Last night I went to go see the summer blockbuster film The Odyssey for the second time. It seems that Spiderman may be overtaking Odysseus for the top spot, but the Escondido IMAX was still pretty crowded after a few weeks since the release of The Odyssey, so I think it’s holding up at the box office. As you may recall, I saw the movie the first time from the second row of the Hollywood IMAX and rated it a 4 based heavily on the dark cinematography, the chaotic battle scenes and the loudness of the soundtrack…among other troublesome aspects having to do with Nolan’s attempt to faithfully depict an Ancient Greek epic poem in all its allegorical glory (the cyclops, the pig metamorphosis, and the dead soldiers coming up out of the ground, etc.). I had hoped that sitting back and having the benefit of perspective and not being weary from a trek up the mountain to Griffiths Observatory would make the experience better. Everyone seems so transfixed by the film that I need to understand why I am so negative on it. While I am not willing to raise my score on the film based on last night’s viewing (the big three of darkness, chaos and loudness prevail), I did take away something intriguing about the film that I think is worth reviewing.
One of the central and repeating themes in the film that I didn’t really catch on the first viewing is the repeated reference to Zeus’s Law. “Zeus’s Law” refers to Xenia, the ancient Greek sacred code of hospitality. The ancient concept of Xenia obligated hosts to welcome strangers and travelers with food, shelter, and protection with no questions asked until after they’d been cared for. Guests, in turn, had to be respectful, not overstay their welcome, and reciprocate generosity later. Zeus himself, as “Zeus Xenios,” was believed to be the divine protector of guests and strangers and the idea was that any beggar at your door might secretly be a god in disguise, so mistreating them risked divine punishment. This meant hosts had to welcome anyone, be they king, messenger, friend, or beggar, with food, drink, and shelter before even asking who they were and what their intentions were. The notion shows up throughout Homer’s Odyssey with the Phaeacians (who were cut from the Nolan film even though they were referred to regularly as “the seafaring people”) caring for shipwrecked Odysseus, Eumaeus (the blinded servant played by John Leguizamo) welcoming the disguised Odysseus home, and, who could ignore the immortal Calypso (played by Charlize Theron). On the flip side there was Polyphemus the Cyclops, violating Xenia catastrophically by eating his guests, even though it could be argued that breaking and entering and eating someone’s cheese without asking might not be the sort of behavior that Zeus would have said warranted Xenia.
In Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey, “Zeus’s law” is invoked repeatedly and becomes central to the plot in that it’s what stops Telemachus from evicting Penelope’s freeloading suitors from the household and allows Odysseus to come to the final banquet as a beggar in disguise and sit among the suitors in the final deception. During the film, the various characters describe Zeus’s Law essentially as the Golden Rule … “treat others the way you want to be treated”, and Nolan has framed it as a matter of basic survival in a world where anyone could end up shipwrecked and dependent on strangers’ mercy. It harkens to the famous Blanche DuBois line from A Streetcar Named Desire…“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Blanche DuBois’s famous closing line in Tennessee Williams’s play, spoken as she’s led away by the doctor at the play’s end is a moment of surrender and fragile dignity, given after her breakdown and the events with Stanley. She technically uses “kindness,” versus hospitality, but it echoes the same theme Nolan exploits with Zeus’s Law/Xenia. Blanche has spent the whole play relying on the goodwill of others to survive, much like a traveler in the ancient world depending on a host’s hospitality. Xenia is not a physics or philosophy “law” in the formal sense but rather a moral/religious code. That is a notion worthy or further thought in the context of the modern world.
The allegory imbedded in Zeus’s Law is about civilization and the collapse thereof. Xenia was the glue holding Bronze Age society together, a world of islands and travelers with no police, no international law, nothing but mutual trust to protect a stranger far from home. Nolan frames it as the golden rule made necessary by circumstance since people need to travel and trade, and everyone is at the mercy of strangers. So the law isn’t really about hospitality etiquette, it’s an allegory for the fragile social contract that lets any society function at all. It’s a warning about what happens when this fragile social trust erodes. Nolan’s retelling uses the sacred hospitality theme to tell a modern story where mutual trust dissolves into fear, paranoia, and endless war. The suitors abusing Odysseus’s household, Polyphemus eating his guests, the eventual sack of Troy…all violations bit by bit in a degradation of society that adds up to civilizational collapse. Nolan explicitly connects the breakdown of Zeus’s Law to the historical Bronze Age Collapse, reframing it as a dire warning for the present about what happens when basic civility between people disappears.
Everyone loves Matt Damon and therefore wants to admire Odysseus, but is that justified by his actions? The film’s twist is making Odysseus himself guilty of violating the law he claims to defend. The Trojan Horse exposed innocent civilians to slaughter (note that Odysseus stares at the horse as it collapses in the ruination of Troy). It is also a symbol of his betrayal of his young acolyte, Sinon, who’s name he adopts in his return home. He has betrayed a fellow human for the sake of the glory and deception of war and victory. He also is hardly a reverent leader of his men or a faithful husband (even if it is Charlize Theron!) along the way. Just look at the chaotic battle scenes where Odysseus hacks and stabs at anyone in his way and does so with single-minded purpose and almost disdain for those weaker than himself. Odysseus is certainly haunted by his role in sparking the cultural collapse that follows, but his is damnably complicit as well. That’s the allegorical sting: the “hero” isn’t supposed to be exempt from the rule; breaking it doesn’t stop being corrosive just because you’re the one telling the story (think Trump).
This all creates a modern resonance. It is a commentary on hospitality toward strangers, refugees, and outsiders, especially immigrants. It is a reminder of the horrors of overt aggression and war more broadly. Nolan’s underlying message seems to be that societies thrive when people choose trust and kindness over fear, and that this remains true in modern times, not just antiquity. Nolan is using a 3,000-year-old custom as a mirror for how thin the line is between a functioning society and one that’s eating itself. Therefore I am prepared to give Nolan a few points for social commentary and lift my score from 4 to 6 (but no further) because not everyone who sees the film will dislike Odysseus for his actions versus his words and his bouts of conscience. Some will admire him (it is Matt Damon after all…). Odysseus may sail off into the western sunset, but he has Penelope, his son Telemachus is in charge of Ithaca and he sails off with the admiration of his people and perhaps even Zeus. What I want is a film that heralds the benefits of keeping and not breaking Zeus’s Law.