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The Characters of “The Odyssey,” Ranked By Suckability · Like a Virgin

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to like a virgin. You cannot see us
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: right now, but friend and I are both wearing sort
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: of diaphanous flaxen chutons, lace up sandals. We have the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: bones of fallen soldiers littered around us and a giant
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: horse on its side in the background. Because we are
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: gonna go long on the Odyssey honey.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Back when the world was new.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, day today we literally we are the muses,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: goddesses of the arts, and proclaimers of heroes, heroes like
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: heroes like Odysseus.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes, we're devoting a full episode of the Odyssey.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Even if you haven't watched the Odyssey or you have
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: no interest in watching the Odyssey, this is a great
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: episode to get some kind of, like, I don't know,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: a take obviously on things that we thought about the film.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: We really both loved, love, love this film. And also
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: we're going to kind of nerd out on the book
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: and like differentiations between the book and the movie and
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: other kind of things that are you know, within our
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: in our brand pillars of nerd and yeahgy which is
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: a fave of yours and mine.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, y'all know, if you have been listening to the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: podcast for any length of time. That we are both
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Greek mythology girlies through and through. We have a shared
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: love for the Delay the is it Delores Delaire's Book
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of Delaire's Book of Greek Mythology. We both love Disney's Hercules.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: And I think it's funny that you're like, even if
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: you didn't see the movie or haven't read The Odyssey,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: but it's like everyone has. I do think the Odyssey
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: is one of those things everyone has some baseline cultural
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: knowledge of.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Right, are they still teaching it in schools? I'm not
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: sure actually, if I.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Don't actually know what they're teaching in schools there from
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: what I've heard, they're not really teaching anything in schools.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So power.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: I assume our generation and traditional generation for sure has
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: a passing knowledge and but I also think that there's
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: like some and it is also just well, as we
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: said earlier, one of the most famous stories ever told,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: if not the origin of or the origin of stories,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: stories are so powerful were We walked back to my
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: place after the movie and like came to that realization
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: together that the Odyssey, like invented stories are so powerful
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: and they are and they are so powerful and you know,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: one of the things about the actual film The Odyssey
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: by Christopher Nolan is like the thesis of it is
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: kind of stories are so powerful pretty much. Yeah, I
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: mean there is uh and you know, I mean I'm
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: already getting in the weeds. But because this story, over
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: the course of like what three thousand years, has been
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: passed orally as things do, there, I think is an
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: oral tradition of storytelling that's definitely in the film that
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: we'll get into.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Oral tradition, honey, That's what I call it when I
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: get on Sniffies every night at seven pm.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: So we'll be having a bit of a thematic critical
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: conversation about the movie and the books, and then maybe
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know, we'll rank the monsters by fuckability or
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, well, but you did not come to
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: this discussion thinking we wouldn't be talking about who in
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: this movie we would want to fuck.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we kind of do that with every movie.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: And everything in life.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Ever, I'm like wondering, weird, I mean, speaking of fuckibility, like,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: do we start with like what I think was the
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: very first rose Dam you take, which was where all
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: the gay guys.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very heterosexual film, which isn't surprising. It's
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: because it's a Christopher Nolan movie.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Who's perhaps one of the most heterosexual filmmakers.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, are premier heterosexual filmmaker.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And that is saying something because there's a lot of them.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, Greek antiquity is like is gay.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: It's it is. That's not something that is implied or suggested.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: It's like, we we know this culturally. We don't need
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: to tell you. We don't need to explain to you
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: why it's very weird to have a version of the
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Odyssey that cuts out basically any homo eroticism.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: And Okay, I'm going to explain it because because thank you,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Because here's the thing. This film took place at a
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: time where gay guys literally ruled the planet, and that
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: is not we had the fucking Grecian call. We had
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Grecian colonization happening in real time. That in real in
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: real events of the real events of the Odyssey. The
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Odyssey a true story, and uh and and so obviously
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: way back then, like the homosexuality didn't exist and you
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: would just kind of fuck whatever. And so there was
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: a tradition of like you know, men fucking often because
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: there were no women around if they were at war,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: things like that, and we don't have to go into it,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: but sure, like the Odyssey doesn't have any sort of
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: textual depiction of homo erootic Greek life, but the Iliad
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: for sure does Achilles.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: And also Greek life just was homo erotic. It was built,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: it was built into their society these like uh, formalized
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: mentor like homosexual relationships, So just to not have even
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a whiff of that, it was weird to me.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I like when I the first the first
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: time I felt that, I was like, oh am, I
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: just having a kind of like gay like gout reaction,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: like an esoteric reaction to this that's like internety. And
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I was like, you know what, Like no, it's kind
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: of just a failure to complexify events and characters. And
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: also just like I don't know, I was just kind
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: of like I felt like there was like a room
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: for that in the manyhood or homoerotic moments of the film,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: which we'll get into. But also like sure, I personally
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: have been like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for any depiction
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: of Greek mythology or the Trojan War or anything that
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: would like do right by the fact that the gay
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: guys were fucking Like I know, I think there's like
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: a glimpse of like Brad Pitt's ball sack in Fucking
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Troy or is that Alexander No, that's I don't know.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: I think there's a ball sack somewhere as he gets
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: into bed with a man and then like I can't remember, yeah,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: and I can't remember if there's anything else, Like there's
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: like references to it in three hundred, but they're mostly
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: like kind of homophobic remarks. Yeah.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: But the thing is the thing about those films what
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I'm missing that's in those and not the Odyssey. It's
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: not about textual queerness. Like I didn't need, like, you know,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: two of Odysseus's crew to have like the first kay
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: kiss in a Christopher Nolan movie. I needed the aesthetics
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: of it. It was more about this. It's more about
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: the style. There is a very there is very much
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a lack of kind of any sexuality in this film,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: which was actually one of Emily Wilson's who we we
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: talked about last week. One of her main complaints about
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: this movie is that no one's fucking girl.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Should we talk about that? Emily Wllison? Is that the
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: next conversation.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: I think it's a I think it's good, a good
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: way to set up our conversation because because the thing
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: is everything, and I haven't read her whole piece in
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the The London Review of Books, but I've read I've
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: read like a lot, a lot of you know, like
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: pulls from it, and I think it's a good way
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: to set up this conversation because I agree with a
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: lot of her critiques of the film, and yet I
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: still loved it. I think it's I think it's in
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: many ways a very flawed adaptation of the Odyssey, while
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: still being a really good adaptation of the Odyssey.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: I yeah, I so I didn't read the a London
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Review of Books piece, but I did read her inner
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: view with The Times. Sorry this, I think the Sunday Times.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: It's the Times, the British version, which I think is
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: transphobic all.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: British newspapers or transphobic.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: That's true, that's true. But for context of the for
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the virgins, in the take that I read in The Times,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: it was eviscerating, like and I think some key kind
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: of like juicy context here is that Christopher Nolan was
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: very famously inspired by Emily Wilson's translation of the book.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: So Emily Wilson, who or doctor Wilson as i'll call her,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: she read the Odyssey when she was eight. Her mother
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: was a professor at Oxford, and she was the first
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: woman to translate the Odyssey, and she still maintaining Iambic Pentameter,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: put forth a very modern iteration of a lot of
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: like the language and how she decided to go about it.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: And the first line of her translation is tell me
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: about a complicated man. And Christopher Nolan was has cited
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: this line in you know, his press about the book
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: and cited Emily Wilson as an inspiration. And so for
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: her to publish a New York review a London book
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: review piece titled an Uncomplicated Man, and across both of
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: these pieces she is kind of truly eviscerating Christopher Nolan's
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: like characterization of Odysseus as somebody who she felt was
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: not very complex, which I think I agree and disagree with.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: She also complained about the puppets. I was just like, girl,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: what there's some things where I was like, okay, you're
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: like to in your like scholar bag. But I did
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: kind of feel like she was onto something when it
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: came to the fact that Odysseus in Homerically, Okay, let's
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: go back Homerically, Odysseus is a trickster kind and also
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: kind of a violent, miss arguably misogynist brute, and Nolan
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Lee he is more of an everyman, right. He is
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: the modern iteration of what a classic hero could be.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: And there are a few things folded into that that
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: we'll discuss. It was a very I mean, it was
