Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey disappoints in its portrayal of Homer’s women

The question of Penelope’s virtue hangs over Homer’s account when she appears to the suitors, with even Telemachus questioning whether Odysseus is really his father.

Penelope’s charged mythical tradition is taken up in Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad, which reimagines the story from the perspective of Penelope and her 12 maids. Her story has also become a vehicle for exploring the complex emotions of spouses of soldiers deployed to combat zones.

Circe

The most engaging of Nolan’s female characters is Circe, and not simply because of the scene in which she transforms Odysseus’s men into swine.

It’s through her that Nolan comments on sexual violence as a strategy of warfare, not an unfortunate consequence. In doing so, he builds on American novelist Madeline Miller’s reading of Circe’s craft as a defence against male violence, although that is never threatened in the original poem.

Her novel Circe is one of a number of recent adaptations of Homer, including Pat Barker’s Women of Troy series and Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships, that give voice to women characters and apply a feminist lens to Homeric epic.

Circe’s identity as a witch in Nolan’s film is a more of a later tradition. In Homer, she is a goddess with knowledge of plants, like other gods. Hermes offers Odysseus the protective plant, moly, so he can resist her drugs.

In Homer, Circe’s singing entices Odysseus’ men to her house, where she transforms them into pigs. When Odysseus follows, he forces her to restore his men to human form. He then allows Circe to seduce him, enjoying her hospitality and sharing her bed for a year.

Helen

The most disappointing of Nolan’s portrayals is Helen, whose abduction by the Trojan prince Paris is said to have sparked the Trojan War. In antiquity, the Spartans honoured her with a shrine as part of a hero cult.

In Nolan’s Odyssey, Helen is a domesticated, repentant and physically disfigured beauty. The film reworks her grand entrance from the epic: Menelaus turns Helen’s face to Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, revealing a scar and questioning whether she is still desirable.

Nolan presents her as more of a minor character than the poem does. Her most significant moment in the film is when Telemachus is taking his leave and she requests he tell Penelope how sorry she is for all the pain she has caused.

By contrast, Homer’s Helen is more complex and engaging. When she first appears in The Odyssey, she narrates her own tale, explaining how near the end of the war, and no longer influenced by Aphrodite, she was ready to return home. She recalls helping (or perhaps seducing) Odysseus when he visited Troy disguised as a beggar.