It takes four years to complete a standard degree and about the same again to do a PhD, so imagine my surprise and pride at my ability to become a scholar of ancient Greece in just one week. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s right, I went to see Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/a> (in 70mm at the Irish Film Institute, thank you very much) and since then the hysterical \u201cwoke\u201d discourse around the three-hour epic adaptation of Homer\u2019s poem has catapulted me into a vortex of fact and fiction. <\/p>\n Nolan<\/a>\u2019s film is a stone-cold banger, which is a relief because the last time I went to see a big screen interpretation of Homer\u2019s work \u2013 2004\u2019s Troy starring Brad Pitt and based on The Iliad, and a complete turkey \u2013 I walked out of the cinema halfway through, the only time I can ever remember doing so, and I love a historical sandal film. <\/p>\n The Odyssey is hugely entertaining, supremely stressful and, crucially, based on a myth. I was vaguely aware of accusations of Nolan being infected by the \u201cwoke mind virus\u201d over his casting choices in the film during production but now that it\u2019s in cinemas the complaints about his commitment to \u201chistorical accuracy\u201d are deeply entertaining. <\/p>\n Firstly there\u2019s Lupita Nyong\u2019o, who double jobs in the film as Helen of Troy and her twin sister, Clytemnestra. Nyong\u2019o is a black actor with Kenyan parents, who was born in Mexico and raised in Nairobi. How could she possibly portray an historically accurate Helen of Troy, screamed the purists online. After all, Helen was hatched out of an egg as the result of the union of the Greek god Zeus (who had taken the form of a swan) and either the princess Leda or the goddess Nemesis. Nyong\u2019o\u2019s father is categorically not a swan, nor was she hatched from an egg. Of greatest concern, though, is her skin colour and the question of how a black woman could possibly exist in ancient Greece. <\/p>\n [\u00a0The Odyssey review: Set aside any doubts. This star-studded film is Christopher Nolan at his bestOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n The same complainers who took issue with Nyong\u2019o\u2019s casting seemed to have no problem with Nolan\u2019s inability to find a real Cyclops to play the one-eyed cave-dwelling monster in his film, which is just political correctness gone mad if you ask me. Justice for the out-of-work Cyclops actors of Hollywood!<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s trans actor Elliot Page<\/a>, who plays the solider Sinon, a small but pivotal role. Much of the online criticism in the run up to the film\u2019s release had centred on the incorrect assumption that Page had the gall to be playing the mighty warrior Achilles but has now somehow switched to fury that Page doesn\u2019t play Achilles, thus \u201cerasing\u201d Achilles from The Odyssey. Achilles, of course, appears most prominently in Homer\u2019s other epic poem, The Iliad. And while we\u2019re talking historical accuracy, there\u2019s no conclusive answer on whether Homer even existed, which itself has led to the \u201cHomeric Question\u201d in Greek scholarship. <\/p>\n The aspect of casting I was most concerned about was the A-list names in the main roles: Matt Damon<\/a> as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope and Tom Holland as their son Telemachus. Holland has a face that just screams \u201cI know what an iPhone is\u201d. I\u2019m delighted to report he\u2019s a great Telemachus and his 2026 face didn\u2019t lift me out of any of the extremely historically accurate action happening on screen. What I found most distracting was Charlize Theron<\/a>. Her character, Calypso, is cursed to live on a desert island and fall in love with anyone who lands there. With her beachy waves and crocheted co-ord outfit she wouldn\u2019t have been out of place in an Instagram photo on her holidays in the Maldives. It\u2019s a minor gripe, though. <\/p>\n