Tag: Homer

The odyssey

I had an existential crisis after watching The Odyssey. The film was good—if not great—don’t get me wrong. But I kept finding flaws: Tom Holland was boring; the story ends 20 minutes after its emotional climax; some of the back stories were difficult to follow; where the hell was Logan “Not Tom Hardy” Marshall-Green? Etc etc.

Then I realized something: am I the problem?

Christopher Nolan has done something that no other filmmaker has ever achieved. The Odyssey, if not many other titles in his filmography, is foolproof. You can find flaws until cows come home but none of it will matter. Even Nolan’s biggest hater — along with the right wing trolls pissed off over his casting choices — will have to admit that no matter its shortcomings, The Odyssey is a great movie.

And how he does it is no secret. It’s all right there in front of you: big ideas, big emotions, hire the best in the business. When Nolan introduces one big idea, seconds later he’ll introduce another big idea. If he doesn’t have an interesting plan on how to stage an action scene, fuck it! He’ll let the music and sound carry the weight. The only way he could have failed is if he had chosen uninteresting source material or ran with an original concept. And obviously that’s not what happened. Nolan made a film adaptation of the literal bedrock of the Western canon.

In short, there was no way that Christopher Nolan could have failed here. It was genius. I haven’t been the biggest Nolan fan, but he absolutely destroyed my every attempt to hate this movie. It nearly killed me.

So I’m gonna be real with you folks, The Odyssey is on par with Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, or any other great Hollywood epic. That’s just a fact. But then again, perhaps we’ve been fed CGI slop for so long that it’s refreshing to see real actors on real sets.

So just a tip for Hollywood execs, take a step outside the studio on occasion.

Dennis R. “Old” McDonald

Every now and then an academic comes along with some wild ass theories that don’t find wide acceptance. They’re either ridiculed or ignored and sometimes, sadly, die in obscurity. Yet later they are found to be totally vindicated.

Dr. Dennis R. McDonald of the Claremont School of Theology and the Claremont Graduate University feels like a candidate for this distinction. He’s been making his rounds recently discussing his solution to “Synoptic Problem”…or how the first three canonical gospels are related…which he calls the “Q+\Papias” hypothesis. My interest in this supposed “lost gospel” theory, referred by historians as “Q”, has waned. There’s just too many unknowns to say anything definitive about it. But the most widely accepted theory is the “two source solution” to the “synoptic problem”: where Matthew and Luke relied on two sources, Mark and “Q”, to compose their gospels. McDonald’s “Q+\Papias Hypothesis” muddies the waters a bit (and is WAY too complicated to go into detail here), but it has been positively received, though not widely accepted.

But that’s not what makes McDonald controversial. He has argued, at times vehemently, that the gospels…most notably Mark…are heavily influenced by Homer. And I must admit, I find that some of his explanations stretch credulity. BUT, McDonald poses an interesting question and solution: no serious academic would mistake the gospels as accurate history even if there are REAL historical kernels contained within them. So where did Mark and others find the inspiration to rearrange the story to fit their needs? Homer seems as good of a candidate as any given his wide influence over the Greek-speaking world. If Mark was written for a Gentile audience, it would make sense to add themes and motifs that are recognizable to the reader/listener.

So while I might not find McDonald’s specific examples all that convincing, I think he’s touching on something important here. As he explained, if we can identify these Homeric influences, it adds another layer that can be stripped away from the text. In doing so, we come closer to what this “Q source” looked like, and as a result, we have a much greater understanding of the historical Jesus (at least in theory).