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: a decided choice, Like Nolan isn't being willfully obtuse about
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: these things, about these things.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: No, And that's why I think this is both a
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: good and bad adaptation of the Odyssey. Because why I
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: think it's so good is because it is an adaptation.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: It makes choices. It is not, you know, literally transcribing
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the story as it's been told. It is very much
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: through this modern, like pathologized, psychologized lens of masculinity and
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: war and shame and honor and all of these things.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: And I do see why Emily Wilson would have problems
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: with it, and I agree with a lot of her problems.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: With it while still really enjoying the movie. The one
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: thing I don't agree with what she said was about
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the casting, particularly the casting of non white actors. What
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: yes she said in her no, yeah, she said in
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: her London in her London review of books essay. Most
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: of the non white actors Zendeia Lupita Njango, Himmish Patel, Corey,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott play versions of the black best
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: friend whose only role in the drama is to provide
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: aid to the white protagonist. But that is bullshit.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: That is true of every character in the Odyssey. Every
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: character in the Odyssey facilitates Odyssease's journey.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, Also, Himmis Ptel is not black.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was just like, well whatever, but like, okay,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: obviously we don't need to have a discussion on why,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: like casting wise, there should be like racial diversity in
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: the Odyssey, especially since this is a myth and we
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: don't know what any of these people looked like.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not real. It's not that that is Ultimately,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: that is the stopping point of any argument about casting
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: for this movie. It's not real or any movie for
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: that matter.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Honestly, Like, should we talk about is the next conversation
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: topic talking about women in the Odyssey or do we
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: dig into the characterization of Odysseus.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Do you think I think we're we've already kind of
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: like gotten into Odysseus. I think let's let's keep on
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: this thread.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: So the thing for me is, I think that when
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: it comes there's you know, complaints by Emily Wilson and
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: many other critics that are talking about the fact that
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: like Christopher Nolan's genius kind of ends when a woman
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: is on screen. And I think that is very true
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: for a lot of his movies, and I think that
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: for this film that is for sure true for Calypso,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: who was to me, the biggest doo doo kakka of
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: this film. This is a and just as context, this
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: is a five star film for me. I love this film.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I actually did never found this film to be quote
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: unquote bad. I just it's fun to critique stuff, and
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: so let's get into it.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah you can. And also it is I think, as
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: we've said many times on this podcast, you can like
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: things and still critique them, still have issues with them,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: still you know, want them to be better, even if
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you loved them. This for me was a four and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a half star film and I.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Loved it, like loved it, and I like, to me,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: the argument on Lupita only works if you're saying, like
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: she had so little screen time, why would you cast
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: a fucking banger like Lupita Nyonggo, you know what I mean? Like,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't you give that to somebody who's a little
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: more emerging? Because sorry, Helena like isn't real. I mean,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: the women aren't in the Odyssey really like that much
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: like Penelope has maybe the most quote unquote screen time.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: I think Helena is like barely in it. Like her,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like, she's not her function
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: her as like a superduper tangential character in this film
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: makes sense in accordance with the book. But yeah, did
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: I want more Lupita? I absolutely did, Like I thought
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: that that was kind of.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Weird for sure. But the but the idea that because
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: she is playing a pivotal role giving Tom Holland vital
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: information in the film and also complicating the idea that
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: she was the sole reason for the Trojan war, how
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: does that make her the black best friend? Emily Wilson
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: that so constant you were crazy for saying that.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, I'm sorry, Circe and Penelope are fucking awesome
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: in this movie. Oh we'll get into that. Yeah, yes,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: but like girl like yeah, on the Lupita, it's kind
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: of like, m I feel a type of way about
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: her as such a fucking like bemus of a actress
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: being cast into such a small role. But also Mia
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: goth is playing concubine number three, you know what I mean,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Like there an ensemble pieces.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: It's an ensemble of all the most famous actors in
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: the world. So yes, so, yeah, you have Zendeya having
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: you know, like what five lines are at the course
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: of the movie, and kind of just like she had so.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Many appearances, but like, yeah, I did I want more
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: of her? Sure, Yeah, it's just but also extremely consequential
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: character in this film.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just don't think I just don't think you
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: can apply that framework of like so and so was
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: only given two minutes of screen time in this movie,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: when that's kind of the point of the odyssey. It's episodic.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: The characters are only there in their episodes.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, sorry just to while we're talking
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: about Emily Wilson in her piece in the Times. In
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: her interview, she like complains about the fact that the
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Cyclops is a puppet, and I'm like, what, like, are
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: you kidding me?
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: That's like literally the coolest part of the movie.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Coolest part of the movie. But I think that, you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: she described, I think her problem with that is that
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: the Cyclops is in the book civilized and in conversation
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: with Odysseus, and she even cites like a sequence where
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: in you know, Odysseus the trickster, you know, when the
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: when the Cyclops asks his name, he says, I am
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: no one or I'm no man. So that when his
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: brother Cyclops come to his rescue after he's getting attacked,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: he's like, no one is attacking me, No one is
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: attacking me. And I'm like, cool, that's like a funny,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: like you know, wordplay for a book three thousand years ago.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: That would be really fucking stupid movie. Sorry, like that
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: would that's cartoonish. And there are reasons that artistic liberties
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: have to be made in a kind of blocked by
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: a certain kind of blockbuster standard. And there are other
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: things in this film where I'm like, Okay, I actually
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: think that a lot of complexity was sacrificed on that
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: blockbuster standard. Yes, but like things like whether poly Femous
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: said no, no one is attacking me, I'm like, that's stupid.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: It Also, I do think that keeping poly Femous, who
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: is not even called poly Femous in this film, like
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: in the in the credits, he's only referred to as Cyclops,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: which I think is purposeful. You know, this film opens
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: with this, you know, like this line that says a
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: time of apparent magic, and I do think, you know, thematically, structurally,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: what Nolan is trying to do is is make the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the more mystical elements of the story that are much
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: more I would say, like fantasy. Like I would say,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: they're much more kind of like nonchalant in the in
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: the in the original poem, because they were like an
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: accepted part of the of Greek storytelling and mythology. I
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: think here, like what he does by making the monsters
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: unknowable is make them more cosmic, more more separate from
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the humans. I actually really like how little quote unquote
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: magic we see on screen. I think it would have
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: been kind of hokey in this film to have Odysseus
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: having a conversation with the Cyclops. Like I actually like
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: that we don't find out that he can speak until
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: he's in pain, because it kind of shows that Odysseus,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: like is not this like stand up guy that we
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: think he is. You know, he shoots, he shoots what
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: he believes to be essentially an animal in pain, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: it's he only feels empathy for it when he realizes
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: that it's capable of speech, that it has these kind
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: of higher cognitive functions. I think this movie is all
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: about so much of it is is different from the
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: original myth because these the Odysseus's life is not as
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: closely entwined with the gods, and anytime they think that
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: something is happening because of the gods, it's really just
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: people looking for meaning in the unknowable chaos of life,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: which is what the Greeks were doing. You know. We
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: I think we have this idea culturally that when we
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: look at these myths, Greeks were literally looking around for
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: you know, giant Marvel superheroes who were controlling their lives,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: when in fact, like their religious structure was the same
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: as the same as ours is, it was them trying
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: to make sense of inn a knowable world. Around them.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: You know, when they talk about when they talk about
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: these like gods, it was their way of interpreting the world.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: It was not quite as literal as it is in
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: the poem. And I like that Nolan made that choice.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: In this film, I agree, and I think that we'll
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: get into the each monster kind of chronologically. But I'm
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: glad you invoked Marvel. I know this isn't Marvel, but
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: like what Nolan did for Batman, for the Batman Sears,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: actually what Nolan did for superhero franchises as a whole
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: is completely shift how you're thinking about what we would
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: originally view as a cartoon a fantasy. He grounds it
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: in the real world and says, Okay, what if he
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: was a real guy with real problems. This is what
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: my Batman looks like. And with The Odyssey, he's doing
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: a version of the same thing, where he's metaphorizing each
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: of these fantastical elements to some extent, some of them
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: are literal fantastical elements, and he stays true to the
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: fantasy of the film, but by removing the overwhelming majority
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: of the gods and goddesses that appear in the story
