of ways that they had 

used practical effects rather than CGI. The cyclops is a puppet for some of it. 

They splice the footage together, you know, with a real actor. 

Or they did forced perspective with those giants. They had the stunt doubles who were like under 5 feet, keeping all that stuff in mind. I mean, to have that extra level of appreciation in knowing what they would do for CGI and other movies, but you know that all of it is real is so cool. 

I know it's an epic tale, but there was such an epicness to the entire story and how it was filmed. 

And those ships, Oh my gosh, whenever they were filming the scenes with the ships out on the

water, it's like, OK, I'm sure they're on another boat that's like nearby and then they're filming it. 

There's so many aspects of it. I'm like, I can't even say this in an articulate way. 

It was made to look easy, even just picturesque, like all the different places that they're walking. 

There's this admiration that I feel like we should be having every once in a while. 

And I, I recently saw some videos on Instagram, somebody was saying something not about 

this movie, but this same idea. 

We'll see these places on Earth. Oh, wow, what an Oasis, what paradise. 

And it's like, yeah, those places are real. 

We have those places. We could go to those places or see those places or be in awe of those places. 

And then we have all these people out there that are destroying the planet or making us think that those places are inaccessible, that we can't go to them, that they're so remote and it's just that we don't know about them or that we can't appreciate the beauty that we do have in the land immediately around us. 

Even if you're in more of a urban setting, there isn't really land. 

There isn't really green space. 

Looking at the moon each night or seeing a beautiful sunset going through the skyscrapers. 

Like there's all these opportunities that we have. And that's what life was like back in ancient Greece, as we had talked about in that Greek Lord miniseries. 

No wonder they were divining from the beauty that was nature.

I loved how they didn't actually show the gods and goddesses, but there was reference to them like oh there's Thunder.  Well that means this is what Zeus has to say about it. 

Like that is exactly what I had talked about in the miniseries. 

That was kind of fun. It was woven in to the characters perspectives when they were talking about their journey and whether it was supported by the gods or not, or they were worried about being punished by the gods in certain situations. 

But other just quick comments. Really great job with costumes and makeup, Obviously required alot of effort and so many types of costumes and looks in different experiences of life and torment and out on the water

or in the sun and across different ages as people were getting older. 

SPOILERS BEGIN: Character Analysis of Athena

Now I'm going to go into a bit more character analysis. 

So first up, we'll talk about Athena. I did a bit of a deep dive on her in our Greek lore series. 

She was a very present figure in the Odyssey and the movie adaptation. 

There's a theory that Zendaya's character, I don't even really know where I stand in this debate. 

I like to think that maybe she was actually Athena, but she just took on the appearance of the woman who had been slaughtered in Troy that Odysseus felt guilty about. 

That I think is option one. 

And then option two is it's just a projection of his guilt. The reason I lean a little bit more towards the first option is because I know in the back story Athena loved Odysseus like it was her favorite plaything. 

Like she was following his journey up close and personal. She had the popcorn up in Mount Olympus and at multiple turns was trying to intervene to help him. 

To me it didn't make sense or didn't present as the quote. 

Correct answer. 

Maybe the whole point is it's left open to interpretation by the viewer. Could be a hybrid of both, I don't know. 

Let me know what you think. 

There were multiple comments around Mentor and maybe some other people, but I know Mentor at least twice the comment was made that he has Athena's eyes. 

What I had thought is he had wise eyes. 

So therefore when it appeared that he was the only person without any hints that on site recognized Odysseus, I thought, well, it's just because he has wise eyes. 

But I did see something that I did not remember because again, I read the story very, very long time ago, back in high school, that in the text, he actually was Athena in disguise. I don't know if Christopher Nolan was leaning into that version or he was doing the former. 

You know, is it relying on the original text and something that wasn't stated? 

It was never told to us explicitly that Odysseus was in fact seeing Athena or that Mentor was in fact Athena in disguise. Like, they took out a lot of the disguise component, which is a huge motif even for Odysseus  himself. 

