Just How "Woke" is Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey"?

[00:00:00]They're making it impossible for me to go see the Odyssey. I really want to see the because I like Christopher Nolan, but oh my gosh, between these stars and now this promotion rap about the Odyssey where they have everybody, you know, Jimmy Fallon and all the people from Have you seen this? Here's the rap to promote Odyssey.

[00:00:18]Watch.

[00:00:19]>> Odysius.

[00:00:20]>> Tmicus.

[00:00:21]>> Penelope.

[00:00:22]>> And Odysius.

[00:00:24]>> Tmicus.

[00:00:25]>> Penelope and Helen of >> Odyssey. Odyssey.

[00:00:27]>> After the Iliad, >> won the war.

[00:00:30]>> I'm serious.

[00:00:30]>> Odyssey.

[00:00:31]>> Odyssey.

[00:00:31]>> Ditching for Ithaca.

[00:00:32]>> Get past the Pelipeneian Peninsula.

[00:00:34]>> Odyssey.

[00:00:35]>> Odyssey.

[00:00:35]>> Mediterranean.

[00:00:36]>> Psychop >> and crater. His cranium.

[00:00:38]>> Cursing.

[00:00:39]>> Men into bacon bits.

[00:00:40]>> Got to go on the road.

[00:00:41]>> Get to where Hades is.

[00:00:42]>> Odysius.

[00:00:44]>> Penelope.

[00:00:46]You could be Homer. The way we go over storytly it looks all you have to say is the Odyssey one of the greatest writers directors of our age is trying it and then put a clause Hollywood into the contracts of all these actors that they have to shut their pie hole. Shut it.

[00:01:15]>> [music] >> Shut your mouth. Spencer, how are you, sir?

[00:01:20]>> Glenn, I'm doing great. It's great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:22]>> It's Yeah, it's uh it's good to be you.

[00:01:24]Uh good to be with you. Um uh I have to tell you, I remember reading The Odyssey when I think I was in high school and I just thought it was a just a bore fest.

[00:01:34]Uh and couldn't get through it.

[00:01:36][laughter] Uh it is it is one of the greatest stories of all. I mean, you know, this is I love this. I remember I read uh Weathering Heights at one point as an adult and I read it and I'm like >> that is actually a boring book I have to tell you. Really? That one is actually boring. I don't know. Did you like it?

[00:01:54]Oh, no.

[00:01:55]>> I did. I did. I liked it and I thought, >> "All right, maybe I should reread it."

[00:02:00]>> Yeah. There's something about these classics, you [laughter] know, discovery. You know, here I am a 30-year-old guy going, you know, people should read more classics. There's something to those classic. Yeah, they're classics for a reason. Anyway, yeah, the Odyssey is is like that. Um, uh, where it is such a great story. Can you start with what the story is?

[00:02:22]>> Yeah, I'm really happy to do that. And it's easy on one level. It's a story about a guy going home. Adysius is a warrior and a king. He's the king of Ithaca. He's been fighting in Troy for 10 years. That's the prequel, the Iliad, if you like. And this is the sequel to the Iliad where he tries to make his way home, but for a whole bunch of reasons, including the wrath of the gods and all sorts of other uh mythological mishaps along the way, he can't get back. And when he arrives back finally, he discovers that a pack of weasels and snakes, a bunch of suitors have taken over his palace. And he has to uh wreak vengeance upon them to gain his queen back. Penelopey, who's been waiting for him all that time, all those 20 years that he's been gone. And uh he one of the reasons he doesn't come back is because uh because everybody died uh that he was that was under his command.

[00:03:22]And so he's kind of feeling bad about that or do I have that right or wrong?

[00:03:26]>> Well, some close. So people all of his men die along the way as part of this tormented journey. But you're getting at another layer of the story, which is once you tell the kind of beginning, middle, end, plot of it, you get to dig deeper into these incredible layers, including Yeah. Why is it that this guy can't make it home? And what does it mean to come home after 10 years of war?

[00:03:54]What does it take to rediscover yourself and reflect on the experience of being a soldier having to do savage brutal deeds and then go back and become a husband and a family guy and a dad out back in the yard with a beer. So, there's definitely that going on as well and these big questions of leadership that you were being raised.

[00:04:14]>> I don't I don't remember the hammock with the beer in the story, but maybe I missed.

[00:04:18]>> Sorry, wine. Wine. They're Greeks, so it's wine, but [laughter] yeah, close enough. Um the uh Okay, so the the other thing and and please uh correct me if I'm I'm wrong because I most likely am.

[00:04:28]Um but his son is angry with him, right?

[00:04:32]And uh and and his wife >> Well, everyone's got a lot of feelings, >> right? [laughter] >> I would say Clint, everyone's got a lot of feelings. Um his son Tmicus is he's one of the first ever coming of age stories that we have in Western literature. And this is how the poem starts, which may be why you were bored by it. It's possible that you got to this poem and you were like, "Ah, there's dragons and monsters and and witches and gods." And then the first thing that happens is we sit around in Ithaca with this kid who's kind of not sure about what he wants to do with his life, and he's fatherless. So, he's trying to gain a certain amount of manhood and maturity. Um, Penelope, meanwhile, yeah, is waiting for Adysius.

