Experienced men: Nolan's "Odyssey" will be released in Russia on July 23
Next week, a few days after the start of worldwide distribution, Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey" will appear on Russian screens. In Moscow's Luxor Hudson and Yasenevo Cinema Quarter cinemas, Izvestia was told that the launch of this version is scheduled for July 23 throughout Russia. The Kolibri cinema, however, did not rule out that their film might appear earlier. So there is time to prepare and "study the gap." In the 21st century, the Homeric epic is at the peak of popularity. In just a few years, many bestsellers based on his motives, a scandalous new translation, a number of high-profile performances and films playing on the themes of The Odyssey and the Iliad have been published. While everyone is arguing about Matt Damon's candidacy, inauthentic armor and other "red rags" of Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey" advertisement, Izvestia tells why this film is just part of a great reflection on the Homeric epic, and this can explain the seemingly unobvious decisions of the cult director.
We read (after) Homer's
Christopher Nolan's Odyssey will not be officially released in Russia, but some cinemas have already announced screenings. In the capital's Luxor Hudson and Yasenevo Film Quarter, Izvestia was informed that the launch in Russia is scheduled for July 23. They say at Kolibri that they might have a movie sooner. There are announcements in the regions as well. For example, on the UltraCinema website, whose halls are in Ufa, Penza, Kurgan and Naberezhnye Chelny, from July 30 as part of the pre-show service. At the same time, at the Tyumen Atmos Cinema, "as part of the Film Club," the website says.
The Homeric epic exists for us primarily as a literary monument. It is not surprising that the main reflection on it develops precisely in fiction.
It's worth starting with Margaret Atwood's "Penelope." The 2005 novel won worldwide recognition, was translated into dozens of languages, including Russian, received a number of theatrical adaptations, and to some extent set the fashion for female optics in relation to the Homeric epic. In the novel, Penelope has been in Hades for a long time and tells us her story, starting from childhood in Sparta. She constantly calls Odysseus a liar, and blames Helen of Troy for all the major troubles of her life, because it was because of her that Odysseus left Ithaca. Penelope's monologue is joined by her maids, whom Odysseus killed immediately after the massacre of the suitors.
The novel "The Silence of the Girls" by Pat Barker delighted British critics, and Emily Wilson (about her later) wrote an enthusiastic review of this book in the Guardian. This is the story of the Trojan War told by Briseis. Do you remember Briseida? The same girl who caused Achilles to be so offended by Agamemnon at the beginning of the Iliad that it almost cost the Achaeans defeat in the entire war. Recall that Agamemnon received the daughter of the priest Chryses as a concubine, Chryses prayed to Apollo, and Apollo caused such a plague to all the Achaeans that Achilles forced Agamemnon to return his daughter to the priest in front of everyone. Agamemnon retaliated by taking Achilles' concubine, Briseis, from Achilles, and Achilles became so angry that he retreated to his tent and refused to participate in the fighting. Barker's Briseis finally gets a voice and declares the Trojan War and the entire era in general as a kingdom of violence, arbitrariness, humiliation and cruelty. Separately, it is worth noting the chapters where Achilles unexpectedly becomes the narrator, and his personality also reveals itself in a new way. The book was published in Russia.
Contradictory responses were caused by "The Song of Achilles" and "Circe" by Madeleine Miller, which were also released in Russia. On the one hand, these are bestsellers and winners of a number of literary awards, some influential resources named them among the main books of the decade. On the other hand, there were a lot of cautious comments that nevertheless the femoptics here has been taken to such an extreme that it begins to seem tendentious. The Song of Achilles is a story about the Trojan War from the perspective of Patroclus, a friend of Achilles. As we remember, the death of Patroclus, disguised in the armor of Achilles, became the catalyst for the most terrifying scenes of the Iliad. In the novel, we learn more about the life of Patroclus and the history of his relationship with Achilles. "Circe" is already a character in the Odyssey, and Miller tells about this amazing sorceress, who happened to meet not only Odysseus, but also Hermes, the Minotaur, Jason and Medea, she saw Prometheus firsthand, communicated with Daedalus. Readers of the novel have been waiting for its film adaptation for many years, the rights to which were acquired by HBO. And "Achilles' Song" is being handled by Universal Pictures.
