The Odyssey

There's this meme about asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire. Despite being half Italian, my answer would be "not that often." Greek mythology,1 however? Far more than I'd like to admit. All that to say: yesterday we watched Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The tl;dr version: it's great. 9/10. Also, wow, that soundtrack... I'm listening to it while typing this. The longer version: over the years, I've read several versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Different translations, adaptations, and retellings from the perspective of individual characters.2 Nolan's film isn't completely faithful to the original. Then again, a fully faithful adaptation would probably run for ten hours, and at nearly three hours, this one is already long enough. Even so, I enjoyed it immensely. Homer's Odyssey is, to me, largely about homecoming, with hubris hanging over nearly every major decision. Nolan's version is about what war does to the people who survive it. It's a different take,…