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: of the Odyssey, he's then saying, Okay, no, maybe the
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: gods are a metaphor, maybe the Cyclops is a metaphor,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: maybe the sirens are a metaphor. And I thought that
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: that just I don't know. I really did love the
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: times where that was successful.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: And he's also this film is all about an Odysseus,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: who is reckoning with his own guilt over this trick
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: he did at Troy that we understand, by the end
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of the movie has fundamentally broken the social contract. And
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't been we wouldn't be able to follow that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: through line in this story if the gods were as
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: present as they are in the poem, because then these
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: are all their choices and Odysseus is just a piece
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: that they're moving around the board. This movie gives him
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: so much more agency, and I really appreciate that.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Since we this is where the chronology starts, should we
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: talk about the depiction of the Trojan war and the
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Trojan horse in this film, which was kind of one
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: of my favorite sequences.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really the sequence that stuck out to
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: me the most on the second viewing of the film.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: I've now said it twice. I saw it with you
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: for the second time, and you know, the first time
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Circe is really my favorite sequence of the film, and is,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I believe, the best sequence in the film. But God,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the them in the Horse. That like seeing what we've
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: already seen of sin On, Sinon's experience, his death, and
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: then seeing it from the inside. That whole sequence starts
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: at this really tense place, and that tension just ratchets
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: up in an insane way. I mean, I'd already seen
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the film. I already know this story. Everyone in our
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: world understands the idea of a Trojan horse, like we
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: know what that is fundamentally. But the literality with which
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: he executed is so cool and just all of the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: all of the incredible cinematic trick I don't want to
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: say tricks, but like flourishes he uses to build that tension.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: You know, Ludwig Goroland's Ludwig Gorensen's score Who's Asked needs
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: to be a oh my god, that propulsive, just like
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: frenetic rumming. You know, the score, which by the way,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: was made using no modern instruments. He was literally banging
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: on pieces of brass.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Love that tea love that also. If you don't know
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Christopher Dolan was originally attached to the early two thousands
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: film Troy, which, like most people didn't like, and back
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: when he was set to direct it, he started ten
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: years ago thinking about how he would depict the Trojan Horse.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: So he's been thinking about how the Trojan Horse happens
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: on screen for ten years, and he came up with
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: the idea of it planted in sand like a decade ago,
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: which I think is so cool.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: It's so genius because like they're negotiating the water rising
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: and some of the men in their die, or when
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: they do finally get into the city and one of
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the soldiers is stabbing into the sword and someone gets
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: stabbed and they have to keep him quiet so then
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: don't get found out. It's just all of these things
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: that you know, you you wouldn't think about these all
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: all these men trapped inside this wooden horse like horrifying.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: It is horrifying that it was. It was both the
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: most thrilling and also one of the most terrifying sequences
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: in the film, and rightly so. It's a terrifying thing
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: that they do, and.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Arguably the most homoerotic sequence in the film, because these
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: men are crammed in there pissing and shitting on each other,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: barfing on each other on each other.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The the and for Christopher Nolan to take what
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: was I think a relatively a pretty a creative liberty
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: on the thematic question of the film and using the
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Trojan horse as a object metaphor for betraying Zeus's law,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: which is do you want to others they as they
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: have done to you? And this principle of hospitality, welking,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: welcoming strangers into your home. And to have a Trojan
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: horse filled with soldiers, uh labeled as a gift because
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: they thought they won the war only to sneak into
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Troy and take it over in the dead of night
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: and kill civilians and all that stuff as essentially the
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: collapse of modern civilization as is kind of revealed to
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: us and through the sequence of the film, I think
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: is really smart, Like are there is it perfect? Not necessarily,
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: but you know, we'll talk more about the zeus law
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: of it all, because it just keeps coming up.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's the concept of Zeus's law is based
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: on the Greek concept of xenia, which is yeah, it's
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: it is essentially like the golden rule, do you want
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: too others as you wish others to do onto you?
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: And so part of that, the coolness of that is
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: like if someone stabs you, you should stab them back,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. Like it's not Christian, right like,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: but I it's still it's.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: A it's a very pre Christian morality.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: But it still has that non magical lesson of like
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: karmic retribution that I think in this movie sometimes gets
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: too too moralistic. But I think it's still really a
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: cool concept to unpack.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a really interesting framework for the film
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: and makes a lot of sense when you take into
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: account Nolan's last film, Oppenheimer, because I do think both
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: of these movies are fundamentally selling telling the same story,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: which is one man regretting a decision he made that
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: fundamentally altered the world for the worse.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And look, Oh, Disseus thought the horse was a really
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: cool idea, Like he was just like, this is a
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: gag He's coming to stunt on these hoes, like the
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: gag of this century, the gag of the millennia, one
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: could argue, And this the Odyssey is the consequence of that. Yeah,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: and you know as the consequence of the gag.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, and as we learn throughout the course of the film,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: what Odysseus is is and you know, back to this
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: idea of internalizing the struggle of this film rather than
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: externalizing it. What we realize over the course of the
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: movie is that because of what Odysseus did, because of
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the guilty feels over this horrible, you know, rupture of
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the social contract, because of that, he doesn't actually want
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: to get home. It's not it's not a bunch of
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: gods and monsters who are you know, creating his fate
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: for him. It's he's creating his fate himself.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: He's addicted to chaos.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: He's the drama.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: He's the drama.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, he chaos as.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: In kaos, the original Greek term. Okay, like if it
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: starts with even though the film doesn't necessarily I mean
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: the opening images, the Trojan horse.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: And the closing image, it's worth.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Saying that, I think, in accordance with the style of
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: the book, there is a lot of non chronological imagery
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: and sequences that happen in this film. And if you
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: haven't read the book, the book goes back and forth
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: on timelines a lot of stories don't happen, but they're recited,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: they're told to others. There's like unreliable narrator stuff that happens.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Odysseus does a lot of like story twisting and turning
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: and lying, and I think that the film stays true
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: to that. And it's also Christopher Nolan's style to kind
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: of like disorientingly jump back and forth in time, jump
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: back and forth into different sequences.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite things about the film. I'm really
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: fascinated by the structure of it. It does such a
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: good job at literalizing the idea that stories are so powerful.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't find things out until a character
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: in the film is telling a story about them, and
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: those stories then become these like Russian nesting dolls of
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: other stories. It actually, like, in a lot of ways,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: kind of reminded me of what I really like about
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Interview with the Vampire the TV show. This whole idea
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: that memory is monster and that what we're seeing depends
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: on the lens of the person that we're whose story
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: were actually following. I think it was such a like
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: you could very you could very easily write this screenplay
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: as a traditional Hollywood you know, three act movie. I
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: like that this film resists that. I like that there
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: are kind of two climaxes because you know, one of
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: them is the like really emotional climax of this film.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: That is, you know, Odysseus recounting the sacket of Troy
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: to Penelope, and then you have kind of the more traditional,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: you know, Hollywood climax of Odysseus versus the suitors. It's
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: just such a it's it was. It's such a refreshing
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: way to watch a big studio blockbuster.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: And we're going to continue to get into like the
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: thematic material and how Christopher Nolan's kind of stories is
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: so power, stories are so powerful. Slash every man characterization
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: continues to appear throughout the film, But I think it's
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: now time to depart from the Trojan War and go
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: into Odysseus's journey and we'll just go through it chronologically
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: and have annotations large and small on each one, and
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: of course we just kind of have to like rate
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: them on a certain kind of fuckibility.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Well, really, what I think we need to do is
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: break out the suckometer.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: The suckometer is out. If you're not familiar, like a
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: virgin audience, dearest virgins. The psuchometer is a really a
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: scientific tool that Rose and I use in order to
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: rate a character or a person as suckable. And I
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: do think, starting from the very beginning, that the Cyclops
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: would suck okay, Polyemous would suck well.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I adustion, I would I would definitely try. I don't
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: know if my jaw can stretch that wide.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, there's no You would have to use the force
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: of multiple men in order to wrap the girth of.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Polyfem You know, here's what I would do. I'd get
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: back in that Trojan horse and see if poly Femus
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: is a furry, Yes, is a fury?
