Səhnə Arxası

Spoiler alert! Odysseus will make it home in the end. (If anyone in the 21st century gets a spoiler about the Odyssey, I think that's on them.)

From the first minutes, I too approached it conservatively. What are these costumes? What is this cast? Why is an Indian actor playing a Greek? Matt Damon as Odysseus?! How much more money is Hollywood going to spend bringing this rascal home?!

I got so worked up, as if Homer were my Dede Korkut and the Iliad and the Odyssey were his Book. Then I thought: why are you so protective of Greek culture?! Who are you, anyway?! And only later did I remember that I haven't even read the Iliad or the Odyssey — I've only seen them in films.

After that I started watching the film calmly and fell under its spell. Before I knew it, the film was over. And I'm sad. The music won't leave my head. And the feelings the film left behind won't leave my soul...

There are plenty of people who didn't like the film. Most of them say it strays far from the original text. But I don't think the film ever claimed to be faithful. The international cast is also part of the director's decision. Because the film is not about Ancient Greece — it is a screen interpretation of a Greek myth that has passed through every era and reached our time. Put modern military uniforms on those characters and they become American soldiers returning from Iraq. Maybe the lotus that Odysseus ate for seven years, the one that made him forget his past, was an antidepressant. How can we know that his torments weren't the post-traumatic stress disorder people live with after war?!

That is the power of myths: they can belong to every time and every people. The Trojan Horse is perhaps humanity's first great trick and betrayal. The moment the strategy of using other people's faith to kill them was born. Back then people broke Zeus's law of hospitality. From that day on, neither the house you visit nor the guest who comes was considered sacred. After the Trojan War, a dark age began in Greek history. People realized that this could be done. And a great civilization began to fall apart. Writing disappeared. The dark age lasted until Homer wrote the Odyssey. It took five centuries!

Even now, people build such strategies to destroy other people. Even now, "Trojan horses" are built to win wars. Somewhere in the world, some other Odysseus is trying to get home from war. Maybe a new Dark Age is beginning in human history. Time will tell. Nolan's film was about that too, I think...