What really happens when you “defy the gods”? Or put another way: Do you believe moral laws exist?
By that I don’t simply mean that some things are right or wrong. Instead, do you believe that the transgression of a moral law carries a consequence? We’re familiar with the consequences of physical laws. If you step off the roof of a building, the law of gravity takes over.
But what if you violate the Golden Rule? Is there a consequence for failing to love thy neighbor as thyself?
At this moment in American history it seems as if a substantial portion of America’s ruling class is putting all its chips on the answer being no, rules are for suckers. In fact, as far as they are concerned, morality causes problems. In American politics and commerce, complying with something as lame as “norms” — even uttering the word in a positive fashion — is like fighting with one hand tied behind your back.
A president enriches himself at a scale never seen before in the United States. An Epstein class of abusive libertines always seems to evade accountability for its crimes. Government officials break the law with impunity, banking on presidential pardons to excuse their crimes — all while truth is buried under an avalanche of lies, lies that are shared with gusto by cadres of grifters and fools.
Without saying one word about modern politics, Christopher Nolan has rebuked the spirit of the age. His retelling of “The Odyssey” is an admonition: Moral transgressions always carry a consequence.
His version of Odysseus is a haunted man. After 10 years of war and 10 long years of suffering on the journey home, he seems broken. He can be ruthless. He can be vicious. But he is also suffering from a profound moral injury; only confession and penance provide pathways to peace.
One of the most vivid promotional posters for Nolan’s film features the broken, severed head from a statue of Athena and the exact quote I began with: “Defy the Gods.”
Combine that quote and that image, and it looks like an exhortation. Go ahead, Odysseus, defy the gods. Tear down their statues. Break their laws. Based on that alone, you’d expect a movie about a proud man standing up to irrational and capricious divine authority.
But that’s the opposite of what transpires. Yes, the severed head of Athena matters to the story, as does Odysseus’s defiance, but there is nothing good or laudatory about it.
The film seems agnostic as to whether the gods themselves are real, and at the start, the text on the screen says it’s taking place at a time of “apparent magic.” Is Athena actually appearing to Odysseus or is she a manifestation of a guilty conscience?
Instead, the movie centers on a moral code, specifically “Zeus’s law,” the obligation to treat strangers with hospitality and kindness. The law is rooted in the mythical idea that the gods sometimes travel among people while disguised as mortals. It is in this disguise that they can judge the true worth of a person. Or, as Odysseus says in the film, “the clearest view of men is from below.”
The first act of the movie features two very different scenes. In Ithaca, Odysseus’s home, a man starts to tell the story of the Trojan War — and Odysseus’s great victory — to a raucous and decadent room of suitors for Penelope, Odysseus’s wife. They’ve taken up residence in Odysseus’s palace, waiting for Penelope to give up hope that Odysseus will ever return.
But the movie soon flashes back to a moment of triumph. You see the victorious Greek forces departing the shores of Troy after the Trojan War. Agamemnon, the commander in chief, sails away in an immense ship. Odysseus decides to follow a different path, and the rest is the stuff of myth and legend.
The film flashes back and forth between the present, when the suitors are swarming Penelope’s palace, and all the years of Odysseus’s journey. Throughout the movie, there are references to the mysterious “sea peoples,” a brutal band of raiders who seem reminiscent of a Mediterranean version of the Vikings.
A sense of doom and decline pervades the scene. At each new destination, it seems as if Odysseus loses more of his crew, until they are all gone — murdered, drowned, eaten and God knows what else. In Nolan’s retelling, which differs from Homer’s and is more like Aeschylus’s, Agamemnon comes home in triumph and is almost immediately killed by his vengeful wife. He’d sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia as an offering to the gods before the Trojan War.
Ultimately, it’s revealed that the dreaded “sea peoples” may have been the Greeks themselves, the veterans of the Trojan War who looted their way back home.
In the movie’s powerful third act (spoiler alert, for those who care about spoiling a modern take on an almost 3,000-year-old epic poem), Odysseus connects all the dots. The Trojan War wasn’t a great victory conducted in service of a righteous cause. It was a war fought for greed and power under the pretext of fighting to bring Helen of Troy home.
And the Trojan Horse? Odysseus’s strategic masterstroke? In Nolan’s depiction, it is essentially a war crime — an act of subterfuge that takes advantage of ancient customs to unleash the horrifying sack of the city after Troy’s army is defeated. Odysseus is determined to get home, but he is also wracked with guilt.
During his extended stay with Calypso, he voraciously consumes lotus flowers that help him forget. He forgets his wife. He forgets his men. And he forgets his own crimes — until the memories return.
Ultimately, he doesn’t come home to Ithaca to sit on his throne, but to confess, to rescue his wife from the clutches of evil men and to choose exile.
Redemption, for Odysseus, comes from confession and penance, not defiance. And the broken head of Athena is a symbol of his own sin, not a sign of his triumph over the divine.
It’s a reminder of how stupid and petty much of the right has become that anyone would think this movie was “woke.” Yes, a Black actor — Lupita Nyong’o — plays Helen of Troy, and a trans actor — Elliot Page — plays Sinon, the Greek warrior who unwittingly tricks the Trojans into accepting the Trojan Horse as a gift. But to label a movie woke simply because of the identity of the actors is to indulge in a caricatured version of the same identity politics that the right claims to loathe.
In reality, Nolan’s “Odyssey” is one of the most small-c conservative movies I’ve ever seen. I can easily imagine a natural law theorist watching the movie, nodding his head and saying, “Yes, there are universal moral laws, and this is exactly what happens when prideful men believe they know more than God.”
But the consequences of violating moral laws are different and more pernicious than, say, defying the laws of gravity. If I step off a roof, as I said earlier, the consequences are immediate and permanent, for me at least. But I can violate moral laws and prosper, if only for a time. The consequences often radiate out to others.
That is why transgression is so seductive. Terrible men get to sack Troy, and some of them might even get to carry the gold away with them. They can live in a palace, for a while, as the rest of the world turns to rubble and ruin.
Earlier this month, I spoke at the third annual “Liberalism for the 21st Century” conference, hosted by the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism. After a panel on presidential power, a young man asked us a version of the question I’ve been asked for more than a decade.
“What’s the utility of following norms if only one side is, and second, can you make rules for rule breakers?”
I responded with a bit of a pat answer, to be honest. “Norm-busting makes our lives worse,” I said. “Repairing norms makes our lives better.”
This feels self-evidently true. Americans are bitter, divided and uncertain. We lack confidence in the future. We dislike one another. We distrust the government. I want to repair that damage, not accelerate our decline.
But that’s an intellectual answer. Nolan has given us the artistic answer.
Defy the gods? Deny the dignity of your neighbor?
You certainly can, if you so choose. And you may prosper for a time. But the narrative arc of the movie tells us our destiny if that’s the path we choose. It turns out that there are rules for rule breakers, just as there are for everyone else, and those rules have persisted throughout human history.
Here’s one, arguably the central truth of the film: Heedless people, you will pay for what you destroy.
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