When he shows up, yes, he has a beard. Yes, he has the cloak on, and sohe is presenting as if he's a beggar. 

But in the actual Odyssey, he has a little magical help from the gods so that his appearance is further distorted, so he is not recognized, and that was taken out entirely. 

Or you have to have that background to know it and just assume because you're watching it. 

It's like Cinderella story. She just has a little tiny mask on her face. How do you not know it's the same person? 

I would suspect there were people who watched this movie and had a similar reaction. 

Like, what do you mean? He obviously looks the same. 

Actually, my family had brought that up and the argument that I was making, even without the magical disguise piece that had been taken out, is it's been 20 years. They're not expecting to see him. 

It's like when you are out and about and if you run into a celebrity, even though you totally know what they look like, you still are so convinced. I would never see that celebrity walking around in my day-to-day.

So you talk yourself out of it. So you don't think they could actually be them? 

There could have been a little bit of a mind trick happening with any of these people. 

Even Eumaeus, who is played by John Leguizamo, who is blind for most of the movie. 

It's not that far of a leap to think that he might have recognized Odysseus just based on his voice. 

And I know from behind the scenes conversation it was revealed that something that Matt Damon did for quote Act 3, which would fall into this section is that he was screaming in his trailer because he was trying to blow his voice out. It wasn't enough in my mind that you noticed it. 

So for people who are watching it, like how does he not recognize him even just by his voice? 

Character Analysis of Circe

It was implied that it was some version of that. Next, I want to talk about Circe. 

If you haven't read the book by Madeline Miller, it was really good and I still have it on my bookshelf. 

It's another one that I have considered rereading and especially after watching this film, this whole Cersei segment, I knew at least in the high level, her back story. 

Nobody that I was with did. I remembered enough about her story to know that Christopher Nolan had made several changes to expedite the process and shorten each of his stops and obstacles along the way in the Odyssey, because otherwise he's just spending forever at every single place. 

But that entire sequence where she was motion, everybody's faces, and even, Oh my gosh, when the men started getting crazed while eating the food. So horrifying, but so good because I knew where it was going and it's so disturbing, but you can't look away. 

And I just thought it was so well executed. 

And then I found out afterwards that it was all practical. They didn't use any CGI. She must have had some fake heads or something because she was sticking her arm down somebody's throat. That must have been dummy. And that wasn't a guy. 

Some of those other things are attaching stuff and she's bending it around and Oh my gosh, it just, it was really, really good. 

I'm going to be quoting a lot from a variety of different articles that I read to analyze this film after the fact. The show notes will include everything in case you want to read more or check them out in 

full to start us off. "Pigs, she argues, is what they already are, and their human forms are just disguises. The brutal violence they committed as soldiers was not thrust upon them, but already a part of them and now it is in 

their nature. They would, she insisted, have attacked her eventually."

More on this later. 

Character Analysis of Antinous

Talking about Antinous AKA RPats, Robert Pattinson, who I also thought did a very, very good job. 

This was a character that I did not remember. Not only was it so clear, especially by the end of the film, that he was all talk. He wasn't just a straight villain. There were dynamics to him. 

We could see his motives shifting over time, how he would manipulate other people. Going back to the quote that I just shared about Circe, what is their true nature? 

What is their true character? 

We would see flashes of that throughout his entire storyline.He's cruel. But then really by the end, we're realizing, no, his true character is that he's a coward because of essentially dodging the draft at the beginning, trying to get a shortcut to rise to power. 

And then when he was hiding behind the columns in the hall, that was so funny. He had been on the hunting trips when he was younger. 

So when Odysseus had strung the bow and then plucked it, which iconic, he immediately started running. 

He was the only person to instantly react because he knew what that meant. He was going to shoot for his prey. The number one prey got saved for last. He ran off. 

