“And dawn will break over the darkened world. And our mistakes will once again be forgotten.” These are the final words spoken in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
When we go to a Nolan movie, what do we expect? An epic-scale IMAX spectacle? A time-bending labyrinth of a plot? A meditation on the nature of humanity? The answer, of course, is all of the above and more.
Nolan has given us no shortage of consistent themes, techniques, stylistic flairs, and even actors to analyze, and it makes his films all the more interesting when placed in conversation with the rest of his work. With The Odyssey now out in theaters, fans and skeptics alike are eager to examine its place among Nolan’s other films, and there are endless connections to make.
The Odyssey is a seamless continuation of the major ideas Nolan explores in his last two films, Tenet (2020) and Oppenheimer (2023). As Nolan’s career has progressed, he has become increasingly concerned about the state of the world and its future. Interstellar (2014) was a major activation point for this thematic interest, and it has continued to shape his work since. But Tenet, Oppenheimer, and The Odyssey paint a very specific picture of humanity’s tendency for destruction. We can never escape it nor learn from the mistakes of our ancestors. The most fascinating part is how each of these films tells this story from different points in our shared history, from the past to the present to the future.
The Past
The Odyssey asks us how humans can learn from the mistakes of our ancestors, and it shows us that we haven’t. In a literal sense, it is an adaptation of a story thousands of years old, molded into a poignant commentary on our modern society. In narrative terms, it presents a cycle of violence and tragedy that has recurred throughout human history.
Both the film and its characters understand the importance of preserving said history through storytelling. Although fictional, The Odyssey tells a very real story of the wars and ruins that have plagued humanity since our earliest days. When one civilization collapses, another rises in its place. But it’s also true that when one war ends, another is always on the horizon.
The Odyssey frames its narrative around flashbacks to the fall of Troy, a crucial moment of destruction that represents all of humanity’s worst tendencies. Violence, deception, cruelty, and rage, all on full display. The tragedy of The Odyssey arises from the fact that this devastation has already happened, leaving the characters to deal with its consequences.
Odysseus’s wife and son are left at home, living in both the literal and metaphorical ruins of the war he wrought. This brings home Nolan’s point that it’s not just Odysseus who has to live with the fallout of what he has done; it’s his family, and his son will have to grow up in a world he and the other people of his generation have damaged beyond repair.
The film ends on a very complicated note. It highlights the tension between wishing to preserve this history so that future generations learn from these mistakes and understanding that they are bound to repeat them. Telemachus is left to rule Ithaca while his parents get to leave the fractured kingdom behind, and it is up to him to either pave a different path for his people or repeat the cycles his father perpetuated.
The Present
Although Oppenheimer is technically a historical piece, it covers a relatively recent history that speaks most directly to our present day. We are living in the immediate aftermath of the world Oppenheimer helped create, with threats of nuclear catastrophe and international war constantly looming over us, facilitated by powerful people with no regard for the human lives at stake.
Much like The Odyssey, Oppenheimer explores humanity’s capacity for cruelty and destruction, but now with the power of modern technology. It asks us if it is not the most human thing imaginable to use advancements in science and technology to immediately create a weapon of mass destruction. Once again, cities are decimated, and civilians are massacred, made all the more frightening by the fact that this film deals not with fictitious events, but real ones.
The two films go hand in hand, as this is the exact cycle of forgotten and repeated mistakes that Odysseus warns of at the very end of The Odyssey. The two lead characters have much in common, with both having to face the consequences of what they’ve done, as well as the knowledge that no one else could have done it but them. But the thread is also clear that there will always be an Odysseus or an Oppenheimer, and they will seize the opportunity every time, even when history has warned them that they shouldn’t.
Again, Nolan ends the film with a warning for the future. When asked about the result of his work and the concern of his early research that the detonation of a nuclear weapon could create a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world, Oppenheimer replies, “I believe we did.” It’s an incredibly bleak conclusion, once again born out of Nolan’s clear concern for the future of our society and what ruinous state we may be leaving for the generations that follow us.
The Future
Where The Odyssey and Oppenheimer present a past that has led to a troubled present, Tenet questions what kind of future we may have doomed ourselves to as a result. Although the central events of Tenet largely take place in the present, the film is much more concerned with the future. Its conflict stems from the idea that we may be damaging the world so irreversibly that future generations will resent us for it to the point of waging a war on the past.
The Protagonist is forced to confront the future head-on, not as a hypothetical reality, but as an enemy born of the actions of the present. While antagonists take a variety of forms in this film, the message of Tenet is clear: it has always been, and always will be, us.
It’s incredibly grim to envision a future so dark that the only imaginable solution would be to kill your own ancestors in the hopes of preventing their disastrous actions, and yet, is it really so hard to imagine? Nolan posits that it’s easy to villainize the people who came before us – the people of Odysseus’s and Oppenheimer’s times – for the fraught state of things they have left us with, but that we must also acknowledge our own complicity in doing the same thing for the people who will come after us. As the deuteragonist, Neil, says in the film’s final moments, “What’s happened’s happened, which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to do nothing.” Tenet holds us all accountable, but also reminds us that we could be the ones to leave the world in a better state than we found it in if we choose to. The unfortunate truth is that we have repeatedly chosen not to.
The Odyssey is a fascinating capstone to this trilogy of films that seem to be chronicling humanity’s downfall in reverse. And given Nolan’s affinity for playing with his stories’ chronology, isn’t that perfectly fitting? That no matter which way you tell it, forwards or backward, we always end up in the same place.
Article Courtesy of Claire May Lewis
Feature Image Credit to Universal Pictures