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Is a is a beast?
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: It?
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Wait, what is it when you want to fuck animals?
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: What is that called?
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean fucking humans. Fucking animals is called bestiality.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Bestiality. That's what I was talking about boost the But
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: you know you alluded to this earlier.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Rose.
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I thought that there was something that is super emblematic
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: of what Nolan would continue to do in this film,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: which is create a sort of empathy for the Cyclops
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: that wasn't really there before in the book and in
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: the movie. Uh As is alluded to Cyclops is the
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: son of Poseidon, and because Odysease's men have like blinded
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: him and duped him, and in the book kind of
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: lied to him and taking his cheese, entered his home,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: taking his cheese.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Loved that the cheese was in the movie.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Love that the cheese was in the movie. The there
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: is a moment where in the film, the Cyclops is
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: leaving the cave, chasing them down, and when he spits
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: out the helmet of one of Odysseus's men, Odysseus, in
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: an act of hubris, shoots his arrow into the cyclops
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: eye just to like add salt to the wound. And
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: this mirror is something that happens in the book. When
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: the Cyclops is chasing them, he takes the top of
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: a mountain and throws it at the bow, and Odysseus says,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I want you to know that it was me. It
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: was not no man quote unquote, It's me, Odysseus. That's
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: my name, and it's because Odysseus, the fucking idiot kind
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: of himbo he is says his name in an act
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: of pride, that Poseidon is able to track him down
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: and punish him for this. Like that the Cyclops is
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: essentially cursing him, and in the film there's this kind
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: of like it becomes more of this thematic moralistic question.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: You at the end of the Cyclops scene really feel
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: bad for the Cyclops, Like he's blinded and alone. He's
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: been attacked basically for no reason other than you know,
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: eating multiple men.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and can you really blame him for that? Because again,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: like I think we are to see the monsters and
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: gods in this movie as sort of these like unknowable
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: forces of nature. And like again, like I think he's
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: he's an animal. Like there's there's that line where it's
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: only after Odysseus, it's only after they've blinded the Cyclops
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: and he started to speak that even the thought of
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: reasoning with him is brought up. Yes, and Odysseus says, well,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's a little too late for that. Now. Yeah, dark,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: extra extremely dark. Well, I mean it's a it's definitely
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: the scariest sequence in the movie. It's really unsettling.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, and the puppet is so fucking cool.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Sorry Mary, Emily Wilson. But like Psychops, you know, ranking
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: very high on the cycometer. Okay, the giants aka the Lecestragonians.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Question Mark is a race of cannibals that are like
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: giant men. And if you don't already know that, I
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: think everybody who's on Twitter knows that Christopher Nolan cast
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: real giants.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: He cast tall people to play the leg Astronians and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: then really short people to play Odysseus and his troops,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and then just use camera angles in perspective like that
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: is what I think is so cool about this film.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: And you know, friend, we were talking about this is
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: just like it's so cool that Nolan is like taking
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: the opportunity because he knows he's the only director who
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: gets the kinds of budgets he gets. He is using
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: them to make movies magical in the way that we
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: want them to be. You know, He's he's using these
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: huge budgets and investing them in the kind of cinematic
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: magic that can can that people say we don't do
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: anymore because movies don't have big enough budgets.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, And like Christopher Nolan's movies also famously come in
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: under budget and on time, which is like no happen,
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Like no directors, you know what I mean, have that
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: kind of the same kind of consistent reputation. So I
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: love that somebody was like, hey, Christopher Nolan, here's two
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million dollars and he's like, I'm gonna
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: spend it on puppets and moving trees. Yeah, like the
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: movie there's in the sequence you were pointing to.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: You were talking, Yes, yeah, they apparently like they built
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: these platforms so that the trees would rotate, and it
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: just looks it's so fucking cool. It's just cool. It's
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: it's so it's so amazing to watch movies and in
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: your mind be trying to figure out how they did things,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: rather than going, oh, well, I know that's cgi.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Or like ugh, I hope it's not a I yes,
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: and this was all real, and like, yeah, I love
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: that the armor not just in like the sequence of
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: the Lagostronians, the Lesstragonians and also elsewhere, that the like
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: the the costuming and the armor didn't have to be
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: like true today. It actually felt otherworldly, which I thought
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: was cool. It added to me to the fantasy element
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: in this and obviously also I think also ranking pretty
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: pretty high, if not just above the Cyclops on the parchometer.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, see they're a little higher, Yeah for me on
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: the suchometer, just because it seems more plausible. You know,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I've hooked up with very tall people before and it's challenging,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: but you can do it. Giant cyclops. You know that's
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: gonna be a little harder. I would have to literally
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: like give him a hand job by putting my whole
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: body around his penis and wiggling.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Like a tree. Yeah. Okay. Then we get into one
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: of our favorite quote unquote monsters, Obstacles on O Disease's
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: journey Cercy.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Uh, the best, the best part of the movie, the
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: entire that entire sequence from the moment they land on
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: the shore and you know, we get this, like, you know,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: the the tension between Odysseus and his men. They're like
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: starting this mutiny. We are following them up into the mountains,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: and there's this really like the haunting soundtrack of all
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: of these animals who we know are actually men who
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: have been transformed into animals, like paired with the scores
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: each of them are introduced. It's so haunting. Samantha Morton, God,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: she better when Best Supporting Actress of the Oscars or
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: at least be nominated. Truly incredible performance. She's at once
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: terrifying and powerful and also extremely vulnerable. You can see
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: all of this incredible pathology of why she does this
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: to men who come to her island. You get this
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: sense of her as this ancient being who has probably
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: been there for you know, thousands of years, and been
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: through this so many times, and been you know, victimized
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: by men, and so has refused to let herself be
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: a victim any longers, and is instead turning them not
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: into things that they aren't, but into things that they
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: really are inside period.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: And I dare I say, well, this is like to
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: me Madeline Miller's impact like you have. I told you
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: my Madeline Miller's story. I don't know if it's going
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: to be for another time.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: But let's hear it.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, I infamously wrote my undergraduate college thesis on
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: the inclusion of queer characters in seafaring and venture novels.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: And so I read Song of Achilles and then asked
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Madeline Miller if I could interview her, and she said yes,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: And I interviewed her over zoom for like she let
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: me do it for hours. I was a child. I
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: had no idea what I was asking from her, but
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: she was so nice and talking to me for so
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: long about Greek mythology. And I was studying abroad in
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: London at the time, and I wanted to go to
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: this music festival in like the Netherlands that Andrew Bird
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: was playing at because I am that girl. And I
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: emailed her, Madeline Miller, because she was slated to be
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: on a panel at this festival, and I asked if
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: I could get a ticket, and I was Madeline Miller's
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: plus one. That's crazy, somebody she's never met and does
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: not know she's so major. But Sursey, which is like,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: you know, one of your favorite books rows a book
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: that I haven't finished, but I one.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Of my favorite contemporary books I don't know about all time.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Circe complexifies this Sorry Curse. The book complexifies her story
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: and grounds it in a kind of like story of
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: exclusion and being outcast from society. It's like a deeply
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: I would art, you could say, feminist perspective on Circe.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: And I think that for in the original book Calip
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Sorry Curce is it's supposed to be like a bombshell.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: She's supposed to be like an ageless goddess, beauty.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Witch Yes played by Bernard ut Peters in the nineties
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: ot to See TV mini series.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that girl.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: It's crazy. The scene where she's like, Okay, odsseus, I'll
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: turn your your men back from pigs if you fuck me.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: She says that, well, she doesn't say if you fuck me,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: but she says if you come to bed with me,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: and she gets into bed and she's like, which is
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: what happens in the text, But it's Bernette Peters, so
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: it's it's a gag.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: And so Nolan Slash perhaps allegediciously influenced by Madel Meyer.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: And we don't have confirmation that Christopher Nolan or Samantha
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Morton read Surce, but we know that they both have