So that was a difference that I did see when I was reading about this online, that apparently he had actually been shot first, The Walking Dead guy, who I don't remember his character's name, I should look it up. But Antinous, his friend, he gotshot in the throat. And that's actually how Antinous was supposed to die. 

You're reconstructing it for a Hollywood film is more dramatic to have him saved for later and then having the shame return to him from Sinon. Justice was served and vengeance was sweet. 

Character Analysis of Helen of Troy

Next up, Helen of Troy. 

I want to go into the actual story because this is one that we didn't really talk about too much in the initial mini series.The Trojan War was kicked off because Paris, the Prince of Troy, had been selected to choose who he thought was the most beautiful of a trio of goddesses, Aphrodite, Athena andHera. 

This is referred to as the Judgement of Paris. So they were asking him who among us is the most beautiful in order to sweeten the deal. Because he wasn't just judging objectively, They all were offering him in essence a bribe to be chosen as the most beautiful goddess. 

Aphrodite offered Paris the most beautiful mortal woman. He ended up choosing Aphrodite as the most beautiful and then therefore was promised Helen as a gift. 

Helen was already married to King Menelaus of Sparta 

Agamemnon. He was Menelaus' brother. The two of them rallied all the troops to fight against Troy in order to reclaim her and just in general retaliation. So that is the origin of the actual Trojan War, which we 

didn't really get in the film. 

It was understood Helen was taken or that Helen went to Troy. 

But what was also conveyed is the fact that Agamemnon, he wanted the war. 

It was almost an excuse to try to claim power and go after these people. He had sacrificed his daughter to the gods to try to help them win the war. 

Yet another story of revenge because he comes back and his wife who was furious for killing their child has another lover and the two of them plot to kill him. So they kill Agamemnon. 

And then I was reading that the House of Atreus which is essentially their whole family line, they were cursed some generations back because of Agamemnon's ancestors like pissed Zeus off and so he cursed their whole family. 

So they have generation after generation after generation of killing each other or being killed or murdered or some sort of misfortune. They also had a son, again not shown in this film, who also kills Clytemnestra, which was the other character that Lupita had played, where in this retelling she was a twin sister,but in the actual text they were half sisters. 

Probably for purposes of simplicity, some characters were cut here and there, and in this case this one was kind of combined by having Lupita play twin sisters and therefore beingable to look identical so that she got a little bit more screen time. She did a great job with the screen time that she had. 

Now, another detail that was change related to Helen of Troy was the reveal by Menelaus when he turned her head and said the face that launched 1000 ships. Well, probably 500 now, or I'm paraphrasing. 

And my whole family, we were talking about afterwards, like, wait, what happened to her face? We did not pick up what they were putting down. 

Reading about it afterwards, I'm like, oh, that actually was really obvious or not so obvious, but it was there. But we weren't putting two and two together in real time, whichis the implication based on the original text. 

And Elias had returned home from Troy, and he, of course, was furious about this whole situation. He actually threatened to kill Helen, but then he didn't, and he forgave her. 

Which larger question here, Why is it about forgiving she was taken, but OK in this adaptation, the suggestion is that because half of her face got marked, he scarred and marked her in part so that she would no longer be the most beautiful mortal woman, but as some sort of a punishment. 

The theme of cycle of violence continues because we have it here yet again. 

It was totally unnecessary that he did that, and yet he did so we have this toxic relationship.He was never just a soldier in battle with Odysseus. He then had this entire other storyline, revenge and wanting to assert control. 

So I wanted to read another quote from one of the articles 

which says "by giving Helen a scar tied directly to Menelaus' anger, the film turns her into someone marked by the consequences of the war rather than simply the cause of it. It reframes her as a survivor of the fallout rather than a passive beauty waiting to be forgiven."

Translator Emily Wilson's Take on The Odyssey

Now moving on to more of the current events side of this film. 

After it came out there was an op-ed written by Emily Wilson who is the only female English language translator of the Odyssey. 

