Homer’s Odyssey is like the Delphic sanctuary of Western civilization. We return to it again and again, hoping that through its oracular message we might receive a foretelling of our own fate. As with every prophecy, the message does not reach us as a transparent, easily readable surface, but as the essence of an enigmatic Pythian echo. It is precisely what hides behind the veil of linear meaning that determines our true identity. Nolan’s Odyssey is telling in this respect. In its total reduction of depth, in its absolutizing of a spectacular narrative surface, it lays bare the essence of our collective historical condition. The original semantic polyvalence of the epic—which interweaves the fate of the individual with fundamental questions of humanity, both personal and social—becomes, in Nolan’s film adaptation, a spectacle of shallowness. The manifestation of commercial aesthetics and the recycling of the most banal ideological constructs of reality offer a remarkably authentic definition of what, in truth, we in the West are today. The saturation of stimuli in every unit of time of the image makes it impossible to pause before the enigma of existence. It places the sensorially overloaded viewer in the position of a subject who must flee at all costs from confronting themselves. Sensorially battered, the viewer loses the capacity for reflection, for searching, for the journey itself. How symptomatic that Nolan finds practically no room for silence, suspense, pause, or emptiness—coming closest to it only in the depiction of vast landscapes, and even then merely as backdrop. Whether the truth of the unconscious revealed itself in the film on its own, or whether this was the director’s actual intention, is entirely beside the point.

In the Beginning Was the Song

The Odyssey is the name of a historical narrative framework that, in its essence, represents a cultivated, thematically defined transmission of foundational insights, of the imaginary-symbolic weave of a specific cultural space. At its origin, sometime in the 8th century BC, it was passed down through the oral tradition of singers (aoidoi), who lent the tales a dramatic character while playing the lyre. It was not actually written down until the 6th century BC. It is precisely this particular mode of transmission that defines the epic’s liveliness, its dynamism. Above all, it establishes its openness to individual completion, again and again, in the introspective exploration of the central questions it indirectly raises. In other words, The Odyssey represents a narrative actualization of the fundamental Delphic maxim “know thyself” (gnōthi seautón). It represents the moral-cultural framework for a specific realization of humanity. Precisely because of this, Homer—whose name history placed in the seat of honor as author of the epic—already in the age of classical Greece formed the foundation of education and upbringing (paideia). In his central work, The Republic (606e), Plato unhesitatingly asserted that it was Homer who educated Greece. The Odyssey, then, alongside the Iliad, has from the very beginning been a field for the sculpting of the human face. In every era of history it forms a central pillar of the humanistic journey of emotional self-knowledge. Completing such a journey demands an active subject—not one who takes the narrative as mere entertainment, but one who knows how to listen, and who takes the central trials of the main hero upon themselves. The full subjective dimension of the Odyssean return on the path of self-knowledge was laid out, in all its depth, by Norman Fischer, Zen master and poet, in his book Sailing Home (2008). Fischer showed that the silence of subjective experience in no way diminishes the dramatic force of trials of epic proportions. The real difficulty of returning to oneself is not spectacular because of special effects, but because of the difficulty and consequence of the task itself. The thunderous loudness of Nolan’s spectacle does precisely the opposite: it pushes introspection—whether on the level of the main actor or of the viewer—to the periphery of visually ostentatious shallowness.