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: a copy that has been confirmed.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Samantha Morton, in an interview with Vulture did say that
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: when she was preparing for the role, she at the
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: very least purchased the book, maybe read some of it,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: but I think didn't want to overcomplicate her understanding of
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Circe and really wanted to go with what was on
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: the page and maybe like, but I do think she
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: probably picked up a few.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Pieces maybe, but it also like the portrayal The choice
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: to make Surce look like a normal woman living in
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: a cabin, to me, brings it back to the Homer
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: because technically in the book, she's not a witch. She's
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: like kind of a pharmacist, like she's a She's referred
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: to us like the many drug sursy and she has
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: like a deep knowledge of plants. And that to me,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: for her to not be this sexy bombshell and to
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: instead be this kind of woman over her stove, I
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: felt was really cool. And she also has the best
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: monologue in the film in my opinion, I mean next
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: to Anne Hathaway. Yeah, like she in this moment, and
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: I believe this is kind of a choice. I don't
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: think this is in the book. She says something the
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: effect of like, well, like, of course, I'm turning your
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: men into pigs. I was afraid, And she like that's
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: very well depicted. And she's like, and wouldn't your men
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: just rape me just like all the other men have,
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Like like if I hadn't turned them into pigs, that's
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: what they do. They're hungry, they're they're like evil little
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: monsters and you know that.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she says to Odysseus, you sent them.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: You sent them to me.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: And I love that when she does break because of
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: Jaseus is threatening her sister, who she's turned into a
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: crow because they get along better that way. When she
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: is transforming the pigs, she says, back into your disguises,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: which like gave me chills.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Girl, It's so good. And it just if we're thinking
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: about all of the who know which of the women
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Nolan did right by Curse is for sure at the top,
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: maybe Penelope a close second. Yeah to me, got the
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: best depiction of a woman maybe. And I was gonna
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: say in maybe any Christopher Nolan film, but I actually
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: haven't seen very many Christopher Olen films, so.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: It's very safe to say Circe is the best written
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: woman he's ever written, for sure.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: And maybe Madeline Miller wrote it. Sorry, Okay, So then
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: we go into Hades. It's kind of in the book,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: kind of really boring, like you know what I mean.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, like the Source instructs Odysseus to go to
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: the underworld, where he is to obtain prophecies from blind
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Tyresius from played by James Remar aka Richard aka Long
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Pink Amazing from Sex and the City. Right, Oh my God,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: I didn't I need I miss that. And also in
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: the book, Odysseus talks to a bunch of other ghosts
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: or like the shades, essentially coming up from the underworld
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: and giving him advice and giving him prophecies. He talks
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: to like his mother, where he talks to Ajax Ajax,
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: he talks to Agamemnon, and he also talks to Achilles
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: in the book. And in the book, Achilles like begs
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: for a proper burial and also says something about like
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: how he would rather live a lifetime as a beggar
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: than a short life as a hero. I mean, that's
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: like a kind of bastardization of the quote, but it's
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: like a very deep and rich the matic question of
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: the Odyssey at large. And this is part of why
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: everyone in their Mother theorized slash claimed that Elliott Page
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: was playing Achilles in the movie, But Christopher Nolan has
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: omitted all of that other stuff after Teresius and inserted
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: Elliot Page's character seen On in this sequence to again
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: deepen the question of Odysseus's character what it means to
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: bury your dead. As seen On is a very devout
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: soldier who essentially unknowingly unsacrificed himself to gift the horse
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: to the Trojans.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: And was tricked into even going into the war by
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: right Robert Pattinson.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Antonius and Antinous.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Antenuous, who's such a good, smarmy little piece of shit
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: in this movie. Oh, he's perfect, perfectly cast.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Is Teresiu's daddy? What's the suckometer on this Oh?
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Teresius, he of the people we've named so far, He's
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: at the top of my suckometer.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, But is Circe ranking higher? I assume so, yeah, no,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: because she's kind of unfuckable.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think she's. Yeah, she's at the bottom of
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the stuckometer because I'm approaching her as a as a sister, respectfully, respectfully, Yes,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm approaching her as you know, someone I met
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: in Papa's orchard or whatever the meme is.
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, So you said Teresius is ranking.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Ranking number one on the suckometer for me, like, because
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I'm like over the giants, I'm like, no eyes, but
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: what the mouth do?
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: But what that mouth do?
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: And he's also he's already on the ground, so I
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: just got to crouch down there.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: And this next sequence of obstacles I've kind of lumped
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: together into a section I've called Boat full of Idiots
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: because it's a testament to something that's in the book
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: and not so much in the movie maybe a little bit,
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: but the kind of mind breaking the idiotic nature of
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: Odysseus's men who are so hungry, constantly so hungry, and
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: constantly barbecuing things and only focused on like fucking things
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: and barbecuing things, and that kind of like neanderthalness really
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: gets in the way of Odysseus's ability to plan and
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: to overcome these obstacles. The Sirens is, like, you know,
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: portrayed a little bit in this film. In this film
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: portrayed that was portrayed a little bit because one of
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: the men kind of takes out of his ear waxen,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: jumps out of the boat and like goes to the sirens.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: But I thought the depiction of the Sirens, even though
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: this was like a less engaging part of the movie,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: was really cool. To not let us hear the song.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a really good choice because I think
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things where nothing they're able to
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: produce whatever live up to what we think would be
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: the kind of song that could you know, drive you crazy? Yes,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: I do really love the way that Odysseus describes the
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: song he in the In the film, he says that
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the Siren Song was all the things you wanted to be, then,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: all the things you wish you never wished for, told
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: you what you most want is what you most can't have,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: and what you most can't have is what you already
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: had and lost, which is just so beautiful, so.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: Beautiful, so perfectly distilling. I think Christopher Nolan's thesis statement
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: on Odysseus kind of suffering from PTSD in some ways
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: and feeling like he's failed his family and his wife.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that what he is going through is not
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: a personal loss but a cultural loss, you know, the
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: loss of their way of life.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: Uh. Scilla and Charybdis, I thought we're fab. It's a
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: quick sequence, you kind of get out of the way
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: at the end. I thought it was fab. I thought
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: it was enticing. Obviously, Charybdis is super fuckable. I mean
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: it's a giant hole.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, also used also made using puppets about arms that
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: you see reaching down to grab the crew and the
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: ship are puppets.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Oh is Caribbdis, the many net is oh Scylla's Pilla,
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: Sila Silicilla. Yeah, that I didn't know that was puppets.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: I literally thought it was CGI. It was so good.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: It was probably enhanced with CGI. I mean it was
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: definitely enhanced with CGI. But I like that everything starts
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: practically in this.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: Film and then he and then we get to Helio's island,
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: the sun God's island and his cows, which are all
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: around mythology, and the big thing is like, you can't
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: eat the cows, Diva and eat the cows.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: It's so funny. See Us comes up on them eating
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: the cows and they just kind of look at him
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: and it's very much like a curb your enthusiasm, like.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Du Yeah, it literally is. And I I mean when
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: it came to like these three sequences in succession, like
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: the Sirens, Sylid, Charybdis, Helios, cows were like seeing kind
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: of the men really go down for the count and
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: I you know, a diseases. Men obviously very very suckable,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: but cows not so much. This cows were there. They
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: were beautiful cows, though, beautiful cows, and they were the
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: demise as was told in the prophecy that Taresius related, I.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Think, but also you know, self fulfilling prophecy. It's like,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: would they have done it if he had said anything
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: to them? Would they have even made because you know,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: after this happens, we see how Odysseus and his men
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: finally are separated, and and would him ash Patel's character,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what his name is, would he have
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: made that choice in that moment to urge Odysseus to
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: go on without them if he hadn't been made aware
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: of this curse that Odysseus would make at home. You know,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: it's like again a thing where I like that that
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the humans are given more agency in this story than
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: in one where we are to understand that the magic
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: is one thousand percent.
