Whose right about the Odyssey? Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro? 

The long awaited Christopher Nolan interpretation of the epic story The Odyssey  released this week to high audience and critical scores and mixed reviews within the conservative media world. Matt Walsh of the successful theatrical release, Am I Racist said the movie was essentially terrible. He hated the dialogue and said the wokeness was worse than he thought it would be. 

On the flip side, Ben Shapiro of Daily Wire fame thought the movie was judeo-Christian and spoke to conservative morality if not conservative politics. He also dismisses the idea that the multiracial casting resulted in a woke or DEI experience. 

So who is right? The Conservative Critic will ask: Is it entertaining? Does it have artistic/intellectual value? And is it liberal propaganda? 

Meter Check: The Odyssey 

Overall Rating: Excellent 

To begin with a reminder of how movie watching works, the political undertones of a movie is only one part of many elements which make up a film. Overall, The Odyssey is a sensation. The underlying material is found by most to be a dry slog (okay found by me to be a dry slog) and Nolan’s interpretation brings it to life in an unexpectedly emotional manner leaning on the character’s relationships and humanity to bring otherwise disjointed journey points to life. Audiences will be truly moved by Odysseus’s journey particularly in its relation to his son, Telemachus. More than a series of unfortunate events, Nolan manages to make The Odyssey into a journey of cause and action, of sin and consequence. Off the screen, it plays more like a Biblical epic than it does the original ancient poem which was relatively void of morality. 

The performances in large part are strong with a few standouts (and a few clunkers) and the overall visuals are well chosen from the nature of the battle scenes to the costuming and styling. There is some painful dialogue that jars audiences out of the mist and one might be left wondering why Nolan even used an IMax camera considering the lack of power in the wide shots but it was beautiful, well organized and compelling by and large. 

Politically, it leans left. But not for the reasons the internet claimed. The mixed race casting is perfectly fine. It harkens to the Rogers and Hammerstein Wonderful World of Disney Cinderella where race simply has no meaning. It is erased from the story telling. It doesn’t do anything to the story that the characters are varied in race because they are all so varied. The use of a transmale actor to play a character who is intended to be small and vulnerable doesn’t present a problem to the audience either nor is this choice in conflict with conservatism. Where the film has a left lean is in how morality is presented on occasion. The construct of what is “honor” feels progressive but not so much that it ruins the movie or can even be identified to a modern political point of view. 

Overall, The Odyssey is a great film that will be enjoyed by most audiences and is likely to take home several awards (all though, I think short of the greatness necessary to sweep over Project Hail Mary and the upcoming Dune part 3). 

Is it entertaining? 

Rating: Gripping 

The movie is just under 3 hours and there’s not a second of boredom. Viewer will white knuckle several situations which Nolan artfully crafts to be high tension and high anxiety (this critic had to cover her eyes several times from stress not from violence). Despite the vast majority of the audience being familiar with the underlying story through required public school readings, somehow Nolan’s interpretation has viewers on the edge of their seat unsure what might happen next and excited to follow along as they learn. The Odyssey is a true epic. It has battle scenes and naval exploration and twists and turns and psychological thrills. 

Unlike when reading Homer’s original material, viewers will absolutely not be bored.

Does it have artistic/intellectual value? 

Rating: In some cases, but the dialogue breaks the fourth wall 

A lot is right with the construction of the movie. To begin with, the performances are very good. Matt Damon was restrained in a way not many other actors would have had the humility to do in a role as grandiose as Odysseus. I can think of 10 Academy Award winners who would have butchered the part compared to Damon’s presentation. His decision to keep the part quiet and strong grounds the entire movie into its emotional core and makes it very relatable and human. Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming) gives his best performance to date as Telemachus. His character is a somewhat naive young man hunting the shadows of his father and because the character lacks gravitas, he will likely be overlooked by the critics but his performance is believable, sincere and deeply emotional. Robert Pattinson (Twilight) also shines as Antinous the arrogant suitor hoping to marry Penelope. Pattinson’s performance is the most fun, correctly presenting a little bigger than the leading men giving the audience plenty of room to hate him. He isn’t a sympathetic villain and its delicious. Anne Hathaway as Penelope is receiving quite a bit of praise but actually was one of the weaker performances giving over the top overtures that feel inauthentic. What worked in Les Mis because of the style and nature of the material did not work here. Her performance in The Princess Diaries 2 would have actually been a better fit for the Penelope Nolan imagined (watch the movie – I’m right about this). 

Additionally, the visuals in the movie were really something. The costuming was bright and layered and a bit fantastical. Like the tone and lens of the movie, the styling of the characters are part modern, part ancient, part surreal. The overall blend works well and appropriately partners with the script and themes playing out on screen. Ellen Mirojnick is the costume director for the film and she is the designer from the first season of Brigerton, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and The Greatest Showman all perfect examples of this kind of blend of historical realism, fantasy and modernization. She was the perfect choice for the film’s point of view and she delivered. 