Christopher Nolan was very vocal and public about the fact that he based his film off of her version. Going in, I had listened to, I believe it was on The Daily, she and Madeline Miller had done an interview and the combination of the two of them were essentially saying, well, the text is there, you can adapt it however you want. 

Would we love to see certain things? Absolutely. Especially having well-rounded female characters and making sure that those stories are built out. 

In general, it's just good to have these stories made because of the fact that it draws attention to the text. 

There was breaking news on this that she had critiqued. It had some nice things to say and some quote negative things to say about the film. 

Some of it was click bait, but I also just didn't want to read it and have any of her perspective in my head while watching the film. I just wanted to focus on the film. 

I also had to pee the whole time, so I had that distraction on top of it. 

I didn't need also Emily Wilson's critiques floating around the whole time, but I did go and read it after watching the film. 

One of the biggest takeaways is that she felt Odysseus's motivation was lacking, like his character in the original text versus Matt Damon's version, which I did kind of agree with. He's smart, he has ideas. There were so many more tricks and things that he did that were taken out that it almost wasn't strong enough. 

Plus everything else about him not being a loyal husband like he was. He was off sleeping with Circe and Calypso. 

He was off with these other women who present him as this great hero and his only flaw is the fact that he felt guilty about coming up with this plan and a bunch of people died when they're at war, which again, totally right to feel guilty about that. But that was his only flaw. He just wants to go home and he remained fully faithful to his wife some of that time he was under a spell. 

I can totally see it from both sides. 

You're sanitizing the character slightly just because it's already a three hour movie and you're already giving the viewer a ton of information and so you don't want them to be confused or conflicted about your lead hero. 

And Emily was saying that Christopher Nolan wrote the screenplay, but he probably should have had one of the translators. It could have been her if he's basing it off of her text, but an official translator contributing or maybe giving some feedback or notes on it. Because there could have been points here and there that they 

highlighted or encouraged to tweak or adjust to make it a little bit truer to the text or not losing ultimately what ends up being their interpretation. 

So what this comes back to is it's his interpretation. This is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. It's her translation after reading other translations, reading the original text, whichwas a translation of oral tradition. 

So it's an extremely long game of telephone to get all the way to Christopher Nolan. 

And that's yet another reason why if you want to have different layers of the story, not to just assume that's the 

definitive telling. There's so many other ways to hear this story, aspects that he changed. 

But can it stand alone as a film that becomes an entirely different conversation? 

And from Emily's perspective, she felt that he was, "trying to pack everything in while missing themes that were 

essential to the poem."

With all of these interpretations, it could be that's his lens. Those are the stories that he wanted to tell, the themes that he wanted to put in the story, which Emily and or any other translators could have identified different themes. 

And it doesn't mean that it's an exclusionary list. 

They can all be right and there can be overlap between some of them. 

And maybe she just found that there wasn't any overlap at all, that he was just applying a lens. And she has every right, obviously, to think, well, all the ones that I ever talked about are that I've discussed with other translators. He didn't have any of those in the book. If that's the case, that's the way the cookie crumbles. 

Going back to the character analysis, some of the things that Emily mentioned were that there are more female characters in the film than in his typical films. 

This was a little hard to read because I was realizing, Oh my gosh, she's totally right. I have watched a lot of Christopher Nolan films. He is a top filmmaker for me. I love going to see his movies. But she is not wrong. 

There are very few female characters in his works and this probably was and maybe in fact was the highest number, but he always has this male lead. Write what you know I guess.

I don't want to say that the female characters were flat because I did not think that to be true. 

I saw some discussion online around Calypso and people thinking that maybe that character was a little bit too flattened and too different from the original text. I felt it came through on the screen that there was dimension to the three. 

We'll take Athena off the table for this. For Penelope, Cersei, and Helen,I thought there was dimensionality to each of them. They were portraying different types of women with different motives, with different perspectives, and I don't think that they were framed as being any less important than any of the other male characters, other than obviously Odysseus and maybe to a certain degree Telemachus as well. He was like the number 2 here. 