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: Real, and where like in this like Triod, I would say,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: the sirens are ranking pretty low on the psychometer, maybe
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: more where curse is. Where does our next obstacle rank Calypso,
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: who is I guess folded throughout the film, but chronologically
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: happens at the end of all of this stuff. I
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: feel like this, to me was the weakest I think
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: Calypso was the weakest part of the film.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I agree, it's there's so many shots that look like
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: they're just from Charlie's there and doing a dire perfe mad.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: She is definitely the most modern element in the film
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: kind of kind of textually because she acts as this
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: like better help therapist for Odysseus to sort of get
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: to the point where he can begin dealing with his trauma. Yeah,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: I mean she is. She's definitely the weak link in
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: the movie for me. I think it almost kind of
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: works how separate she is from the rest of the
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: narrative because of the role she's supposed to play in
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Odysseus's story, But it also definitely does kind of take
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: me out of it when you know they're on this
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: beach and she just looks like incredibly perfect, Like I
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: know she's a nymph, but it just it's a it's
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: an interesting choice for this film that is like very
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: grounded in reality for her to be walking around in
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: like this net dress that looks like she bought it
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: on essence.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: And like all of the it is giving essence. Actually
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: it's giving like essence like Macrome moment uh in the books,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: like all of the women are really just kind of
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: a mirror like a tool of reflection for Odysseus, and
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: I think that's this. I think Christopher Nolan really took
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: that and and ran with it in order to reflect
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: all these other themes he's trying to like pull apart
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: in the film. But yeah, it was kind of giving.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: Like Calypso as a kind of Santa Monica homeopathic practitioner
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: slash cognitive behavioral therapist.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Like, oh yeah, she definitely shops at arawon.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: But as a good therapist does she really clocks his
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: tea In the film, she's kind of like, look, girl,
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: you're Eprey loving boots, Like you don't want to go home.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: You just want to eat, eat and think about your
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: trauma and like fuck everybody along the way, and you
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: don't maybe you don't actually want to go home. That's
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: kind of like a big part of what she's unpacking
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: with him.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: She's also such a psychiatrist in the way that she
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: gives him a drug and then is like, I can't
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: believe you got addicted to that drug and all of
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: your problems now are because you're on that drug. That's
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: so like okay, okay, Calypso, I didn't realize that you
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: worked in the psychiatry department at Callum Lord.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: That's so funny, but it's it's like, I again a
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: creative license. In the film, she says, well, you ate
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: it so willingly, and you know, oh my god, he
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: was asking for it. He was asking for it. And obviously,
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: you know, the Lotus Eaters as like a separate episode
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: in this book was omitted and then kind of like
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: folded into the Calypso sequences in the film. And by
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: saying you ate it so willingly, it's implicating Odysseus in
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: the story of Calypso staying with her for seven years.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Was became this kind of yes, maybe like she's a
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: for sure, like a little bit of a sexual abuser
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: because she's like drugging him for seven years. But also
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: he she in this movie is she's like, well, I
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: mean you kind of seem like you wanted that, like truly,
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: like she's and he.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: And he agrees with her. She is how he realizes
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: he doesn't want to go home.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so then Odysseus goes.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: Home welcome home.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, And this is the climax of the film. Do
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: you have any reactions to the slaughter of the suitors.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: I think this is where we can maybe talk about
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: Penelope and Telemachus and Antinous if we want, Yeah, I
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: obviously and Hathaway fucking eight, like she will get the ascocar.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: I want. Oh that moment is I just love how
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Ride or Die. She is for her man. She's like
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: her son is I need help? Mom? She's like, fuck you,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I want my man back.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Literally every time, and her next to Sorry Tom Holland.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Yikes when they have when they have that scene and
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: you're going back and forth from her doing some of
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: the best acting I've seen in a you know, mainstream
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: blockbuster film, and he's just kind of there, you know,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: he really he does come alive in the action sequences,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: but the dramatic scenes not quite as much.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: And also like distractingly, and I know what we say
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: this about every movie, but like every time Tom Holland
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: was in a scene with someone, it immediately became a
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: gay porn. And like it was like him talking to
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: John Leguizamo and it was a gay porn, and him
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: talking to Antinous and it was a gay porn. And
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: when he's talking to his mommy, I was like, this
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: is the setup for a gay porn like this is
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: like he's distractingly like twinked twink Spider Man, and yet
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: like Telemachus's twinkedness is really technically critical to the plot
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: of the book because they say the suitors or somebody
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: says once like your son. Oh. I think it's Odysseus
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: who says it. He's like, once our son grows a beard,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: you can marry whoever you wish. Penelope and he can't
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: grow a beard.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, I bet Tom Holland can't grow a beard.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: I think the reason why every scene he's in gives
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: gay porn is because he has this kind of aging
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: twink face. You know, it's like it's he's he's started
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: to curdle. But much like many twinkie gay porn stars.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: Is there something else to be said about Telemachus or
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Antinuous or Penelope or should we talk about like Athena
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: and kind of wrap up the conversation.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Uh, let's talk about Athena, because I do think that's huge.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: It is it is huge, and it is it kind
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: of goes back to this central idea we've been talking about,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: you know, a time of apparent magic, you know, because
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: it is revealed in this sequence where Odysseus in disguise
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: is recounting the sacking of Troy to Penelope, which is,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: you know, incredibly hard to watch. It's really brute, brutal,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: it's really sad, masterfully done. But we see that Athena,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: who has been Odysseus's kind of you know, id his
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: conscience throughout the course of the film. But also, you know,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: we are to understand literally a goddess we see in
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: his memory of the pillaging of Athenis Temple, that who
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: we understand to be Athena was maybe actually a priestess
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: in the temple who was killed and then has really
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: been Odysseus as a personification of his guilt.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: And it's like the notion of like was it Athena
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: or like was it his memory, his PTSD his conscience?
