Good morning. President Trump resurfaced widely debunked claims about the safety of American voting systems in an address to the nation last night. And smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to disrupt life for millions. Before we get to that, though, I’m going to turn to my friend and colleague A.O. Scott, a critic at large for the Book Review who was our longtime movie critic. I asked him to help us understand the place of Homer’s epic “Odyssey” in our cultural lives right now, as Christopher Nolan’s filmed version of the tale arrives in theaters.
Greek lifeBy A.O. Scott “The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan’s 172-minute adaptation of Homer’s 2,800-year-old, 12,000-line epic poem, opens in theaters today. Back when I was reviewing movies, I would have seen it already. But nowadays I pull a different oar on this battle-weary trireme, and the nearest IMAX screen is a four-hour journey, over land and sea, from where I sit. Like Odysseus wending his way toward Ithaca, I’ll get there as soon as I can. I suspect many of you will, too. The movie is both a groundbreaking technical achievement — the first feature shot entirely in the mighty IMAX format — and a tribute to a durable and beloved work of literature. Throwback to the futureThat blend of old and new is especially notable given that the original “Odyssey” is one of the earliest and most powerful literary expressions of nostalgia. Compounded from the Greek words for “home” and “pain,” nostalgia has come to mean a longing for the past, and it has become a central principle of modern culture. In post-pandemic, peak streaming era, movies have become objects of nostalgia in their own right. They don’t make ’em like they used to, and more often than not we don’t see ’em like we used to — in dark rooms full of strangers, clutching tubs of popcorn and hiding our eyes at the scary parts. Hollywood, in the midst of contentious mergers and haunted by the specter of A.I., is an anxious shadow of its former imperial self. The audience that once filled the theaters is fractured and distracted. Sometimes the crowds turn out — recently for the Gen-Z horror breakouts “Backrooms” and “Obsession” and for “Toy Story 5” (speaking of nostalgia) — but such hits can feel more like a reprieve than a renaissance. With “The Odyssey,” Nolan and Universal Pictures have laid down a big ($250 million) bet that people will show up for a large-scale spectacle that evokes the grandeur of an earlier time. We’re talking about the sword-and-sandal epics of the 1950s and early ’60s, widescreen productions stuffed with modern movie stars in ancient costumes. The cast of this thing is a veritable glossary of 21st-century stardom: Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya and of course Matt Damon as the hero described (in Emily Wilson’s translation) as “a complicated man.”
From Trojan War to culture warA few of Nolan’s casting choices have riled up some of the people who live to get mad on the internet. These days you can’t have popular culture without a culture-war skirmish, and before anyone had seen “The Odyssey” we were subjected to a ginned-up online controversy about Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy (and her sister Clytemnestra) and Elliot Page playing a Greek soldier in the Trojan War. Nyong’o is Black and Page trans, and those objections follow a familiar anti-woke trajectory, rooted in this case in arguably anachronistic assumptions about the Mediterranean Basin in the Bronze Age, when the action takes place. What’s interesting is that both Nolan’s film and the pre-emptive ideological strike against it show how much modern souls still care about the ancient world and its stories. As someone whose journalistic beat has gone from new movies to old poems, I can’t get too mad about that. Dig in:
Trump’s Speech
Wildfires
More on Politics
Around the World
Other Big Stories
Older generations might be more responsible for the decline in reading than the kids, David Wallace-Wells writes. Lots of people say #MeToo is dead. That’s wrong, argues Gretchen Carlson, who founded a nonprofit to help survivors of harassment. Deeply reported journalism needs your support. The Times relies on subscribers to help fund our mission. Become a subscriber today.
We’ve made all of these links free for you.
Fighting fire with fire: A group in South Carolina is burning down homes to study how wildfires spread. In the video above, the climate reporter Mira Rojanasakul explains. Click to watch. Slopped: A Times tech reporter found an A.I.-generated biography of herself on Amazon, selling for $26.99. She’s not the only one. Who’s behind the drivel? Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about an Iranian billboard that depicts Trump in a coffin.
$12.7 million— That is the face value of the counterfeit U.S. currency seized from a factory in Colombia. The nation is one of the world’s top producers of funny money.
Baseball: M.L.B. released its 2027 calendar yesterday, with the earliest regular-season game ever, but labor negotiations could push the entire schedule back. Soccer: With the World Cup ending this weekend, take a moment to appreciate the sport’s mathematically marvelous ball.
Astronomers have discovered a pair of super-rare, super-light “super-puff” planets. They’re at least th |
