Christopher Nolan recently told The New York Times that “The Odyssey,” Homer’s nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem, was his “ur-text,” saying, “It’s in everything I’ve done before.”
That’s the thing about this ancient, enduring saga, which chronicles the Greek hero Odysseus’ treacherous 10-year journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War: It’s the ur-text for much of modern storytelling.
Like Nolan’s new adaptation, many retellings have been direct: Uberto Pasolini’s “The Return” (2024), starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as his wife, Penelope; Mario Camerini’s “Ulysses” (1955), with Kirk Douglas as the title character, the Latin variant of Odysseus; and the 1997 NBC mini-series “The Odyssey.”
Homer’s epic also informed the 2007-11 web series “Star Trek Odyssey,” and was parodied by “The Simpsons” in 2002.
Plenty of other screen adaptations could be better described as “Odyssey”-coded, and present the hero’s journey in imaginative ways. Here are seven worth revisiting.
‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ (2000)
Stream on the Criterion Channel, or rent on most major platforms.
This rollicking, sepia-toned Coen brothers adventure, a fantasia of folklore and tall tales, moves the action to dusty Depression-era Mississippi.
In 2000, Joel Coen said that he and his brother weren’t thinking about the Greek poem at first, but instead had an idea about three fugitives escaping from the chain gang: “Homer suggested itself later when we realized the movie was essentially about the main character trying to get home and having this series of adventures along the way.”
“We never actually read it,” Ethan Coen added.
Still, they included some significant references: the main character, played by George Clooney, is named Ulysses Everett McGill; he and his sidekicks are hypnotized by three enchanting women singing in a river, à la the mythological Sirens, who lured men to their deaths through irresistible song; the Cyclops-like figure here is a one-eyed Bible salesman, Big Dan Teague (John Goodman); and the Lotus-Eaters, who in the poem represent narcotic-like escapism and avoidance, are a religious congregation engaged in a mass baptism that temporarily derails our hero.
‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)
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Stanley Kubrick’s existential space epic about the astronaut Dave Bowman’s journey through the cosmos mimics Homer’s tale in far more than title alone.
In 1965, when the film was being called “Journey Beyond the Stars,” Kubrick told The New Yorker about how tricky it had been to explain the project: “About the best we’ve been able to come up with is a space odyssey — comparable in some ways to the Homeric ‘Odyssey,’” he said. “It occurred to us that for the Greeks, the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation, and that the far-flung islands Homer’s wonderful characters visited were no less remote to them than the planets our spacemen will soon be landing on are to us.”
The name Bowman calls to mind the poem’s climax, when Odysseus, disguised as a ragged beggar, reveals his true identity by stringing his wood-and-horn bow and expertly shooting it, shocking the suitors who had been pursuing his wife, Penelope.
And the Cyclops-like character that Bowman has to outwit and overcome in order to ascend? HAL, a villainous A.I. whose only real physical trait is a single glowing red eye.
‘Joe Versus the Volcano’ (1990)
Rent on most major platforms.
Early in the director John Patrick Shanley’s screwball rom-com about the meaning of life, copies of “The Odyssey,” along with “Robinson Crusoe” and “Romeo and Juliet,” are shown on the desk of Joe (Tom Hanks), a spineless Everyman doing soul-crushing clerical work at a bleak factory. Each book nods to the journey that this downtrodden man will soon embark upon after being told that he’s terminally ill.
As with Odysseus, Joe’s road to enlightenment is long, winding and rife with obstacles. Crooked-path imagery appears throughout, whether as a crack in his apartment wall or the trail leading up the volcano that he’ll eventually throw himself into, an act that will leave Joe reborn.
One of these obstacles might be familiar to Odysseus: nature’s fury. A huge typhoon leaves Joe adrift on a makeshift raft. Delirious from lack of food and water, he has a spiritual awakening under a giant moon. The scene echoes the episode when Odysseus must use his wits to survive on a raft after he’s shipwrecked by Poseidon’s wrath.
Meg Ryan, in her first role opposite Hanks, plays a few characters who mirror female figures from the “Odyssey” including Angelica, a superficial socialite who represents, like the Lotus-Eaters, distraction.
‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’ (2004)
Stream on Paramount+.
Homer’s themes of identity and cunning have also been plumbed for sillier fare, as in the first feature based on the animated juggernaut “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Directed by the series creator, Stephen Hillenburg, it is a clear adaptation.
