The Stones We Cast Return: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the Cost of War
After a hiatus of more than six years, a dear friend persuaded me that it was time to step back into the darkness of a cinema. Our choice was the newly released adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey by none other than the celebrated British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan. By all accounts, it was an excellent film. As always, Nolan gives his audience a complex plot and leaves them thinking about more than a few things.
As a Latin student some thirty years ago, I encountered the world of Greek epic through the classical texts and their Latin reception. Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad introduced us to Greek heroes, gods, goddesses, and wars, particularly the destruction of Troy, while Virgil gave us the memorable warning, Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes — “I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts” (Aeneid 2.49).
You can then imagine how Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey became, for me, an occasion for comparative analysis. I shall mention some of these comparisons before turning to what I consider a central message of Nolan’s film: the pervasive nature of war and violence.
As a caveat, I recognize the difficulty of integrating every element of Homer’s poem into a film. Nolan omits the encounter with Aeolus on the floating island of Aeolia (Book X). Aeolus’ gift of the bag of winds, which might have eased the crew’s journey, instead complicates their problems because the men do not trust Odysseus. Trust remains a motif in Nolan’s narrative, but it is developed more fully in the original text.
Trust—and its absence—also appears in the encounter with Circe, who feeds Odysseus’ men and then turns them into pigs. In Homer’s text, Eurylochus suspects Circe, remains outside, and reports what has happened to Odysseus; Nolan assigns this role to Odysseus himself. Nolan also depicts a quick departure from Circe’s island, omitting the year Odysseus and his crew remained there after Circe restores the men to human form (Book X).
The film also omits Circe’s four attendants and the herb moly, given to Odysseus by Hermes, to protect him from her magic. Similarly, much of the dialogue between Odysseus and the Cyclops Polyphemus in Homer’s text (Book IX) is absent. The Cyclops’ prayer to Poseidon is rather reduced to a cry, while his final outburst in Nolan’s film does not appear in the poem.
On Ogygia, the island of the nymph Calypso, Homer depicts Calypso singing and weaving as she holds Odysseus there (Book V), while Nolan has her feed him lotus flowers. In both versions, Odysseus’ rejection of immortality becomes a lesson about what human ambition can cost: family, community, and a true sense of self.
Despite the adaptation’s attention to family, Nolan omits Laertes and Anticleia, Odysseus’ parents, as well as Odysseus’ meeting with Achilles, the acclaimed hero of the Trojan War (Book XI). Meanwhile, Nolan adds a significant twist to the sequence of events at the return of Odysseus (Book XXII), and the movie ended quite differently from the poem.
One striking element of Nolan’s The Odyssey is the ambiguity surrounding the gods and goddesses. It is never clear whether Nolan presents them as real or as psychological images haunting the human mind. In Homer’s text, the gods repeatedly obstruct or assist Odysseus on his journey home; in Nolan’s film, Odysseus often gets in his own way. The gods are far less culpable.
Nolan’s narrative mentions Zeus but never shows him. Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, strategic warfare, and craft, is presented less as a divine counsellor than as an imaginative figure who appears to Odysseus in moments of confusion—a mental dialogue partner. One of those killed at Troy bears Athena’s face, suggesting a haunting image of death rather than the straightforward appearance of a goddess.
In Homer’s text, the gods repeatedly obstruct or assist Odysseus on his journey home; in Nolan’s film, Odysseus often gets in his own way.”
The theme of violence and its consequences remains central to Nolan’s The Odyssey, offering a lesson that the modern world can draw from this ancient classic. The film directs our attention to what savagery does to the identity of both its perpetrators and its victims.
Having helped destroy Troy in a senseless rage, Odysseus reflects in his monologue before Penelope that the war also destroyed his native Ithaca and everything he loved. Violence has a way of returning to its source while remaining where it was planted. The wars supposedly “fought and won” in recent decades continue to fuel today’s security challenges. The war launched in Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the collapse of the Libyan state remind us that military interventions can produce consequences far beyond their original theatres.
Libya’s collapse contributed to the circulation of weapons, fighters, and instability across the Sahel.[1] The devastation in Gaza, conflicts involving Iran, and Russia’s war against Ukraine likewise produce consequences beyond their immediate settings, including displacement, food insecurity, and economic pressure.
[1] Cf. Adeoye O. Akinola and Naledi Ramontja, “Violent Conflict in the Sahel: Causes, Dynamics, and Actors,” 125-146. In Adeoye O. Akinola, ed., Contemporary Issues on Governance, Conflict and Security in Africa (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023).
Violence has a way of returning to its source while remaining where it was planted.”
For African societies carrying the memories of civil war, colonial violence, military intervention, and forced displacement, Nolan’s Odysseus is not merely an Ancient Greek hero. He embodies a truth many communities already know: wars do not end when weapons fall silent.
They continue in damaged institutions, displaced families, traumatized soldiers, inherited grievances, and generations struggling to return to a home that violence has already changed. In truth, war changes us all. The soldier doesn’t just come home when the war ends. He rather continues to return, in bits and pieces, for years unending.
For Odysseus, it took ten years to find his way to Ithaca, a theatre of chaos. Looking back, Troy was not just a city for Odysseus; it was a piece of his wrecked and wretched soul. For a man leaves something behind in every place he has destroyed. And so, upon return, there is no settling, there is no guarantee of finding peace.
The soldier does not simply come home when the war ends. He continues to return, in bits and pieces, for years on end.”
Violence does not stay where it is committed. Troy and Ithaca are united in tragedy and violence. What we do “there” does not remain “there.” It cannot be contained. It follows us all the way “here,” into the present. We cannot escape either our acts of violence or the places in which they occurred.
Little wonder Jesus asks Peter to sheath his sword: “For all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).
Violence does not stay where it is committed. What we do ‘there’ does not remain ‘there.’ It follows us all the way ‘here,’ into the present.”
When we create conditions that subject people to institutional violence, war, displacement, hunger, and poverty, we create the monster that eventually threatens our own peace. Human violence leaves all of us vulnerable, lost, and traumatized, like Odysseus. No one is immune to its consequences; no one is invincible.
