In Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, civilisation is collapsing as raiders defy Zeus’s law. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
Peter Swallow
The new film extols the value of a rules-based world order. That’s far more radical than any casting decision
- Peter Swallow is Labour MP for Bracknell, and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on classics. Before his election, he was a classics teacher and academic
For years, a small but vocal corner of the extremely online right has looked to the ancient world to justify its polluted brand of politics. The classicist Donna Zuckerberg (sister of Facebook founder Mark) wrote a book about it way back in 2018 called Not All Dead White Men – a deep dive into the corners of the internet where misogynists pretend ancient philosophy can justify their hatred of minorities.
You would think that these self-appointed guardians of the ancient world would be excited about a blockbuster retelling one of its greatest pieces of literature, the Odyssey. Especially when Christopher Nolan’s film has been getting rave reviews, “the vast majority … written by men”, as the Guardian’s Catherine Shoard has pointed out. The Odyssey is an action-packed thriller with a fight scene every five seconds. In many ways (and I don’t mean this as a criticism of Nolan; I loved the film for all its flaws), it’s a movie designed to appeal to their tastes. And yet.
Many rightwing commentators have been railing at the film’s perceived “wokeness” for months – since well before it hit cinemas. Nolan’s biggest crime seems to have been casting Lupita Nyong’o, a black woman, as Helen of Troy, the entirely mythical daughter of Zeus. In other versions of her myth, she was born out of a swan’s egg alongside her mortal sister Clytemnestra and her two brothers, who were either gods or mortals depending on which one you read. I can see why they’re worried about inaccuracy …
There have been plenty of other criticisms from keyboard warriors concerned about a lack of historical accuracy in a film adaptation of an entirely fictional myth. Having a PhD in classics means I agree with them that Corinthian helmets aren’t historically accurate to the film’s bronze age setting; having a sense of proportion and an understanding of artistic licence means I don’t really care.
Elon Musk has, perhaps predictably, emerged as the loudest critic, even calling Nolan an “ anti-White racist ” and suggesting he might use Grok to create an AI-powered Odyssey movie “ that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer ”. But as ridiculous as that all is, the right shouldn’t hate Nolan’s Odyssey for its inaccuracies. They should hate it because of what it has to say about the very real, very Homeric concept of xenia.
Xenia, which Nolan translates as “Zeus’s law”, was an ancient custom that governed how people were supposed to treat strangers. Zeus’s law is absolutely original to Homer. In fact, it’s a pretty fundamental part of the poem. When I taught GCSE students about the Odyssey, xenia was one of the first concepts I’d teach them. In Homer’s Odyssey, as in Nolan’s film, it drives how different civilisations and cultures are supposed to interact with one another in society. People (and monsters such as the Cyclops) who break Zeus’s law are punished; those who uphold it (such as Odysseus’s son, Telemachus) are rewarded.
But Nolan’s take on xenia is unmistakably modern. To me, it feels like an allegory for the fraying, rules-based international system. Whether it’s state sovereignty being undermined by Russia, international maritime law under threat from China or Donald Trump’s disdain for global multilateral cooperation on everything from trade to defence to the climate crisis, the rules-based order established after the second world war is under threat.
At the end of the movie – spoilers – Odysseus and Penelope see their entire bronze age Greek civilisation collapsing. This is based on an actual historical event, the Mycenaean collapse. In Nolan’s retelling, it happens because the people of the sea are raiding and warring, breaking Zeus’s law.
The message for a modern audience is, again, not subtle: society will collapse if we abandon our rules-based international order. If Nolan’s film really is “woke”, this is why – because it’s fundamentally a film about the value of multilateralism produced for an increasingly nationalistic world. Musk and co seem to have missed this message. But it’s the real reason why they should hate the film. It pushes back against everything the hard right are trying to achieve and instead makes clear that a commitment to international diplomacy isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s a prerequisite to civilisation.
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And, yes, for all those complaining, that’s not in the original poem. Nolan’s film is a reimagining. But here’s the truth about classics. Nobody gets to decide how all those wonderful ancient stories get retold, rewritten for new times or redeployed to make new arguments or share new perspectives. No one person gets to own the ancient world. Especially not Elon Musk.
- Peter Swallow is Labour MP for Bracknell, and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on classics. Before his election, he was a classics teacher and academic
