ClassicsNow

Brilliant interview. Here is my favorite part: Zhong Shu: “One thing that captured me was that the concept of atonement doesn't exist in Greek culture. It doesn't exist in the Greek language. It doesn't exist in Homer's Odyssey. It exists in your Odyssey. So I guess a natural question that I had when watching the film was: did you Christianize The Odyssey? Why did atonement become important with the coming of catastrophe?” Christopher Nolan: “I think it's a really good question. I wasn't too conscious of how I was approaching it philosophically, other than that I really honed in on the idea of what's termed xenia. In the film, we call it Zeus's law for simplicity. But it's that idea of mutual respect: that I treat you the way I want to be treated. In their theology, it's because you might be a god in disguise. So I really drilled down on that, and I started to realize that, for me, a lot of what's interesting about the interaction of history and mythology is this idea of the Sea Peoples—the people from the sea who were thought to have precipitated the Bronze Age collapse. It's one of the great mysteries of history: who were they? The idea that, really, a violation of xenia, a violation of Zeus's law—which is what the suitors are doing in the palace—is causing this difficulty, this damage. I think the idea of atonement, in a way, is what we bring as viewers to the story. I don't know whether there really is atonement in the film, or whether we just feel that that's the catharsis, or that's the process we're seeing in the final meeting that we've waited for between Odysseus and Penelope. But I think, in a way, we may be bringing our more modern sensibility to that. It's a very interesting question. Insofar as it's there, it's not a deliberate attempt to, for example, Christianize it. It's an outgrowth, or a natural conclusion, of burrowing in on this philosophical idea of what happens when you break Zeus's law.” Zhong Shu: “I guess, from what you're saying, the connection between atonement—which is the perspective of a Christian world—and xenia, which is the perspective inherent in the Greek world, is that what connects them is the fact of war. What is the response to war? You still want to say that the presentation is inherent in the Greek mythological worldview: that war happened when hospitality, or xenia, was broken.” Christopher Nolan: “I think so. Sometimes it's difficult to draw a line. I think academics are often perhaps too dogmatic in drawing a line between different philosophies as they evolve historically, because I think I was more interested in commonalities. One of the things I found is that once you ignore the theological underpinning of xenia, what you realize is that it is what we, in modern terms, call the Golden Rule. This idea of treating others as you would be treated has never really changed over time. The reasons that we try to hold people to that might have changed, but the idea itself hasn't changed. What I came to think is that what the poem, to me, is saying—or inspiring in me—is the idea that civilization depends on this rule, and possibly is even defined by it. To me, that was a really interesting thing to realize. This ancient text, to me, speaks directly to the modern world because I think we live in a world where the concept of xenia, the concept of mutual respect, is more challenged than it's ever been, in more obvious ways than ever. I think we see the negative effects of that in terms of what defines civilization and what binds us together.”