[00:05:18]She's a famous model of devotion, but she's also human. And everyone in this poem is beautifully human. So, she is trying to stave off the suitors with this famous trick of weaving and unweaving a burial shroud. And then she's also Yeah. this very beautiful symbol of how she's a match for him because he's famous for his matus, his cunning, and his his intelligence.

[00:05:45]Basically, she has that same amount of kind of deceitfulness, but also WS and and smarts. And when they finally meet, he's in disguise. She's not sure what to believe. She's not ready even to let go of her defensiveness, and neither is he.

[00:06:04]And they have this gorgeous reconciliation scene where she practically melts into his arms when he finally proves that he knows the secret of their marriage, which is that their bed is is carved out of a tree that he uh that she asked him to move and he says, "No, I can't." So, there's this there are all of these moments that are really cinematic and offer a great kind of pallet for a director like Nolan to to work with. Um, there's also a lot of word play and kind of the plot on purpose twists around the the word that Homer uses at the beginning for Adysius is he's polluted.

[00:06:39]He has many ways and wanderings and he and the plot itself loops back over onto itself. Um, so there's also stuff that maybe if you're coming to it for the first time, you're like, I thought this was about a king and a queen and now I'm kind of wandering about and pyos and and Sparta with all these random characters.

[00:06:57]But what I would say if you're getting into reading it for the first time is like [snorts] bear with him for the first four books. There are 24 books or chapters of the poem and just keep an eye on Homer's great theme which is the man. He begins the poem and musa sing to me of a man muse. And the whole thing is about who is this guy? And if you think about it as a kind of um identity tale and a homecoming tale and you keep an eye on the character of Adysius, you find just like endless stuff that reveals itself with more and more rereading. It has high replay value as they say of video games.

[00:07:33]>> Uh okay, so Christopher Null, forget everything he just said because I think we just made this sound really boring.

[00:07:39]Um, Christopher Nolan, Christopher Nolan, if you're going to go see a movie, >> Christopher Nolan, and I don't know if you feel this way, I think he's one of the better storytellers of our age. Um, no question.

[00:07:52]>> He's so good. And there is, you've seen the movie, so please tell me he didn't wreck it by putting a bunch of crap and woke crap in it. He just told a great story.

[00:08:03]>> He did not wreck it. I'm totally ready to just say this is a good movie. Now, there's a lot of footnotes and stuff that we can get into talking about, but just the bottom line is the thing we were afraid of, which is completely reasonable and understandable. I was listening to you talking about how dumb actors are when they open their mouths.

[00:08:22]And boy, I want to co like just I'm so in for this writer, the shut up and sing, the shut up and act rider that you want to put on people contracts completely. They've done so much damage to people who are already fed up and understandably, right? It's like I always think about Rachel Rachel Zgler in Snow White this disastrous Disney remake >> and you know Zgler Snow White is famously very very white. Zgler is not all that white. So so people were kind of raising their eyebrows at that but more than that and much more importantly she doesn't like the source material.

[00:08:57]She was giving these interviews saying oh it's it's misogynist and it doesn't like women in power and it's all about keeping women down. So that combined with the fact that the these racial recastings only ever go in one direction and you're kind of shamed for for noticing this, right? Um I think that's driven people a little bit crazy. And I understand that like now whenever somebody does this they think, oh no, here we go again. And with the Odyssey, which is such an incredible work of art and such a foundational work of Western literature, it's it's a very tender sore spot, right? Like you're going to take this thing and you're just going to drag it through the muck and you're going to like tell me that it's evil and you're going to give me your stupid modern take on it, you know? So, I think that's what people are are worried about. And I think that that got blown a little bit out of proportion because Nolan is not doing that at all in this movie. He makes some changes to the source material so you can like or not like, but none of them is designed to undermine the poem or to tell you you're wrong and racist for liking it. It's the actors who kind of mouthed off and it's the controversy that got kicked up around the poem. That stuff, you know, Lupita, who is one of the people that talked about, oh, Homer doesn't like women or whatever. um you know she she's a great actress and she gives a really interesting performance in this and she's really her part is really like a vanishingly small part of the movie as are a lot of the other things that people got um upset and and mad about and Nolan really does which not a lot of directors have done. He really does put the story on screen. He gives you Matt Damon as the smartest soldier around, tormented guy making his way back home.

[00:10:43]And he gives you Anne Hathaway in the best performance I've ever seen her give. Uh, who >> unlike a lot of other Penelopeies that have been on screen, she really does want Adysius back. She loves him. She's of course conflicted. She's confused and in pain, but she passionately loves him and is waiting for him. And it's just a very moving story. So I I don't know. I think Nolan does a really great job. the book is better because the book's always better than the movie. But it's that's something that, you know, you can kind of talk about when you see the movie.