Image That Drowns Out the Word

Nolan’s Odyssey represents one of the most ambitious cinematic undertakings of all time. It is the first feature film shot entirely on 70mm IMAX film. The 173-minute rendering of The Odyssey takes place across five or six different countries. Realizing the entire production required a substantial budget of $250 million. From its premiere on July 6, 2026, to the present, the film’s earnings have continued to climb, bringing in billions within just a few months. This made it Nolan’s most profitable film to date. As the numbers themselves attest, Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is conceived spectacularly. Each episode on its own is an eventfully and visually saturated narrative frame that seeks to create an immersive experience for the viewer. Through the movement of the camera, Nolan wants to turn the viewer into Odysseus’s companion—a passive observer of the path of his fate. The viewer joins the line to set sail from Ithaca with Odysseus. They are with him in the Trojan Horse, in Polyphemus’s cave, at practically every step. And yet, oddly, they are always merely beside him, almost never truly with him. Throughout the entire film a documentary-style narration dominates, one that never offers a genuine pause for introspective dilemma—not even when it comes to Penelope’s yearning wait for her lost husband. Everything unfolds as a retrospective synthesis that links events into a linear timeline. It is precisely because of this surface quality that any depth of the viewer’s experience of the epic scale of the trials themselves is lost. The episodes of Nolan’s Odyssey are held together only and exclusively by sequence. No inner tension of the heroes—let alone the heroines—creates the drama; only noise and the spectacular nature of momentary events do. The saturation of noise and visual elements is at times so brutal that it drowns out the tensions between the central antagonists and forces the viewer into the role of an anemic witness to cinematic excess. Dialogue suffers especially amid these audiovisual eruptions. Dialogue is a basic element for testing reality as such—one of the few scalpels that resists ideology. In Nolan’s Odyssey, dialogue is reduced to the basic function of conveying the story’s timeline and sketching the fundamental attributes of the main characters. There is no depth of incision, no questions, no doubts, no crossroads. As if the word had become a superfluous ingredient of a story that the image has entirely appropriated for itself.

Woman as Emptied-Out Ornament

Although the main hero of The Odyssey is a man, women form the central core of the epic’s narrative structure. In the form of goddesses, mythical beings, or mortal women, they can be counted at around thirty. Each of them plays a key or significant role in the context of Odysseus’s fate as a dynamic process of self-realization. The two central figures of the epic are Helen and Penelope. The former is the site of questions of belonging, desire, ambition, adultery, and other categories of social relation. The latter is the site of questions of fidelity, closeness, perseverance, and principle. Helen stands at the center of the opening tension, the rupture that establishes the basic dynamism and retrospective intersection of the narrative; Penelope, meanwhile, connects the passages between past and present, weaving them together just as she weaves the shroud for Laertes. As long as she weaves, time moves forward, and events remain bound together into a shared fabric of meaning. Without Helen there is no plot; without Penelope there is no time, no story at all. The goddess Athena, who in the form of an inner voice of prudence guides Odysseus at moments of the hardest decisions and trials, occupies in the epic the role of moral compass. Among the mythical female roles, Circe and Calypso hold central places. Both of their roles, as multidirectional crossroads of decision, open the widest interpretive horizon. Circe transforms a life that, for the price of pleasure, renounces the endurance of collective loyalty. She turns companions, before their own eyes, into human-animals—a metamorphosis that could well be the name of our own age. At the same time, she advises Odysseus, guides him, and opens up to him the unconscious currents of his own self-awareness. Circe is both thanatically dangerous and liberating. Without a stop at Circe’s, the journey misses its intended goal of self-knowledge; in Freudian terms, the id (Es) never becomes the ego (Ich). With Calypso, on the other hand, it is a matter of suspension, of an inability to complete the journey, of the embodiment of the desire for timelessness and immortality at the cost of memory. The seductiveness of the promise of eternal youth and beauty demands a high price: loneliness, captivity, facelessness, alienation. Where the depth of the female characters in Homer’s Odyssey is inexhaustible, Nolan flattens it to the level of narrative decoration. The female roles in his film adaptation are conspicuously marginal. In several places it seems as though they are present only because the literary source demands it. Where Penelope still shows traces of a possible introspective dimension, the character of Helen is already reduced to bare formality. Circe is portrayed as a simple sinister witch who despises human closeness and turns people into animals as a hobby. She is depicted in much the same way as supporting characters are depicted in film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings. The same holds entirely true for Polyphemus, who calls to mind an enlarged Gollum. The stop at Calypso’s, in its particular aestheticization, resembles a cosmetics advertisement. The nymph lacks any depth of character or personality. She is reduced to the level of an aesthetic object that is apparently meant to be sufficient in itself to keep Odysseus lingering in his longing for immortality. Dialogues with her are so impersonal, flat, and laconic that they resemble an exchange of thoughts with a large language model. Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey and critic, in her essay “An Uncomplicated Man” (London Review of Books), defined with great precision that Calypso in Nolan’s film resembles an unpaid therapist who soothes his soul with drugs. Another site of explicit ideological symptomatology of our present moment. Every emotional transaction that would form the core of suspense, the very foundation of the impossibility of moving on, is entirely absent from this episode. Everything is reduced to the symbol of the lotus and a shallow ambient aestheticization—not the overcoming of oneself in the challenge of confronting a fantasy, merely the return of memory after waking from anesthesia. The absence of depth is shown not only in the manner in which the female characters are treated, but also in the decision to cut certain key roles altogether. It is entirely understandable that a film adaptation cannot cover the full literary source, and yet, given all the unnecessary emphases elsewhere, the absence of Arete and Nausicaa feels deeply questionable. Without them, Odysseus’s story never reaches narrative completion. Nausicaa is, after all, the figure who symbolizes the passage between entrapment in the wild current of trials and the hospitality of civilization’s shore. Arete is the symbol of the recognition of virtue, the embodiment of meritocracy and of what matters. That which gives Odysseus’s journey its value—that which allows his story a voice within the context of social relevance—Nolan simply omits. In precisely the same way that our own age neglects any judgment of value grounded in merit.

