Homer's Heroes in Nolan's Epic
👤講者：李語堂 (中央研究院歐美研究所助研究員)
👤主持人：周序樺 (中央研究院歐美研究所副研究員)
📅時間：115年9月3日 (星期四) 上午11: 30
📍地點：中央研究院歐美研究所一樓會議室
🧾摘要：This talk examines Christopher Nolan’s recent cinematic adaptation of the Homeric Odyssey. Through a comparison of the film with the original poem, I argue that Nolan’s adaptation is not so much a representation of Homeric myth as it is a representation of American ambivalence toward the heritage of ancient Greece. I develop the concept of American ambivalence first by considering the casting and the choices made with regard to speech and dialogue, and then by considering Nolan’s portrayal of Odysseus’ guilt about the Greek victory in the Trojan War. Nolan’s Odysseus is not straightforwardly a hero or a villain: he is a morally tainted protagonist who finds redemption within certain limits. The central theme of the film is the tension between Odysseus’ duty and his belief in his own moral worth, which becomes a critical commentary on ancient Greece as a whole through the characters’ recurring references to “civilization” and its eventual downfall. I examine how the theme of moral transgression is represented visually through the portrayal of food and feeding. I also examine the environmental contrast between land as a site of moral transgression and water as a site of punishment and atonement; this reference to water as a sign of moral degradation becomes especially pointed through the film’s references to the “people from the sea,” who are eventually revealed to be Greeks who have abandoned their moral code. These symbols have Homeric antecedents but are developed consistently in ways that depart significantly from the original poem, marking a distinctive interpretation that Nolan adopts toward the legend of Odysseus and his return to Ithaca from the Trojan War.