As SpongeBob heads out on a hero’s journey with the hapless Patrick Star in tow, they encounter mythical monsters and temptations akin to the Sirens and the Lotus-Eaters; here, ice cream intoxicates, lures and deceives.
Princess Mindy, an Athena-like mermaid, guides them, bestowing courage and confidence, and warns them of a Cyclops, a one-eyed scuba diver.
She also gives them a “magical bag of winds” to help blow them quickly home to Bikini Bottom when their mission is complete — a shortcut that Patrick stupidly, well, blows, when he lets the bag fly away without them. In “The Odyssey,” a similar gift from King Aeolus, the ruler of the winds, is stupidly mishandled by Odysseus’ selfish crewman when Ithaca’s shores are in sight, resulting in a storm that sends them back to the island of Aeolia.
‘Cold Mountain’ (2003)
Rent on most major platforms.
Anthony Minghella’s Oscar-winning Civil War epic, based on Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel, echoes Homer’s classic at many turns.
Jude Law stars as the physically and spiritually gutted Inman, who deserts after surviving the Siege of Petersburg and heads out on foot for a long journey home. Both Inman and Odysseus are traumatized by war, and neither believed in the cause or cared about glory, only about returning to their homeland — here Cold Mountain, N.C.
Nicole Kidman stars as Ada, a reflection of Penelope. Both women stay faithful to their loves despite the passing years, and both resist increasing pressure and threats to sacrifice their property: Penelope from the suitors, and Ada from Teague and his Confederate Home Guard. The Home Guard is also a Poseidon-like entity, hunting Inman on his push home.
In one of the vignettes, Inman encounters Junior (Giovanni Ribisi), who offers him food and shelter for the night. In truth, his hospitality is a trap, and Junior, a treacherous and depraved figure akin to the Cyclops Polyphemus, plans to turn Inman over to the Home Guard for cash. In “The Odyssey,” Polyphemus, a son of Poseidon, traps Odysseus and his men in a cave.
At Junior’s cabin are several women, and soon Inman finds himself severely intoxicated. It’s a sequence reminiscent of both the Sirens and the Lotus-Eaters.
‘After Hours’ (1985)
Stream on the Criterion Channel or rent on most major platforms.
The New York Times critic Vincent Canby likened this disorienting, surreal Martin Scorsese comedy to “Alice in Wonderland,” explaining how the straitlaced Manhattan computer programmer Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) descends into “an urban Wonderland of eccentric sculptors, artists, bartenders, waitresses, potential suicides, thieves, freaks and loners.”
But even “Alice in Wonderland” — with its circuitous setbacks, maddening obstacles, and turnstile of allies and foes — could be considered “Odyssey”-coded. Here, Paul pursues Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) to the underworld of SoHo; she’s the Siren luring him from the safety of his mundane life. Before long, he’s battle-scarred and desperate to get home.
Paul even tries a Trojan Horse gambit, though unwittingly. In a trick engineered by the cunning Odysseus, Greeks were smuggled across the enemy lines of Troy in the belly of a giant wooden horse, ending the decadelong Trojan War (as detailed in “The Aeneid”). In “After Hours,” a disheveled Paul, hunted by a vigilante mob, winds up encased in a George Segal-like papier-mâché sculpture. After burglars steal the “artwork,” it falls from their van, and Paul smashes against the ground as dawn breaks, ending his nightmare.
‘Ulee’s Gold’ (1997)
Rent on most major platforms.
This indie written and directed by Victor Nuñez is a quieter, more grounded take on “The Odyssey.” Peter Fonda stars as the stoic Ulysses “Ulee” Jackson, a widowed Florida beekeeper and Vietnam veteran who was the only survivor of his combat unit. He tells his granddaughter — Penny, named after his wife, Penelope — that he survived by being “tricky,” a nod to Odysseus.
He’s reluctantly raising Penny and her sister because their father is in prison for a bank job and their mother, Helen, has vanished. It’s the disappearance of Helen of Troy that triggered the Trojan War, tearing Odysseus from his home.
The violent associates of Ulee’s son wind up at Ulee’s property, like the suitors who defile Odysseus’s palace. There, the criminals hold Helen and Ulee’s granddaughters hostage as they demand the stolen bank money. Like Odysseus, Ulee is now forced into another battle, only this time to regain control of his own home.
In her Times review, Janet Maslin described the movie as a tale of “the spiritual reawakening of a hard-bitten loner.” Odysseus, too, must shift from a warrior mentality to that of a human man returned to everyday life.
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