Appearance as Surrogate for Essence

Nolan has robbed The Odyssey of all depth through sheer spectacle. He has flattened its multidirectionality into a linear narrative. He has consistently modeled its aesthetic ideals on the archetypes of the beauty and fitness industries. He has reduced dialogue to an almost unnecessary filler. In none of his choices has he made room for critical distance, reflection, or pause. He has done exactly what Hollywood expects: a technically accomplished spectacle that inadvertently lays bare the full shallowness of our present age—a brutal experience that, in its dispersal of consciousness, demands only an ever greater dose of stimuli so as never, even for a moment, to find itself caught in a reflective loop turned back upon itself. He has stripped The Odyssey of its essence and elevated appearance to the level of substance.

V ORIGINALU

Christopher Nolan: Odiseja kot spektakel plehkosti

Homerjeva Odiseja je kot delfsko svetišče zahodne civilizacije. K njej se neprekinjeno vračamo, da bi prek orakeljskega sporočila prejeli napoved lastne usode. Kot pri sleherni prerokbi sporočilo do nas ne pride v podobi prosojne, enostavno čitljive površine, temveč kot bistvo enigmatičnega pitijskega odmeva. Prav tisto, kar se skriva za tančico linearnega smisla, določa našo dejansko istovetnost. Nolanova Odiseja je v tem smislu povedna. V popolni redukciji globine, v absolutizaciji spektakularne narativne površine, razgali bistvo naše zgodovinske kolektivne določenosti. Izvorna semantična polivalentnost epa, ki prepleta usodo posameznika s temeljnimi vprašanji človeškosti v individualnem in družbenem smislu, postane v Nolanovi ekranizaciji spektakel plehkosti. Manifestacija komercialne estetike in reciklaža najbolj banalnih ideoloških konstruktov realnosti predstavljata nadvse avtentično opredelitev tistega, kar v resnici na Zahodu danes smo. Saturacija dražljajev v sleherni časovni enoti podobe onemogoča postanek pred bivanjsko zagonetnostjo. Čutno preobremenjenega gledalca postavi na raven subjekta, ki mora na vsak način zbežati pred soočenjem s seboj. Senzorično ugonobljen izgubi zmožnost refleksije, iskanja, potovanja. Kako simptomatično, da Nolan praktično ne najde prostora za tišino, suspenz, postanek oziroma praznino, ki se ji še najbolj približa v prikazih razsežne pokrajine, čeprav le v podobi kulise. Vprašanje, ali se je resnica nezavednega v filmu razkrila sama, ali pa je bil to pravi režiserjev namen, je povsem brezpredmetno.

