The Odyssey, the world’s greatest travel story

I have just watched Sir Christopher Nolan’s film version of Homer’s 3,000-year-old Greek epic poem, The Odyssey – what must be one of the most famous and perilous travel stories of all time.

I am old enough to have been at a grammar school in the UK when a study of the classics was thought to be the cream of educational programmes. My Latin master introduced us to Homer’s poem and to the much later Latin poem, The Aeneid, that tells a similar story but of a voyage by a Trojan fleeing the destruction of his city by the Greeks. I can still quote the opening words of the Aeneid: “I sing of arms and the man”. I remembered no words of The Odyssey but its title. As a teenager, I wasn’t impressed by what Homer wrote.

But Nolan’s film has excited me in a way no other film has. So, I downloaded a translation of Homer’s text. Here are its opening lines: “Tell me, Muse, of that man of many resources, who wandered far and wide, after sacking the holy citadel of Troy. Many the men whose cities he saw, whose ways he learned. Many the sorrows he suffered at sea, while trying to bring himself and his friends back alive.”

The journey took Odysseus 10 years. The film’s story remains fairly faithful to the original text. It is the story of the Greek king and hero, Odysseus, as he struggles to return to his palatial home on the island of Ithaca after the Trojan War. For the 10 years he encounters mythical creatures, capricious gods, dangerous temptations and violent seas. For the same 10 years, his wife, Penelope, fends off many suitors who believe he is dead. Their son, Telemachus, goes off in search for his father.

To be able to trace the places Odysseus went to on a modern map, I sought help from ChatGPT. I was reminded that The Odyssey is a work of myth rather than a historical travel log. However, it can be said that Odysseus travelled around the central Mediterranean – from north-western Turkiye across the Aegean, south towards north Africa, west to Sicily and southern Italy, around the Tyrrhenian Sea and finally east to the Ionian islands of western Greece.

I am certainly not alone in rating Nolan’s film highly; Rotten Tomatoes’ tomatometer – the most trusted measurement of quality for films – has given The Odyssey its highest score of 95 per cent. For me, it doesn’t have the romance of Casablanca or the personal relevance of Chariots of Fire (because when young I was a distance runner), the sexiness of All That Jazz, but it is a film on an epic scale, with the grandeur of its landscapes and its realistic portrayal of violence – particularly in its many shots of an open boat at the mercy of turbulent seas. It expresses vital values, too – perseverance, loyalty, guilt and humility.

After watching the film, I have been focusing on and reading about the number of techniques that made for its success. First, Nolan didn’t want his film to be computer-generated; he wanted everything to be real. For those incredible sequences on the boat, the production used the largest modern Viking longship, the “Draken Harald Hårfagre” – a ship built to ancient specifications and with traditionally-appropriate materials. It is a ship that had previously crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice and came with a sailing crew who became part of the movie.

The full cast playing Odysseus’s crew had to learn real rowing and sailing. They found out that moving a ship needs gruelling muscle power. Dipping a large oar into the water at speed could easily break ribs or pitch the rower overboard.