Don’t gossip about people from the sea — or anywhere, really — if you haven’t seen “The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan’s latest film. Major spoilers ahead!
In the magical, god-filled world of “The Odyssey,” the ancient Greek epic poem credited to Homer, there are plenty of things that can kill you at any given moment — including the gods themselves, if you make them angry. Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan’s adaptation, marking his first epic movie since 2023’s “Oppenheimer,” does change its approach a bit, and the gods are less visible, if just as meddlesome.
Matt Damon’s Odysseus learns this the hard way when he royally ticks off Poseidon, the god of the sea, who retaliates by sending his ship off course with winds and storms. There’s also a giant, hungry cyclops hanging out in a cave, massive armor-clad cannibals called the Laestrygonians who will attack without provocation, and a hut-dwelling witch — Samantha Morton’s Circe — who may or may not turn you into a captive animal. Then there’s the oft-mentioned “People of the Sea,” an unclear threat mentioned by several characters. So, who are they?
The answer is … complicated. The mysterious “Sea People” are mentioned in the original text of “The Odyssey,” but Nolan’s take on the material presents a tantalizing twist. When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, finally returns to his home in Ithaca and speaks to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), he realizes that the “People of the Sea” refers to an army that suddenly and brutally attacks a city … just as he and his men did during the Trojan War.
Odysseus and the other members of the Greek army are the real People of the Sea in The Odyssey
Even if you’ve never read “The Odyssey” and potentially can’t identify Greece on a map, I’m willing to bet that you know the story of the Trojan horse — a tricksy false gift given to the people of Troy, who brought it into the protected gates of their city without realizing it was packed full of furious Greek soldiers ready to attack. The Trojan horse gambit is one of the most famous deceptions in history, real or imagined … and even though it’s only fleetingly mentioned in the text of “The Odyssey,” we get a very thorough look at it in Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation. (I mean “thorough” in good and bad ways; while Nolan and his cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema do a phenomenal job shooting the jumble of tormented men lurking inside of the horse’s belly, we’re also forced to watch many of them either drown or, with no other options, involuntarily emit bodily fluids.)
As Odysseus reflects on the attack on Troy (a battle that ended up turning the tide and winning the war for the Greeks), he realizes that he and his men are the People of the Sea who arrive and cause ruin, break Zeus’ Law (which stipulates that people should be nice to strangers), and destroy lives and even civilizations. Like Cillian Murphy’s titular theoretical physicist in “Oppenheimer,” Odysseus has to grapple with the fact that he is death, the destroyer of worlds … and the very thing his wife and son fear.
“The Odyssey,” which earned a positive review from /Film’s own Chris Evangelista, is in theaters now.
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