The backdrops are basically a tourism ad for Greece. Absolutely breathtaking naturescapes and ruins eating up the screen. They’re so stunning it almost looks like the actors are performing in front of paintings. 

That being said, the film had some problems in its construction. Nolan is a fantastic director. Not sure he should have adapted the script by himself. While Nolan has headed the writing of most of his projects, he has always had co-writers to help with ideas and editing which The Odyssey would have greatly benefit from. The biggest issue is the dialogue. On multiple occasions, characters will say very on the nose omnipotent things that shake viewers out of the fantasy of the story. At one point Odysseus says “this is the end of our age of bronze” and then later he says something about civilization being over and writers being lost. The people of ancient Greece did not realize in real time that civilization was ended obviously or they’d probably have made some attempts to stop it. I also don’t think they called themselves the “bronze age.” It just felt very like 13 year old middle schooler writing a school play for her history project. 

There is also a scene now widely discussed where Penelope says something along the lines of wanting a woman to be allowed to rule alone like she had been all those years. It is clunky and odd and feels out of place with Penelope’s devotion to Odysseus. Its basically the America Ferrera monologue from Barbie shoved into an epic tale. The monologue didn’t work in Barbie and it didn’t work here. The politics of the monologue weren’t really the problem so much as that the monologue was not inline with the character’s motivations and kind of messed up an otherwise strong duality between her and the wife of Agammenon. 

Finally, its not clear to me why Nolan insisted on an IMAX camera for the movie. While there are a few beautiful wide shot scenes, none of them are of particular interest to the story. They’d also by and large be just as pretty in the smaller aspect. Unlike Dune and Dune: 2, the point of the IMAX just wasn’t clear at all. The most powerful scenes in the movie are done in close ups. 

The movie was beautifully made with a few weak spots but the weak spots do not outshine its strengths. Its not Nolan’s best work, but its better than what most filmmakers are putting out there.

Is it liberal propaganda? 

Rating: Somewhat 

The stuff that people online said would make it “woke” definitely didn’t. The race issue was not a problem at all and nothing felt shoehorned in that way. Every person felt well slotted in their character and that everyone was of varied race did nothing to make the story disjointed or unbelievable. 

Additionally, Elliot Page as Sinon (not Achilles as was widely falsely reported) worked pretty well considering the character was meant to be a vulnerable and small boy. Elliot’s performance particularly later in the film was very good. From a political perspective, the trans agenda has been by and large focused on the replacement of women with men and the preservation of women’s spaces as well as the protection of children so where a transman (who transitioned as an adult) is replacing a male actor for a role meant to be a weakling? Seems like not at the top of the list of grievances especially where the performance was strong. Adult trans individuals simply working in Hollywood is not the core of the beef conservatives have with the trans agenda. Had they made a character be trans perhaps we’d be having another discussion. But Elliot simply played a man and a man whose description Elliot matches. One time Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan. The problem just doesn’t seem to be there.

But what did seem more left leaning, but not that severely, was how morality was defined and displayed in the film. In the film, Odysseus plucks his bow to warn prey he is hunting them saying this is an honorable action in battle. It is confusing to understand why doing something that would make hunting harder or get you and yours killed in battle would somehow be the moral choice. This kind of reasoning comes up repeatedly in the movie and it does feel slightly from a worldview of a leftist who considers hunting immoral and believes that the stronger army is inherently the evil army in a war. 

There are also quite a few feminist undertones in the movie which often make no sense and are disjointed from the overall narrative. Like Penelope’s monologue above but also in how the witch Circe is depicted. 

On the flip side, the exploration of faith and sin and consequences does feel Biblical in the Christian sense much like Ben Shapiro claimed. Odysseus is repeatedly faced with angry Pagan Gods who give him no forgiveness and offer him no shelter from the misery of his immorality (loosely held all things considered about what the Gods condone). This is juxtaposed against Athena who is depicted as Christ several times in the movie. Normally this critic is pretty annoyed when Christ imagery is displayed through women (it feels needlessly pointed) but in this case it actually really worked. A credit to Zendaya the actress but also Nolan’s vision and the costuming. It is very obvious that the idea of a great faith is being presented to Odysseus and therefore to the audience. Its not heavy handed, there is no call to salvation, but its definitely there. The idea that humans are only valuable to one God and that God loves them despite their constant harm to him and each other is a core theme of the movie. The Pagan Gods are essentially dismissed vengeful, far off convenient scapegoats.

Conclusion 

Both Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh are right about The Odyssey. It does have some bad dialogue and liberal themes. It also has pretty obvious Christian bias. And regardless of both of those things, the film is excellent and worth seeing.