Another major author is Natalie Haines, and those who read her novel "A Thousand Ships" in Russian then ordered the next ones in English. In "Ships," Calliope's muse decides to tell Homer about those he hasn't paid enough attention to in his epic. That is, again, about women who are given the opportunity to connect to this story. There is not only Briseis, but also Andromache, Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Penelope — and then there are also goddesses, whose feminine gaze is also insufficiently represented in Homer. It is worth reading the novels by Haines Stone Blind about Medusa Gorgon and the recent No Friend to This House, which, however, is about Medea, but at the same time the book is written with an eye on the "Odyssey", and Medea herself is compared to Penelope.
Separately, it is necessary to note the rather recent trilogy of Claire North (aka Catherine Webb) "The Song of Penelope". It has only been partially translated into Russian, and it is a very detailed and unexpected apocrypha about how Penelope ruled Ithaca in the absence of Odysseus. It tells in great detail about the life of the island, wars, rebellions and, of course, about the strength that the wife of the absent king needs to maintain power and order for so many years. The most striking novel, of course, is the third, "The Last Song of Penelope." The story is narrated on behalf of Athena and begins with the fact that Odysseus secretly arrived in Ithaca. And then there will be not only the massacre that he staged and its consequences, but also the story of two people who have lived apart for a long time and who will now have to find the words to at least start talking. North's skill is that our relationship to Odysseus will change more than once over the course of the novel and will eventually become more difficult than ever.
All of these works were written by women — we can say that in the new millennium, women simply appropriated the Homeric epic for themselves, became the main narrators and philosophers of this heritage. They took power into their own hands, like Penelope. And that's not all: there is also Alice Oswald's Memorial and Costanza Casati's Clytemnestra. All this leads us to the main literary event in the field of Homeric studies of this century, the publication of the translation of the Odyssey by the aforementioned Emily Wilson.
To begin with, this is the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman, although previously there were more than six dozen of them. But it wasn't just Paul Wilson who was important: from the very beginning, she stated that her key goal in her approach was to return Homer to the simplicity and speed of his story. No grandeur, no grandiloquence, just modern English, understandable to everyone. If you've stumbled over the words "buxom" and "lily-of-the-valley," then you'll understand the English-speaking audience, they've often had the same thing. It's beautiful, but very difficult. Wilson abandoned the hexameter in favor of the iambic pentameter, which is more natural today, but at the same time retained all 12 thousand lines of the poem.
Wilson tried to speak precisely and harshly. She does not refer to women as "maidens" or "maids," but as "slaves," emphasizing cases of sexual abuse against them. She calls murderers murderers, thieves thieves. She doesn't so much praise as accuse. Wilson's translation split the literary world. Someone considered it a new milestone, someone condemned the fact that the composition, of course, became more transparent, and the plot itself became clearer, but the meaning of the poem has changed, and now it is not very clear whether this "Odyssey" can be considered Homeric at all.
In any case, the controversy surrounding the translation has become a great advertisement for the Odyssey. Christopher Nolan said that this version is very close to his understanding of the events of the poem. And for all his fans, this automatically meant that they urgently needed to buy a book and read this particular translation. But the new thought about Homer is not limited to literature alone.
Christopher Nolan
He went out onto the stage
Modern theater does not ignore Homer, although it refers to him less often than to the Greek tragedy: it is not so easy to decide how to package the events of the Iliad or Odyssey into a performance format. Against this background, the experience of the British poet Simon Armitage stands out, who both worked on translations of Homer and made productions based on him for BBC radio. Armitage wrote two plays for the British theater at once.: "The Last Days of Troy" based on "Iliad" and "Odyssey: Missing in Action".
The Odyssey had a special resonance. Armitage brought the action to the present, and the UK became his base. Penelope is besieged not by suitors, but by annoying journalists, Minister Smith becomes Odyssey, Turkey becomes Troy, where he is sent on a business trip, and the British prime minister says about Europe that it is just a safari park with monsters and other creatures. The story of Odysseus, who is trying to return home, turns into a parable about how there is no home, but there is nowhere to return and there is no need. At the peak of the migration crisis, this turned out to be exactly what made the play a super hit. However, there was also quite harsh criticism — for frontal metaphors, a strong simplification of the plot to fit into three hours of performance, even less. However, BBC Radio 4 later made a radio version of the show, in which it is available today.
