SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
"The Odyssey" is a story that is almost 3,000 years old, one that has been retold time and time again. And with each iteration, a new generation of storytellers gets a chance to put their own spin on Odysseus, the complicated man, the man of twists and turns, trying to make his way to his wife, Penelope, after the Trojan War.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ODYSSEY")
MATT DAMON: (As Odysseus) No one could stand between me and home, not even the gods.
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: The word most commonly associated with Odysseus, or Ulysses back in the day, was always wily. Now, that's a (laughter) - that's not a word you traditionally associate with your hero.
DETROW: That is director Christopher Nolan. He has been thinking about adapting "The Odyssey" for more than 20 years and finally got his chance after the success of 2023's "Oppenheimer." But even for a director known for his lengthy films, the entirety of Homer's epic poem was just too much for one movie, so Nolan told me he started by making choices.
NOLAN: I did it in stages, and one of the first things I did after I'd reacquainted myself with the poem, I sat down and I wrote a list of what defines "The Odyssey." Things like the cyclops. Things like the sirens. I think for a lot of people, the lotus-eaters would be one of those things. And so I was trying to strike a balance between your sort of thoughts on what this thing is before you get really acquainted with it and then the specifics of it.
DETROW: And yet at the same time, you're adding. You know, you're scaling down, but then you're adding. Like, I was struck by both Penelope and Circe are present characters in the poem, but they're, for a lot of reasons, kind of more in the background, and you give them both, you know, speeches, almost, talking about their point of view on this world.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ODYSSEY")
ANNE HATHAWAY: (As Penelope) Look at this great house. Stones as old as knowledge at the mercy of some greedy unwanted guests. The structure's nothing without people's respect for its meaning.
TOM HOLLAND: (As Telemachus) Zeus' law.
DETROW: So, I mean...
NOLAN: Yeah.
DETROW: ...I imagine that's a whole different challenge. Like, where am I going to add, where I'm going to put background story in, motivations, things like that.
NOLAN: Sure. I mean, I don't think of it so much as adding and subtracting as trying to translate your experience of reading the poem and absorbing the poem into the cinematic medium. So sometimes, yes, what feels like adding things, in a way, you're sometimes just looking at the source material with a specific lens, a modern lens.
And in the case of some of the female characters, in the poem, they tend to be used at times purely as reflection of the hero as opposed to being characters in their own right, at least at first blush. And when you start looking at the sort of mechanics of who does what to whom, you know, how does the story play out, you actually start to find the necessity of characterization is there in the poem. It's there sort of implied, just as I'm having to get on a real boat in real waves. You know, I know that I've got Anne Hathaway coming to play Penelope. I've got Charlize Theron, you know, coming to play Calypso, Samantha Morton coming to play Circe. They play people, not symbols.
DETROW: What to you were the core ideas that you wanted to build this movie around when you started thinking about what it would look like?
NOLAN: Well, there are two concepts that are most often referred to from the poem, and one is nostos. That's the idea of a homecoming narrative, coming home changed and home having changed and the emotion of that and the catharsis of that. And that's sort of baked into the narrative.
But the other is a concept called xenia. I don't refer to it by it - by that name in the film. In order to keep things simple, I refer to it by its other name, which is Zeus' law. And that's essentially the idea that when you meet a stranger, however humble that stranger might seem, you know, might - you might think that they're a beggar or whatever, they could be a god in disguise, so you have to treat them the way you would want to be treated. So it's sort of what other cultures have referred to as the sort of golden rule. You know, treat others as you want to be treated, but with a theological underpinning.
And you start to realize the more you work with it, that nothing has changed. We are just as dependent on this mutual respect as we ever were. And so in that way, the theology of the piece and the relevance for a modern-day audience, they're not fighting anymore. Suddenly, they're all kind of pulling in the same direction, which I thought was kind of exciting.
DETROW: There's been so much focus on the decision to shoot it all in IMAX and how it was challenging, but you felt like it was worth it. I'm wondering, as part of that, were there any trade-offs you made to shoot it all in IMAX?
NOLAN: No. And the reason I say that so emphatically is we were only going to do that if we could do it without compromise. And so for me, the big barrier, as it were, the thing we'd never been able to do before was shoot dramatic scenes with the actors because the cameras are too noisy. IMAX had built this blimping (ph) system for us, this high-tech box that you put the camera in, and it silences the camera. But it's massive, and it weighs 300 pounds, and you can only shoot just under three minutes with it.
So what I was asking the actors to do from a method point of view is start the scene. As it's developing in intensity, pause, keep everybody tensed up, reload the camera as quietly and efficiently as the camera crew could, and then pick up the scene again. And none of us knew whether that would be worth it, whether that would be a compromise to performance, and that was something obviously we're not prepared to do. In retrospect, I think what happened was it put such intense focus on the performances, on that moment between action and cut in those dramatic scenes, that even though it feels like it would've been distracting and cumbersome, I think it actually became an advantage.
DETROW: Would you do it again?
NOLAN: Not tomorrow, but...
(LAUGHTER)
NOLAN: ...Maybe once I've had a holiday. I've been trying to give up IMAX for 20 years, and it's just addictive. It's absolutely the most wonderful, beautiful imaging format ever devised. If we can do it, it's going to take the audience there. It's going to immerse them in it.
DETROW: You're at the point in your career where everything you do is scrutinized and analyzed. And I feel like there's always this conversation of, is this a reference to that movie, and are these movies talking to each other? And I'm wondering, do you feel like there are ideas you're returning to and trying to work out movie by movie?
NOLAN: I mean, the way I would sort of best answer that, I think, is to say that if I've done my job right when I'm fully immersed on a film or on a project, I leave that film with unanswered questions. I leave it with themes that we haven't been able to fully address. And that will often inform my creative process on the next film. But that makes it sound a bit more conscious than it is - a bit more self-conscious than it is.
Certainly, I got to the end of making "The Odyssey." I saw some very strong connections with "Oppenheimer," and that made sense to me because, you know, you never fully exercise it with a film, I don't think. I think you're always slightly carrying it into the next thing.
DETROW: I'm trying to think of how to ask that for people who haven't seen it yet, but I really felt...
NOLAN: I know, a little tricky (laughter).
DETROW: It feels to me like there's a lot of thinking about the idea that once you take a certain step, you can't take it back in both those films.
NOLAN: Very much. And it was, for me, also very interesting to take on mythology. As you unpack it and what Homer has written, what's there, you start to realize that there are these massive sort of real-world stakes that - you know, what were the consequences of the Trojan War, for example. Suddenly, everything takes on this much weightier, much more sort of real-world quality that starts to really engage you from a modern perspective and relate to other versions of those kind of stories.
DETROW: That was director Christopher Nolan. His adaptation of "The Odyssey" is in theaters now.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUDWIG GORANSSON'S "CAN YOU HEAR THE MUSIC") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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