Nolan's film is about America

 

from The MarkFather

  Can we -- and by we I mean I -- talk about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey for a minute? We can? Thanks. I was going to do it anyway.

 You see, it seems to me that what keeps being missed in this whole debate is that Nolan was never trying to recreate Bronze Age Greece at all. First, it wasn't even written down until hundreds of years later, and second, Nolan's film isn't really about that anyway.

 

It's about America

 

Nolan used one of the greatest epics in Western history to construct a parable about modern day America.

 

He retains many of the same themes, including and especially the importance of compassion and hospitality to strangers and the breakdown of those norms in a society headed towards collapse.

Sound familiar? Because it should.

 

That's why he had such a diverse cast, because he wanted a cast that looks like and reflects modern day America, from a rapper as the poet to a black Helen of Troy. 

People were so busy criticizing the lack of historical accuracy, often if not usually as a cover for their own racist feelings, that they missed that point. Unfortunately, it also prevented them from not only enjoying the film but also from grasping the larger point of a film that serves as a spiritual successor to Oppenheimer. While the latter film pointed to the dangers of scientific hubris in creating technology beyond our means to control, this film points to the moral decay preceding it.