this past weekend i went to see Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey in theaters. i’ve been looking forward to it for a while, and walking out of that theater, i was struck by how much the movie lingered with me. it wasn’t the spectacle or the visuals, it was the weight of what Homer was actually saying underneath all the adventure.
it reminded me of a lecture i’d watched a while back from the Predictive History channel on YouTube, which completely changed the way i understood the Odyssey. that video was a real inspiration for me. it reframed everything i thought i knew about this story, and after seeing the film, i want to share some of what i took away from it, because i think it speaks to something we all deal with.
it’s not an adventure story
most of us grew up thinking the Odyssey is about a hero sailing around, fighting monsters, and trying to get home. but at its core, it’s a story about three people, Odysseus, Penelope, and their son Telemachus, who are all broken by twenty years of separation. each one of them is suffering from what we would now call trauma, depression, and cognitive dissonance.
Penelope can’t confirm whether her husband is alive or dead. she can’t move on, but she can’t justify waiting either. she withdraws into her room, day after day. Telemachus is trapped in the shadow of a legendary father he’s never known, watching his inheritance get devoured by suitors while his life wastes away. and Odysseus, the man who devised the Trojan Horse, is sitting on a beach weeping, broken by what he saw and did at Troy.
the ancients understood this as a splintered soul. in modern terms, it’s a shattered worldview, when your coherent sense of who you are, where you came from, and what your life means gets ruptured by an experience too painful to face.
the three lies Odysseus told himself
what i found most powerful is how the lecture explains why Odysseus is broken. when he left for Troy, he built his entire justification on three pillars: the war was about justice (a Trojan stole Helen), it was about family (Helen belongs with her children), and it was about legacy (winning the greatest war in history would give Telemachus something to be proud of).
these held together as long as the war continued. but when the Greeks won, everything collapsed. the war wasn’t about justice, it was revenge and murder. it wasn’t about family, they destroyed families, enslaved women, killed husbands. and the legacy wasn’t glory, it was the annihilation of an entire civilization for nothing. Helen didn’t even want to go back to Sparta.
the moment that broke him
there’s a passage Homer wrote that captures the exact moment Odysseus’s soul splits. during the fall of Troy, he strikes down a Trojan soldier. the soldier’s wife throws herself over the body, screaming. the victors drag her away into slavery. and Homer writes that Odysseus weeps, not as a conqueror, but “as a woman weeps, her arms flung round her darling husband.”
he sees Penelope in this woman. he came to Troy to reunite a wife with her family, and instead he destroyed every family in the city. that realization is what shatters him. and that’s what the entire Odyssey is really about, having done so much evil, how can you go home? how can you repair yourself?
love is the answer
the lecture ends with something simple but profound. the answer Homer gives is love, specifically, the love of family. Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus each have a splintered soul, and the only thing that can heal them is each other. their reunion isn’t just a happy ending. it’s the restoration of three broken people who find wholeness again through the people who matter most.
i think there’s something universal in that. we all carry wounds. we all have moments where the story we told ourselves about our lives falls apart. and Homer’s answer, written nearly three thousand years ago, is that we don’t heal alone. we heal through the people we love.
sitting in that dark theater watching Nolan bring this to life, i felt that truth in my chest. some stories survive millennia because they say something we never stop needing to hear.
Donovan