So I will take this critique as more of a general note to Christopher Nolan, whatever film you're working on next, because we already know that you're working on something else. It would in fact be nice if there were more women in the films. We like what we saw here. Let's have more ladies, please. 

A standout moment in the film, I thought was the conversation between Zendaya, Matt Damon, AKAAthena question mark, and Odysseus, "who doesn't understand Thunder? Fire?" 

I mentioned a little bit earlier his concept of the gods being present, but they're not seen. They're just felt, their experience, their ideas. And I believe I had discussed this in the Greek Lore Part  episode in talking about lore in general, that it's really easy for modern interpretation to just say, Oh, well, it's just stories. 

And then if it's real, and it's a little bit hard for us to know at the time if they also thought some of the stories were just stories or if they thought that all of them were real. And in that way, it doesn't even really matter what the ancient Greeks had thought at the time, because the essence of it is the same as what we have in modern 

day religions. 

You don't have to see it to believe it. You just have to feel it. It's about the energy. It's about the connection to nature. It's about the power of something that's bigger. And maybe we don't know the force that is ruling it or if there is a force ruling it or not. 

We know that it's something that is beyond us as individuals. But Emily, in her analysis, does point out that this movie kind of rides the line on one hand saying like Odyssey has made a lot of comments in this film that we're kind of suggesting, "I don't care about the gods. I'll defy the gods. Who cares?"

You'll see the crew and they're superstitious. We have to do this because of  the gods.  But then the other hand, we're hungry, so we're going to just defy the gods. 

Everyone's kind of flip flopping back and forth, which is probably the point. As we know that happens a lot in these stories. 

In the Roman lore era, when I was discussing La Belle et Bete, Beauty and the Beast, the origin of it was Cupid and Psyche, where she did the thing she wasn't supposed to do. She wasn't supposed to look at him and then she did. And how this idea of punishment for defying the gods comes up a ton in Greek lore, and then it also comes up similarly in the Roman lore stories as well. 

Unpacking The Odyssey's Themes of Divinity and Conflict

And then as far as her thoughts around Odysseus, she said quote we are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it. A very different point. Agreed. 

A very different point because you could watch that takeover scene and there was a couple men and they kind of grabbed women and you might take the hint and say there may have been rape after that, but they didn't show it. 

Trying to do the math. There's a lot of buildings in there. How many people were killed? How many of those people were totally innocent? Who actually should they have been? Quote, taking this out on? 

Who should the revenge have been against? Shouldn't it have been Paris? Shouldn't it have been the gods?What is the message here about war in general? 

And I do think that it is a little bit unclear in combination with the Circe comment earlier. These are just disguises. They're actually pigs. Like, the Venn diagram is likely

a circle or some overlap for those that are more likely correlation here to be physically violent, sexually violent. 

Is the implication here that he's the only one that feels bad about it? Like, is that really the implication here? There's no indication of that in the text. 

So I think that this critique is a little valid, that there's room for the viewer to misinterpret. And I think it's probably because Christopher Nolan wasn'tfocused on that. 

Like, that wasn't what he was trying to speak to. But then there's a message that's still conveyed in the absence of explicitly labeling it or putting a qualifier or something around it. 

It's like a point is made in absence of trying to make a point. 

Further to that, Emily wrote quote, he did not want to go home because he didn't believe he deserved to and because after what he did, the home he left could never be the same. It was very clear in watching the film that there was a truth that he had to face, which is the truth is that he didn't want to go home. But why is that? 

What we were told is because he feels bad about killing people, he's claiming I single handedly, through my plan, dismantled Zeus's law and the world will never be the same again. 

This one man similar to Oppenheimer, now that I've invented the bomb, the world is never going to be the same and it's all my fault. Maybe that's a little bit of what was going on, but that is not something that was really in the original text. 

And if that's not what he was trying to convey, then what is it? He didn't want to go home. Well, OK, he just felt guilty about it. 