Na začetku je bila pesem

Odiseja je ime zgodovinskega pripovednega okvira, ki v svojem bistvu predstavlja negovan, vsebinsko začrtan prenos temeljnih spoznanj oziroma imaginarno-simbolnih prešitij specifičnega kulturnega prostora. Na začetku, ki sega nekje v 8. stoletje pr. n. št., se je namreč prenašala prek ustnega izročila pevcev (aoidov), ki so pripovedi dodali dramatičen značaj ob igranju na liro. Zares zapisana je bila šele v 6. stoletju pr. n. št. Prav specifičen način prenosa epa opredeljuje njegovo živost oziroma dinamičnost. Predvsem pa vzpostavlja njegovo odprtost za vsakokratno individualno dovršitev v introspektivni tematizaciji osrednjih vprašanj, ki jih posredno odpira. Z drugimi besedami, Odiseja predstavlja fabulativno aktualizacijo temeljnega delfskega reka “spoznaj sebe samega” (gnōthi seautón). Predstavlja moralno-kulturni okvir specifične uresničitve človeškosti. Ravno zaradi tega je Homer, čigar ime je zgodovina postavila na častno mesto avtorstva epa, že v času klasičnega grštva predstavljal temelj vzgoje in izobraževanja (paideia). Platon je v svojem osrednjem delu Država (606e) brez zadržkov zatrdil, da je prav Homer tisti, ki je vzgojil Grčijo. Odiseja je torej poleg Iliade že od samega začetka polje klesanja človeškega obraza. V vseh obdobjih zgodovine predstavlja osrednji steber humanističnega emocionalno spoznavnega popotovanja. Dovršitev tovrstnega popotovanja terja aktivnega subjekta, torej ne takšnega, ki pripoved vzame za zabavo, temveč takšnega, ki zna prisluhniti in osrednje preizkušnje glavnega junaka vzeti nase. Vsakokratno subjektivno razsežnost odisejskega vračanja na poti samospoznanja je v vsej globini razprostrl Norman Fischer, mojster zena in pesnik, v svoji knjigi Sailing Home (2008). Fischer je pokazal, da tišina subjektivnega izkustva v ničemer ne zmanjša dramatičnosti preizkušenj epskih razsežnosti. Dejanjska zahtevnost vračanja k sebi ni spektakularna zaradi svojih specialnih učinkov, temveč zaradi težavnosti in usodnosti naloge same. Gromka glasnost Nolanovega spektakla stori ravno nasprotno: introspekcijo, pa naj si bo na ravni glavnega igralca ali pa gledalca samega, postavi na periferijo vizualno bahate plehkosti.