The grandiose 11-hour megalomaniac play "Iliad" was staged at the National Wells Theatre. The basis was the poem "Music of War" by Christopher Logue, which turned into a large-scale show with a multimedia component. The production was divided into four parts, which could be watched in a row or stretched over several evenings. That is, it turned out to be a theatrical series with video projection, constantly sounding text, the actors then entered the image, then turned into storytellers. The performance could be listened to regardless if there was too much information: the intense video sequence quickly overwhelmed the viewer. And the fact that, in fact, it was an adaptation of adaptation, made this experiment an art for a very prepared audience.
Homer also lives in the Russian theater. Last year, the Obraztsov Theater released an unusual production of "Troy. Impression", where Schliemann's biography, played by live actors, and the Homeric plot, which was embodied by dolls, existed in parallel.
Izvestia, in its review of this unusual and also quite demanding performance, noted: "The tragedy of Schliemann is that ancient characters commit reckless deeds and exploits, and he is always forced to look for compromises, workarounds — and only then, at the aftertaste level, you understand why Odysseus was not among the many characters in the play. Because Schliemann is Odysseus, wise, cunning, long—suffering, dreaming of his Penelope, but not denying himself the pleasures with other women."
Evgeny Kamenkovich's grandiose performance "Ulysses" at the Fomenko Theater, which has been among the hallmarks of the theater for 10 years, is also very important. This is also an "adaptation of adaptation," because it is based on Joyce's Ulysses, which transferred the events of ancient antiquity to modern Dublin. But in light of the fact that the Homeric epic is constantly being modernized in other productions, Kamenkovich's six-hour version still remains a thought about Homer. And when Leopold Bloom returns to his Molly, it's still Ithaca, Penelope, and Odysseus.
Non-film adaptations of Homer
After the blockbuster "Troy," it became clear that making films based on Homer was expensive and risky, including for image. And most importantly, it's pointless. Homer works with the reader's imagination, and it is the viewer's imagination that should be activated when he watches, for example, "Oh, where are You, Brother" by the Cohen brothers. However, the connection with the Odyssey is no less obvious there than in the TV series "Percy Jackson" or in the video game Hades. Of the noteworthy films, one can only name "The Return of Odysseus" (in the original, simply "The Return") with Ralph Fiennes, where there are no battle scenes or special attractions in general, but there are two middle-aged people who are very tired, but for some reason still love each other.
Much more interesting are those cases when we do not immediately read Homeric motifs. For example, "Inherent Vice" by Paul Thomas Anderson or "Inside Llewyn Davis" by the Cohen brothers are arranged according to the principle of "Odyssey". The protagonist of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar becomes an Odyssey, and the main theme of Dunkirk is the return of soldiers stuck in the meat grinder of war to their Ithaca. "1917" is the same "Ulysses" in its continuity and absurdity.
In any case, when Christopher Nolan started shooting Odyssey, one thing was clear: there was no point in following Homer literally, because the film was released in the context of an intense and rich reflexive experience of the 21st century — the era after September 11, where all of Homer seemed to come back to us anew. Long-term wars, the loss and acquisition of a Homeland, wandering around the world, ambitions that hinder the general well-being, total violence, feeling like "pawns" in the "hands of the gods", the search for an Achilles heel, and many other topics now concern all of humanity. But at the same time, Homer's poems themselves, the school curriculum, have acquired too many interpretations.
Nolan has already succeeded in the main thing — to pay attention to his film, to make him wait, to make him argue about it even before watching it. For this, ticket sales for the sessions started a year before the release, for this, apparently, the very progressive multi-ethnic casting was carried out, because of which so many hits had already fallen on the blockbuster. But in the context of the reflection we discussed today, the Scandinavian—style armor and all the other "inconsistencies" are an attempt at a fresh look, an attempt to return the audience's blurred attention, to actualize the poem once again, to look at it in a new way. Moreover, Homer is always a story of passion, and there is so much passion around Nolan's film that a sensation is guaranteed.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