So he didn't want to face his  wife, face that he had all these people that were killed.  He didn't want to face that they were loyal to him. 

And maybe he wasn't actually a good leader. He didn't want to face his relationship with and against the gods. Like it could be any number of those things. I don't think in watching it that it was clear enough what we're supposed to take away, other than I just generally feel guilty about what that's like when somebody apologizes and then they're like, oh, I'm sorry you feel that way. 

What's the thing that you're actually apologizing for? The thing that you did, and why is that that you feel bad about or you think it's wrong? 

I think that's the piece that we're missing that Emily is picking up on. 

Comparing Nolan's Ending to The Odyssey's Original

Now to wrap up, I'm going to talk about the ending. When we got out of the theater, I turned to my sister and said I felt like it ended really abruptly. 

I just felt like it was off and I didn't really know why. And then I read what the actual ending was and I went there it is. That's why it felt wrong. Not that I remembered it, but I think Christopher Nolan tried to end it on the optimistic, positive note, which I don't think is a problem, but I wanted to see something more. 

If you wanted to land it in the happy way. I don't have a specific suggestion of what I think it should have been. I really don't. 

In the final book, the murdered suitors, so all of those people that Odysseus took out with his arrow

and various other weapons, all of those family members, just asTelemachus had said earlier. Remember how he had said, "well, if I take out all of those people by lighting the building on fire, all of their family members are going to come for me." 

That is in fact, what ended up happening. Those family members storm Ithaca, and this triggers another war. 

So just when we're thinking, oh, the war has finally ended because this one guy has come home, another war started because it's at his own hand. He kills a bunch of people. What happens is Athena and Zeus end up intervening to stop it. And then Zeus makes everybody forget, pulling the plug on all of it and doing a reboot. 

It's getting at this idea of humanity's true nature, and if their true nature is violence and vengeance, rather than the hopeful ending that Christopher Nolan gave us, oh, maybe the cycle can be ended. We don't know. 

Poor Telemachus, Lil Tom Holland, he's there by himself. 

But we're just left to think, oh, then everything turned out fine, but we don't actually know that. 

And another thing that I read is that all those people that were kneeling for Odysseus, he just straight up killed everybody. There was no kneeling. And then he spared those people.He actually successfully killed all of them and was very merciless, which makes it even more, quote, justified in the cycle of vengeance that those family members are coming and going after him. 

What this story is telling,

the Circe scenes with Antinous and his reaction, even Odysseus with his guilt, It was there, but I think with how it ended, it's not the take away, this cycle of vengeance bringing out the worst in humanity. 

But what does keep getting iterated over and over and over and over again is it is about Zeus's law. 

For context here, Zeus's Law from the ancient Greek Xenia, that is the rule name about having an idealized relationship between strangers, between hosts and guests. 

It's about treating people with mutual respect. And what this does is it produces goodwill. 

It's encouraging people to get along, trying to eliminate clans and not just like, here's my family and we're all connected. You're connecting with other people. In modern days, it's more of the golden rule, like treat others how you want to be treated, acts of kindness, things like that. What goes around comes around. 

That can go in a negative way too, with our karma and our vengeance here. But all of them are intermingled. 

It's just only ever stated in the one way in the film. The more subtle lesson that is being conveyed in Christopher Nolan's adaptation. 

Connecting Ancient Lore to Current Global Conflicts

What you're trying to do in fostering those relationships with people who are different from you, that is getting at xenophobia. Love thy neighbor Agamemnon and co just said let's invade over there. I know it's still in Greece, but let's invade over there. Those people are evil. They're bad. We're justified in doing this. 

And for anybody with current events, I mean, we have the war in Iran. We have war in Ukraine, obviously Israel and Palestine as well, all of these other global conflicts that have presented in history and that are active in present day where some quote leaders think they have the right to just go in somewhere and attack them because they believe the people that are there are bad. 

Preventing strangers from coming to your country, to your land, to your city, you think they're going to corrupt. That is a really, really important theme and take away from this film. 