[00:11:12]The the woke takeover stuff is what everyone was really afraid of and that just doesn't happen. It's just not in this movie, which is great.

[00:11:19]>> Yeah. You know, [clears throat] one of my favorite poets, you're going to lose a lot of respect for me, is Dr. Seuss.

[00:11:24]No, one of my favorite po favorite uh uh poets is Edgar Allen Poe.

[00:11:30]>> And and his >> You like him? cuz I just read something that said uh most people, you know, especially in that era, all of the uh critics, all of the other poets except for a few over in England, they all thought he was trash.

[00:11:48]>> Oh, poo. This is snobbery. This is just sheer. People like Eden Poe, and that's why critics look down on him, I think. I mean, they think of him as trash or entertainment. and because it's fun, you know, because it's exciting and people like it, then they'd say, "Oh, he's not really a great poet. He's not a sophisticated literary artist." There are sophisticated great poets who are difficult to understand, but Po is incredible. He's a beautiful wordsmith.

[00:12:13]So is Dr. Seuss, by the way, a genius.

[00:12:15]It's impossible to do what Dr. Seuss does. Anyway, yes. Okay. So, [clears throat] >> okay. Um, can you tell me there is um while we're here on ancient culture except for the po thing, AI is now helping us unroll ancient scrolls that we haven't had access to. Can Do you know anything about this? Can you talk to me about this and what's happening and what we're finding?

[00:12:37]>> Uh, I love this story. So, this is like I I'm not used to um people being interested in things that I'm passionate about because I'm a classicist. So, the fact that there's this big movie about the uh Odyssey and this major AI story about classic.

[00:12:53]>> Oh, no. You're nerding out. This is your weekend.

[00:12:55]>> I'm just This is my like this is my moment. I am just like, "Put me in, coach." Um, >> so, but this is a genuinely awesome story and it's awesome for about a zillion different reasons. Um, >> these scrolls that you're talking about were buried under the ash of Vuvius. You remember Mount Vuvius? exploded, erupted and buried Pompei, and there was another city, Herculanium. And so, obviously, there's like incredible stuff preserved there, a lot of dead bodies for one thing. But in addition, in the 18th century, they found this villa with a library. And it's not like today where you can just be a schmuck like me and have a big shelf of books behind you.

[00:13:36]It's like very few people had were wealthy enough to have large collections of books. And so there's a lot of stuff in there that might be lost that is lost from the ancient world that we could recover. And it's tantalizing because they're baked into these carbonized chunks basically. They're like they're like charcoal basically. And so for centuries people have been trying to figure out how to read them, how to read what's inside them without destroying them or just making them crumble to a million pieces. It's like an Indiana Jones type thing. You know, if you touch it, it falls apart. And there have been all sorts of different mechanical efforts to do this. Um, including most recently, and this was when I was in grad school, people were shooting them with X-rays, very highly powerful X-rays that can see inside the layers without touching the scrolls or doing damage to them. But it's really, really hard to figure out once you have the X-ray images how you're supposed to basically arrange them, virtually unroll them, they say, to to make them lie flat so you can read them, see what's on them.

[00:14:37]And that's what AI has now helped people to do. There's this project called Vuvius project which is funded by a tech investor where you get a prize if you can do this with one of the scrolls. And they just recently figured out how to do it with a complete scroll. So you can just look inside into the past into these breless treasures using the help of AI but not and this is really important. I know we've talked about this before. The AI is not reading the scrolls. So, it's not guessing what letters are there. It's It doesn't even know any Greek, if that makes sense.

[00:15:09]There's no There's no language built into the >> showing us.

[00:15:14]>> Exactly. Yeah. And then the people come along and they they read the the stuff that's in there.

[00:15:18]>> I am already out of time. I only have a minute left with you. So, go ahead and finish. What? So, what have they found?

[00:15:24]>> Oh, well, right now, sorry to say, bunch of philosophy. The hope there's all these scrolls left to unroll. We could find stuff by Aristotle. We could find uh poems that were missing like Enus, the great uh Roman, the great the great Latin poet. Um we have a tiny sliver from from this period. We've got, you know, seven plays by Escilis, which is just a a miniature portion of what he wrote. There could be anything in there.

[00:15:54]And I just love that, you know, the tech is actually working to help the humans rather than [laughter] the other way around.

[00:16:01]Um, thank you so much, uh, Spencer. I'm glad to hear this review that my pleasure.

[00:16:06]>> The Odyssey is is good. Uh, and, uh, you know, because that's what I would expect from Christopher. So, thank you.

[00:16:12]Appreciate it. God bless you, man.

[00:16:14]>> Thank you.

[00:16:15]>> Great to be.

[00:16:17]>> Yeah. That's uh wouldn't it be interesting if if we open all the scrolls and we found like the words to Beyonce and we realize no no that's why those words are so good they're ancient right yeah maybe words [music] from Lizo's songs but certainly not Beyonce