“I have been in the presence of greatness and I’m not sure what it means.”
Great art makes demands on its audience. It doesn’t come with Cliff Notes or cartoon summaries. It shows and doesn’t tell. Such is the case of William Faulkner’s Sound and Fury, and such is the case of Christopher Nolan’s cinematic adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. It makes demands. It calls for reflection. To “get it” may even require seeing the movie a second time. This is not the fault of the film, but a measure of its greatness. Every generation finds itself somewhere in Odysseus’s voyage because the poem speaks to the perennial questions: Who am I? Where is home? What kind of person must I become to arrive there?
The film is worth seeing because it is a significant cultural artifact both in cost, scale, messaging, and audience reach. It is a film that will mark 2026 in the annals of history. DEI critiques based on casting or scholarly criticism about its faithfulness to Homer’s original poem are largely beside the point. It’s integrity as a piece of art stands in its faithfulness to its mythic narrative archetype. Here Nolan excels in depicting an epic life quest against an overarching moral compass. As such it has powerful lessons for our own narrative patterns that we call our lives.
The plot is confusing. Initially we don’t know if the story is about Ithaca, Telemachus, Penelope, the Trojan Horse, or Odysseus. The narrative is fragmented and confusing. So it is in Homer, who doesn’t introduce Odysseus until Book Five. So too are our lives. They are the overlapping conflation of the narrative quest of many people in our lives. The thread of the main story is found in the reflection of hindsight. Something we rarely do, except perhaps in old age. As Soren Kierkegaard rightly observed,
It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take a position [to do this]: going backwards.
So, if the plot line of the film is confusing to you, so it was for Odysseus, except for one point. His life was consumed by an overarching quest to return to his kingdom, to his wife, to his son, to home. Odysseus’ life had a point, a calling, a direction, a mission. He was on a mythic quest.
This makes Odysseus distinct from most modern men whose lives are characterized by an existential homelessness. Even worse, many have accepted homelessness as a settled condition. Its loss is no longer viewed as a loss. Again, the Danish truth-sayer Kierkegaard,
There is something missing in my life, and it has to do with my need to understand what I must do, not what I must know—except, of course, that a certain amount of knowledge is presupposed in every action. I need to understand my purpose in life, to see what God wants me to do, and this means that I must find a truth which is true for me, and I must find that idea for which I can live and die.
Getting home was that truth for Odysseus. Home for him was not just Ithaca, it was identity, belonging, memory, and vocation. “Will you remember who you are?” His greatest danger is not death but forgetting the quest.
The Odyssey suggests that the deepest human problem is not simply being lost. It is forgetting where home is. Nihilism says there is no home. Consumerism says any destination will do. Technology says movement itself is enough. The Odyssey says otherwise. Reality is not morally neutral. Justice is woven into the fabric of existence. Wisdom consists of discerning and living according to this deeper order. Human flourishing requires an orientation towards a true home—a place where identity, memory, love, obligation, and hope converge. This is ultimately found in Homer by aligning with the “Law of Zeus.” This is not a single written law but a recurring moral principle that governs the universe. Zeus is the guardian of justice, moral order, oaths, hospitality, and the proper relationship between mortals and gods. Throughout the Odyssey, the success or failure of every character depends upon whether they live within the moral order. Odysseus’ life is shape by a quest against the backdrop of a sacred canopy, the Law of Zeus.
He is a tortured hero. While the hero of the Trojan War, he is wracked with guilt over the bloodlust he wrought there. He is a fragile hero, an everyman: a military leader, king, husband, father, and friend. Odysseus is not John Wayne or The Rock. He is a man who is struggling to fulfill his mission and is deeply aware of his limitations.
Struggle is an essential aspect of a quest. Every decision has moral consequences. The struggles are external depicted in the monsters and internal depicted in the temptations to abandon the quest. The internal struggles are the most dangerous here depicted by Calypso and the lotus. A beguiling woman or a drug that dulls the urgency of the quest are as common a temptation today as in the days of Homer. And it doesn’t take a strong drug to seduce most of us, constant daily distractions will do. Modernity’s two forms of lotus-eating are diversion and indifference. The quest will come with struggle from without and from within. This should be expected and not come as a surprise. We must tie ourselves to the mast to avoid the siren songs of suburban middle class personal peace and affluence.
But Odysseus’ journey teaches one additional lesson, the final ordeal. The journey is only half the story. Literary scholar Christopher Booker states,
The second part, begins when the hero is actually in sight of his goal, sees him having to face a final great ordeal, or series of ordeals, which may take as long to describe as everything which has gone before. It is this final struggle which is necessary for the hero to lay hold of his prize and secure it.
This is a cautionary warning for those who go into retirement by taking their foot off the gas. It is here as you end the journey, have the goal in sight, that your biggest battle looms. So, it was for Odysseus upon his return to Ithaca. For some of us, our greatest battles still lie ahead.
The deeper question that this film asks is “What makes a place truly home?” The answer is not geography. It is not a house. Home is where memory, covenant, family, justice, worship, and belonging converge. If the quest is mythic, home is metaphysical. In a day where homelessness is a growing societal blight, we all do well to check the homelessness in our own souls. Nolan’s masterful film reminds us that home is a quest worth living and dying for. His story makes this demand of his audience.