Podoba, ki preglasi besedo

Nolanova Odiseja predstavlja enega najambicioznejših kinematografskih podvigov vseh časov. Gre za prvi celovečerec, ki je v celoti posnet na 70-milimetrski IMAX film. 173 minut upodobitve Odiseje se odvija na ozemlju petih ali šestih različnih držav. Realizacija celotne produkcije je zahtevala zajeten proračun v vrednosti 250 milijonov dolarjev. Od premiere 6. julija 2026 pa vse do danes je naraščala tudi donosnost filma, ki je samo v nekaj mesecih prinesel milijardni zaslužek. S tem je postal najdonosnejši Nolanov film. Kot izpričujejo že same številke, je Nolanova ekranizacija Odiseje zasnovana spektakularno. Vsaka epizoda zase je dogodkovno in vizualno zasičen pripovedni okvir, ki želi gledalcu ustvariti potopitveno izkušnjo. Z gibanjem kamere želi Nolan gledalca spremeniti v Odisejevega spremljevalca, pasivnega opazovalca poti njegove usode. Gledalec stopi v vrsto, da z Odisejem odrine iz Itake. Z njim je v Trojanskem konju, v Polifemovi votlini, praktično na vsakem koraku. A začuda je vedno samo ob njem, praktično nikoli z njim. Skozi celoten film prevladuje dokumentaristična pripoved, ki nikoli ne ponudi resnejšega postanka v introspektivni dilemi, tudi kadar gre za Penelopino hrepeneče čakanje na izgubljenega moža. Vse se odvija kot retrospektivna sinteza, ki dogodke poveže v linearno časovnost. Ravno zaradi te površinskosti umanjka sleherna globina gledalčeve izkušnje epskih razsežnosti preizkušenj samih. Epizode Nolanove Odiseje povezuje zgolj in samo vrstni red. Dramatičnosti ne ustvarja nikakršna notranja razpetost junakov, kaj šele junakinj, temveč zgolj hrup in spektakularnost hipnega dogajanja. Nasičenost s hrupom in vizualnimi prvinami je mestoma tako brutalna, da preglasi napetosti med osrednjimi antagonisti in gledalca prisili v vlogo anemične priče kinematografskega pretiravanja. V vizualno-zvočnih izbruhih še posebej trpijo dialogi. Dialoškost je osnovna prvina preizkušanja realnosti kot take. Eden redkih ideološkosti nasprotujočih skalpelov. V Nolanovi Odiseji so dialogi zvedeni na osnovni obrazec podajanja časovne zgradbe zgodbe in orisa temeljnih atributov glavnih akterjev. Nikakršnega globinskega reza, vprašanj, dvomov oziroma razpotij. Kot da bi beseda postala odvečna sestavina zgodbe, ki si jo je v celoti prisvojila podoba.