And I don't necessarily think the average viewer in watching, you have to do more of the deep dive I think to get there because it's easy to just view it as, oh, this is a war movie, ha, they're fighting. 

There's so many war movies and even many from Christopher Nolan and I wanted to read another quote. 

"Home can be found and we can choose to do better by flushing out leaders who merely seek to make their followers afraid of the unknown, vilifying neighbors for the sake of ill gotten power and personal enrichment. We can choose to look for leaders who espouse kindness instead of those who would enact violence against their own family in order to plunge thousands into further danger and death. "

And they go on to say "gods and leaders are what we make of them. So choose wisely."

This was a good button to put on everything that I have talked about today. 

Reflecting on The Odyssey and Inviting Discussion

Just a circle back here. I really enjoyed the film. I am so glad that I saw it. I was waiting for a very long time to see it. The production aspects, the acting, creative aspects, all of the above, really fantastic. 

Do I understand some of the critiques around what was said or unsaid? That leaves certain things up to interpretation. As if it was ignored, as if it wasn't directly hit. 

So we don't understand that the movie's trying to make a point, point about anything. 

And so maybe more of a missed opportunity type situation. I can agree that there are some points where, Oh yeah, that would have been really cool if they had just a line here or a look there. 

And maybe it signaled some of that because it adds other richness to what was already a really great film. And then it can make other points. And maybe it's just that that's not the kind of filmmaker Christopher Nolan is. Maybe he saw it and decided not to do it, or maybe he didn't see it because he had his specific vision. 

And there's other perspectives as other people who have read the same text, who have read all sorts of different translations, including Emily's, and who have had a different take away. 

And that's why we continue to have adaptations. That's why we have people who continue to analyze and talk about this text thousands of years after it was written down, after an unknown period of time when it had just been spoken. 

It is one of the most important stories of all time, which is kind of crazy and cool that we get to be in a time when this Greek lore is appreciated. Honored if seeing the movie encourages people to do the typeof analysis that I did, hearing some different perspectives, seeing it in different ways. I'm sure in going back there's probably other interpretations of even the same line that we wouldn't have caught in real time because we're focused on everything that's going on and what they're fitting in and what the special effects are. 

If you have watched it and you have any thoughts, questions, responses, or you heard some perspective that are different than the ones that I found in just the last  hours, let me know. 

I would love to chat with more people about it, so feel free to send me a message or an e-mail or a comment in any of the social media posts about this. I'll return you to your regularly scheduled feed. 

We're in the process of doing some book clubs right now and then we'll start up with the 3rd and final Lore series of the season. 

So good a time is any that we kind of jumped back to one of the previous ones before starting the next ones at the time and did kind of work out. 

Christine: Thanks for listening.

Christine: If you'd like to learn more, the resources we used to prepare for this episode are listed in the show notes.

Renee: If you're curious to develop your intuition, we've partnered with the Nuurvana Be Light program to give our listeners a $500 discount on tuition fees.

Renee: Email us for more details and we'll connect you with the founder, Deganit Nuur.

Christine: Want to connect with us?

Christine: You can reach me, Christine, @ChanneledbyChristine with one L on Instagram.

Renee: And you can reach me, Renee, @_readbyrenee, or connect with both of us via email at synergytosynastry@gmail.com.

Christine: Keep your spirit curious and your aura sparkling.

Renee: We'll see you when the stars next align.

Outro

I did put it on hold actually, because I am. 

Oh, hold on. I have to pause. 

OK, I'm back. What was I saying? 

That is funny. Wait, I'm sitting down here. Actually, I was standing, which made me contributed to it. But I'm standing starting to talk about this movie. And just as when I had the real movie, I suddenly needed to go to the bathroom really abruptly. But here, because I was home, I was able to actually pause my recording, run out of the room, and then come back in and reset.

I guess I'm always just going to have that association with this film. The Odyssey's on. Got to run to the bathroom.