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: Like that becomes this like blurry line that lends itself
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: to deepening Odysseus's humanity.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: And I actually don't I really like the ambiguity of
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: it in the film. And I think a lot of
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: people in their coverage of the movie have jumped in
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: a kind of cinema sins YouTube easter eggs way to
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: being like the twist of who Athena really is, and
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: I actually think it's it's much more interesting to leave
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: it ambiguous and to let you interpret it. Unfortunately, Matt
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Damon did kind of conclusively say to Vulture at least
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: how he played it. He said to him, she's there.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: You've seen the film, so you know who she is.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: She's a girl who conflates basically the end of our
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: humanity and what we've done. She's murdered in front of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: him and then she becomes Athenis, so she's like his consciousness,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: his conscience. She's what he has wrought, and she's living
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: in his head like his conscience. We played it like
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: an interior monologue, almost like a soliloquy when I'm talking
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: to her after I see the guys and they've slaughtered
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: the cattle. It's this walk and talk where she just
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: appears and then disappears, like he's having this conversation bouncing
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: around in his head. That's obviously revealed when she comes
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: and sits on the steps when he's with his wife
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: at the end, and then she's gone. When the story
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: tells you who she actually was. And I don't know,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: I think that's Matt damon just being kind of dumb, and.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: It was like it was a little circular.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's I think she's both. Yes, I
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: think she's both in the way that the gods were
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: both to the Greeks. Like I saw this really great
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: TikTok recently that I'll try to find and it was
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: talking about, you know, this idea that, like Athena to
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: the Greeks was that moment when you make a connection
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: between two things in your brain, like that moment when
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: your thoughts gain swiftness, like that lightning bolt of inspiration
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: that strikes you. Athena was the way that they rationalized
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: that that they made sense of the world around them,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: and she was also a religious figure that they worshiped.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: And I think in this movie, to me, it is
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: more interesting to see her as both to see her
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: as a product of Odysseus's shame and guilt and his
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: guilty conscience and also potentially as this divine figure kind
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: of guiding him through this journey. I don't think we
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: need to we need to have the gotcha moment of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: having the rug pulled out from under us, and Athena
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: was actually the you know, just his conscience all along.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I it's just to me, it just that
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: it being that black and white didn't really feel like
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: the aim of the film to me at all.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like a twist so much as as
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: another layer of his psychology.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: And Athena specifically as the only quote unquote goddess portrayed
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: and the only and being this kind of conscience figure,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: I think is the big I think beautifully analyzed on
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: the podcast The Ancients it's a history podcast, and these
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: two scholars analyze this scene of the memory of Zindea
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: turning out to be this farm girl who got beheaded,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: and one of the scholars kind of suggests that this
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: scene is meant to mirror the rape of the priestess Cassandra,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: which happens at the foot of the statue of Athena
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: as she was during the Trojan War, as she was
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: fleeing to the Athenis temple to escape the violence of
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: the war. And there's this layering of the rape of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: Cassandra happening at the foot of Athena's statue in her
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: temple as a violation of the goddess and a really
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: decisive moment in the fall of Troy and so in
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: that in the way that the story is told, and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: then as like Nolan possibly builds on that is a
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: convergence of the women of Troy, the civilian the innocent civilians,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: and deaths and the death toll of Troy being one
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: to one with the goddess Athena and what it meant
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: to kind of like violate that sacredness. And it gets
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: a little tricky because Athena is actually like a war god.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: She's a pro war god, you know what I mean.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: And so when they leave Troy and set up set
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: out for the Adust, when Odysseus is men set out
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: for the Odyssey and leave Troy, Athena is pissed that
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: this rape happened and starts the drama. She goes to
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: Zeus and she is like, let's fuck obliterate these twigs,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: I want this twink obliterated.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, period, And so you know, I you know you
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: said earlier like that the the war scene is very brutal,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: and to be honest, like, was it that brutal? Like
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: it's clear that Nolan's take is war bad, you know
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: what I mean? Like that feels clear, But in terms
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: of like me really wanting to see what Odysseus was
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: wrestling with. I kind of felt like Nolan didn't really
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: go there in depicting how inhumane the violence of the
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: Trojan War was. I'm not saying I needed to see
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Zendia beheaded. In fact, I thought it was really beautiful
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: that the beheading of the Athena statue in the film
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: kind of creates this again, thematic question of Athena goddess,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: civilian farmer, rape pillaging, tolls of war. But I did not,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: really I didn't. Actually, I don't know if I really
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: saw what Odysseus was contending with. The whole time, I
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: understood it and it was made clear to me, but
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I saw it.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: I I guess if you're looking at through the framework
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: of war bad, then maybe yes. I think it's a
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: little more nuanced than that. And this is where I
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: think what Nolan is trying, what parallels Nolan is trying
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: to draw from the Trojan War to our modern world
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: really comes into play, is because I think he's not
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: necessarily just saying like war is bad, war as disgusting,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: war makes monsters of us. I think what he's more
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: pointing to is you know, back to the idea of
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Zeus's law Zenia, of breaking the social contract and not
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: leading to the fall of their civilization. Is more so
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: that when we no longer see the people around us,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: the people in our society, the people that we're in
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: community with, as deserving of our care and empathy, not
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: for what they can do for us, but merely by
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: existing in proximity to us, or by existing in the world.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: When we turn our neighbors, when we look at our
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: neighbors and turn them into strangers, into criminals, into aliens,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: when we you know, build borders, build walls, and we
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: no longer see the people around us as deserving of humanity,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: then we have no right to civilization, and civilization falls.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: I think it's really haunting Towards the end of the
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: film when Penelope asks Odysseus, you know why, why will
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: these tales only be sung? And Odysseus says, because songs
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: will be all that's left of those of us who
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: knew how to write. He seeing the consequences of his actions.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: He's seeing the fall of his civilization because strangers have
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: been automatically turned into enemies, because they went inside these
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: people's homes and murdered them in the streets, which is
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: exactly what we're doing today.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's an in the kind of going back
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: to something that we were talking about the very beginning,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: this kind of blockbuster standard. Even though I really wish
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: that I had seen a bit more of what exactly
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: was causing the BTSD, I maybe understand some of the
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: rationale on the different efforts to make Odysseus less of
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: a brute than who he was in the book, because
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: in the Homeric details of this story, we would never
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: root for Odysseus, right, Like I mean, actually that's arguable,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: but like you know, in the book, at the end
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: of the Odyssey, after he kills all these suitors, he
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: makes all of his indentured servants clean up the carnage,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: and then he hangs he and then he takes all
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: of the servant girls and makes Telemachus hang them because
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: they were disloyal. Like that's obviously not going to be
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: in the movie, because if it were, it wouldn't hold
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: up what I think Nolan is trying to do and
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: reframe with Odysseus, which is make him quote unquote like
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: kind of capital trademark redeemable man, you know what I.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: Mean, at the very least, extremely sympathetic.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: And also sorry, I'm not saying I want to see
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: like a dozen servant girls hanged, but by eliminating some
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: of them more violent or complexifying details of Odysseus, it
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: does make him more born. I thought that Odysseus was
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: boring in this film. I Matt Damon was fine. He's
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: He's never an actor that's really compelled me personally, and
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: that's not a testament to his skill as an actor.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: There's a testament to my personal taste and what I
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: like in movies. But like, he was.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Boring to me. I did find him very suckable. The
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: scene where he's stringing the bow and you just see
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: his arm in peran while was crazy.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: O Disseus's arm best supporting actor.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: Also one of my favorite motifs in the film, every
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: time he plucks the bow string and we hear that
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: sound cue. Even Emily Wilson liked that. She she liked
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: that well. I think one of the problems she had
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: was the lack of uh like in world music in
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: this film. Like even you know Travis Scott at the beginning,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: starting off, you know, telling the tale of the Fall
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: of Troy, like he's there's no music, and this is
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: very much a musical tradition. These these poems were sung,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: That's how there were passed down. So I did appreciate
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: that little musical motif. God, what else, what else is
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: there to say?