Ženska kot izpraznjeno okrasje

Čeprav je glavni junak Odiseje moški, predstavljajo ženske osrednje jedro narativne strukture samega epa. V podobi boginj, bajeslovnih bitij oziroma smrtnic jih lahko naštejemo okoli trideset. Vsaka od njih igra ključno oziroma pomembno vlogo v kontekstu Odisejeve usode kot dinamične samouresničitve. Jedrni figuri epa sta Helena in Penelopa. Prva kot torišče vprašanja pripadnosti, poželenja, častihlepnosti, prešuštva in drugih kategorij družbenih razmerij. Druga pa kot torišče vprašanj zvestobe, bližine, vztrajnosti in načelnosti. Helena je v središču otvoritvene napetosti, razkola, ki vzpostavi osnovni dinamizem in retrospektivno presečišče, Penelopa pa povezuje prehode med preteklostjo in sedanjostjo, ki jih spleta med seboj tako kot mrtvaški prt za Laerta. Dokler plete niti, čas teče, dogodki pa so povezani v skupno tkanino smisla. Brez Helene ni zapleta, brez Penelope ni časa, ni nikakršne zgodbe. Boginja Atena, ki v podobi notranjega glasu presodnosti Odiseja usmerja v trenutkih najtežjih odločitev oziroma preizkušenj, ima v epu vlogo moralnega kažipota. Osrednje mesto med bajeslovnimi ženskimi vlogami zasedata Kirka in Kalipso. Vlogi obeh v podobi mnogosmernih odločitvenih križišč odpirata najširše interpretativno obzorje. Kirka spreminja življenje, ki se za ceno užitka odpove vzdržnosti kolektivne zvestobe. Tovariše pred očmi spreminja v človeške živali. Metamorfoza, ki bi lahko bila ime sodobnega časa. Hkrati Odiseju svetuje, ga usmerja in mu odstira nezavedne tokove njegovega samozavedanja. Kirka je tanatično nevarna in osvobajajoča. Brez postaje pri Kirki pot zgreši želeni cilj samospoznanja. V freudovskem smislu ono (Es) ne postane jaz (Ich). Pri Kalipso pa gre za suspenz, za nemoč dovršitve, za utelešenje želje po brezčasnosti in nesmrtnosti za ceno anamneze. Mamljivost obljube večne mladosti in lepote zahteva višino cene v podobi osamljenosti, ujetosti, brezosebnosti in tujosti. Če je globina ženskih likov v Homerjevi Odiseji neizčrpna, jo Nolan splošči na raven pripovednega dekorja. Ženske vloge v njegovi ekranizaciji so vidno obstranske. Na več mestih se zdi, kot da so tam samo zato, ker to zahteva literarna podloga. Če Penelopa še kaže zametke morebitne introspektivne razsežnosti, je lik Helene že zveden na golo formalnost. Kirka je prikazana kot preprosta zlovešča čarovnica, ki sovraži bližino človeškosti in jo za hobi spreminja v živalskost. Upodobljena je na enak način, kot so v kontekstu ekranizacije upodobljeni spremljajoči liki v Gospodarju prstanov. Povsem enako velja za Polifema, ki spominja na povečanega Goluma. Postaja pri Kalipso v svoji specifični estetizaciji spominja na reklame za kozmetične produkte. Nimfi manjka sleherna osebnostno značajska globina. Zvedena je na raven estetskega objekta, ki naj bi bil sam po sebi dovolj, da Odiseja zadrži v hrepenenju po nesmrtnosti. Dialogi z njo so tako neosebni, ploski in lakonični, da spominjajo na miselno izmenjavo s širokimi jezikovnimi modeli. Emily Wilson, prevajalka Odiseje in kritičarka, je v eseju »An Uncomplicated Man« (London Review of Books) neizmerno natančno opredelila, da Kalipso v Nolanovem filmu spominja na neplačano terapevtko, ki z drogami pomirja njegovo dušo. Še eno mesto eksplicitne ideološke simptomatike sodobnosti. Sleherna čustvena transakcija, ki predstavlja jedro suspenza, temelj nezmožnosti nadaljevanja, je v epizodi popolnoma odsotna. Vse se zvede na simbol lotusa in plehko ambientalno estetizacijo. Ne premagovanje samega sebe v izzivu soočanja s fantazmo. Zgolj vračanje spomina po prebujanju iz narkoze. Odsotnost globine pa ne izpričuje samo način tematizacije ženskih likov, temveč tudi odločitev za izpustitev nekaterih ključnih vlog. Povsem jasno je, da ekranizacija ne more v celoti pokriti literarne podloge, pa vendar se ob vseh nepotrebnih poudarkih zdi odsotnost Arete in Nausike zelo sporna. Brez njiju Odisejeva zgodba ne doživi pripovedne dovršitve. Nausikaa je namreč tista, ki simbolizira prehod med ujetostjo v divji tok preizkušenj in gostoljubnostjo civilizacijskega pristana. Arete pa je simbol prepoznanja vrlosti, poosebljenje meritokratičnosti in ključnosti. Tisto, kar Odisejevemu potovanju podeli vrednost oziroma kar njegovi pripovedi omogoči glas v kontekstu družbene relevantnosti, Nolan preprosto izpusti. Na povsem enak način kot sodobnost pušča v nemar sleherno na meritokraciji temelječo presojo vrednosti.

Videz, surogat bistva

Nolan je s spektakularnostjo Odisejo opeharil za sleherno globino. Njeno mnogosmernost je zvedel na linearno pripoved. Estetske ideale je dosledno povzel po arhetipih lepotne in fitnes industrije. Dialoge je zvedel na skorajda nepotrebno mašilo. V svojih odločitvah niti na enem mestu ni ponudil prostora za kritično razdaljo, premislek, postanek. Naredil je točno tisto, kar Hollywood pričakuje. Tehnično dovršen spektakel, ki nehote razgalja vso plehkost sodobnosti. Brutalno izkušnjo, ki v razpršenosti zavesti zahteva le še prekomeren odmerek dražljajev, da se niti za hip ne bi znašla v povratni reflektivni zanki. Odiseji je odvzel bistvo in substanco postavil na raven videza.