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: We could talk about the sea people, but that's kind
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: of nerdy. That was the only thing left on our agenda.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: I do, I do want to, I do want to
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: talk about it.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I do think it's really interesting and disagree and maybe
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: maybe it's It's very cool because so throughout the film
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: there's this ongoing discussion of the people from the sea
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: who are you know, every are the reason are really
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: the the impetus behind Ifica needing a new king, because
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: the idea is that if these sea people who are
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: going around to all these different islands, if they come
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: and show up and Ifica needs to go to war,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: they need a king to rally around. That's why it's
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: so important that a suitor is chosen or Telemachus you know,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: takes the throne. And the sea people are a real
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: historical mystery. I did a little, you know, just baseline googling,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: on Encyclopedia Britannica and a little context is the Sea
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: People are groups of seafarers who arrived in Eastern Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Cyprus,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age, especially
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century BCE. Historical counts of the Sea
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: People's raiding, most notably several Egyptian texts dating to the
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: thirteenth and twelfth centuries, coincide with what is known as
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: the Late Bronze Age collapse, a period when trade connections
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: declined and many large settlements were destroyed or abandoned. Some
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: of this destruction occurred in Mycenaean Greece. For example, the
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: palace at Mycenae, which appears in Homer's Odyssey as the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: seat of King Agamemnon, was burned around eleven hundred BCE.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: Scholars continued to debate who exactly the Sea people were
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: and their possible role in the Late Age collapse. And
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: so I think the real actual twist, more so than
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: the Athena quote unquote reveal, is that Odysseus and his
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: men were the people from the sea that in breaking
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: Zeus's law, they became the monsters that led to the
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: fall of their civilization exactly.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: And so this is also something that's very clever for
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: Christopher Nolan to do, because the myth of the sea
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: people did not exist in the history of the Odyssey.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: The theory of the people from the sea is a
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: more new invention. It was proposed in the eighteen fifties
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: by the original curator of the Louver and it was
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: one of the theories of the late Bronze Age collapse,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: saying that basically these tribe, these Ageean tribes, quote unquote,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: emerged from the water and like pillaging and burning and
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: raping for And obviously there's that's a theory. There are
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of other things that likely contributed to the
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: Bronze Age collapse and different things that fold into that.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: But this theory, this relatively new historical theory. For Nolan
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: to play with that and to say, oh, we were
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: the sea people all along takes I think, takes the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: narrative to another level, however kind of layered it may be,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: because it takes the onus off of these mysterious indigenous
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: or tribal entities that are magically causing the Bronze Age collapse.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: And then, as you just said, putting the responsibility back
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: on Odysseus.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: And doesn't that sound familiar to anyone living in twenty
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: first century America or the world at large. The Sea
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: People also featured on the current season of ninety seven.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: Their theory is that the X men we're the c people.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: I have three.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: Kind of closing questions for you, okay, Leaman and me.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: The first question is for the virgins, when do you
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: go during the two hours and fifty minutes of the Odyssey?
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: When do you go to pee?
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's the official like a virgin guide to peeing
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: during the Odyssey. These are the times when you should
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: go urinate. I will say I did not piss. I
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: did not go to the bathroom during my first viewing
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: off The Odyssey?
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: Did I?
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: I'm built different. I was riveted that I was when
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: a film is that good, I just I can hold it.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: So you should pee during any Calypso scene. Yes, Unfortunately
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: they are while they are important thematically, you can miss
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: them and still get what's going on. I would also
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: go pee during the siren scene. You really could listen
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: to analysis of it and get what's going on and
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: then this is not one hundred percent, But I would say,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: if you really gotta go, you could go during Robert
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: the Robert Pattinson and Anne scene. Maybe it does have
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: some good acting, but you could skip it.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: I totally agree. I mean, I love that Anne Hathaway
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: and Robert Pattinson kind of almost catch a vibe, Like
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: I think that that was cool.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, she wants his cock, she.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: Wants his cashirk and like better woman than me because
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: I would have sucked Robert Pattinson.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: No, she stood by her man.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: I love a sniveling little weasel. I also, I mean
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: same thing with like, oh diseases men, like I love
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: an idiot. Okay, like idiots are hot. Sorry my two
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: more questions. Uh, is this movie better than Disney's Hercules
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: on the adaptation of Greek mythology or just as a film?
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: It's not, Sorry, it's not. It's not. I think I
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: have to disagree.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: You think it's better than Disney's Hercules.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: I would rather watch Disney's Hercules than I would watch
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: the Odyssey. I think the Odyssey is a better adaptation
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: of Greek mythology, but Hercules I think I will watch.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: Well, I do think those are different questions. Are you
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: asking me which one when I enjoy more? Or which
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: is a better movie? To me?
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: That's the same question.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: It's not the same question to me. But I do
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: think we approach things in somewhat different ways when it
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: comes to that. But I think that's I think that's
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: a good way to kind of split the difference on this.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: My second question is in my letterbox review this year
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: of Uptown Girls, the two thousand and three film, I
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: wrote that Uptown Girls is better than anything Christopher Nolan
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: has ever done, And after watching The Odyssey, I I
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: want to ask you, is the Odyssey better than Uptown Girls?
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: I agree, Well, okay, I think that.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Did you say is Wait? Hold on, did you say,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: is the Odyssey better than Uptown Girls? Is Uptown Girls
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: better than the Odyssey?
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: Is? Is the Odyssey better than Uptown Girls?
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: No, it's not up to the Odyssey is No? And
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: you mean yes it is? The Odyssey is better than
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: Uptown Girls.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: Is the Odyssey better than Uptown.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, the the Odyssey is better than Uptown Girls. Although
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: the Odyssey does not have sheets of Egyptian cotton or
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: or Dakota fanning, No, and it could have benefited from both.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: It could have benefited from both. Dakota Fanning should have
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: been calypso ooh I like that. Yeah, I mean el
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: Fanning would be better. Sorry, but Dakota or.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe okay here, Okay, As much as I
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: love Samantha Morton, what if like Dakota Fanning and el
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: Fanning both play Circe. She plays all the parts, but
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Dakota Fanning is made to look really like old and decrepit,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: and el Fanning is just normal. And so they have
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: sort of a maiden mother crone thing where they're constantly
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: cycling through the you know, like times of womanhood.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: That I can get behind. And Helena should have been
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: played by Julia Fox.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: Helen Helen was Helen. Helen was correctly played by Lupita Niango.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: Sure you were casting the most beautiful woman in the world. Yes,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: that is the only woman you can.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: Cast that's actually so fierce, and I agree with that.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: I will redact my statement just how I have redacted
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: the fact that I can I can see the Odyssey
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: might be better than Uptown Girls.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, So let me ask you a question of my own. Yes,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: does Christopher Nolan deserve to have his ass eaten.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I do. I think that in this film
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: and other films of his, that he is really looking
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: for an out for like a really deplorable man.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: Do I think that all of his movies are kind
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: of about a tortured dude burdened by the weight of
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: his power, who ultimately like fails or disrespects his wife.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: Sure that is also true. Do I think that the
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: moral compass of the Odyssey of this film is a
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: little bit muddled at times? And I don't actually know
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: what he's trying to say about morality and war. Sure,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: but he, like Odysseus, is really just trying to do
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: his best. Like he thought the horse was a good idea,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: and I think that that deserves his ass to get a.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: And you know what I'll say, not only will I
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: use his ass, I'll suck it from the back.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: I'll suck it from the back, Okay.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: And that is the official, like a virgin stance on
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: the Odyssey. I'll suck it from the ball, suck it
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: from the back. We hope you enjoyed this hour and
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: twenty three minute in depth analysis through suckometry of Christopher
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: Nolan's The Odyssey If you liked this and want more
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: of these deep dives, they exist on our Patreon, patreon
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: dot com slash like a Virgin. If you would like
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: for more main feed episodes to go this deep into
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: specific topics, let us know. We'll take it under advisement.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: We want to know what you thought of the Odyssey?
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Have you seen it? Are you planning to see it?
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: Which monster do you want to suck the most?
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: I like enjoyed writing up notes on this topic so much.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: I was kind of like, damn, this feels like a
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: bonus episode, Like I feel like we could do a
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: whole other episode just on the Iliad or just on
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: some other terrain of mythology. So if you are not
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: a subscriber of our Patreon, patreon dot com slash like
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: a Virgin, you will find two bonus episodes of bonus
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: episodes a month. That is bi monthly episodes, and weirdly,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: bi monthly in the English language means both every other
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: month and twice a month, but in this case we
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: mean twice a month. So go on over support our work,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: and we also mean the episodes are by and the
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: episodes are bisexual. Go on over subscribe to our Patreon
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: and uh bless my soul.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: Person of the Weekend ever