Cam: 00:00

Thanks for listening to Have Toga, Will Travel. This is just a quick note that today’s episode contains some references to murder and sexual assault, and may not be appropriate for all listeners.

Emily: 00:22

Hello. Welcome to Have Toga Will Travel, a podcast exploring the Mediterranean world, ancient and modern, through the eyes of two former classics professors. I'm Emily.

Cam: 00:32

I'm Cam.

Emily: 00:33

And we're your hosts.

Cam: 00:34

And today we're going to talk a little bit about "The Return," a 2024 movie directed by Uberto Pasolini, starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, which is essentially an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey.

Emily: 00:47

So before we start, we feel like we should talk a little bit about what we mean by adaptation and what we look for in looking at adaptations of ancient stories. And if you're coming into this thinking you're going to get some sort of like point for point critique about every plot point, whether it's there or not, or done right, this is not the episode for you.

Cam: 01:08

No, that's not what adaptation is about. Adaptation is about taking a source material and striking a balance between being faithful to that source material, but also building on it in interesting and significant new ways as you create a piece of art that can stand in its own right.

Emily: 01:26

Yeah. And one of the other things that we're dealing with here is that we're moving genres, right, from a written genre of epic to a performative genre that is film. And so that's also going to necessitate changes in how the story is presented, how the story is understood. We don't have the third person narrator who can sort of voice over everything like you can in the epic. And, you know, this idea of adaptation as doing something interesting with the story is not unfamiliar to the ancient world. This is something they did as well with their storytelling. Greek tragedy does this as just a fundamental element of the genre. And so for me, you know, what I'm looking for in something like this is do you understand like the deep fundamental issues at play in the story? And are you doing something interesting with it?

Cam: 02:20

Yeah, that's a good metric.

Emily: 02:21

Yeah.

Cam: 02:22

So, I think that we should probably start with a summary of the Odyssey. And let me just set the stage before we get to the summary itself by saying that traditionally, the Odyssey, Homer's poem, is divided into 24 books, each of which are about 800 lines long.

Emily: 02:39

And I will say that if you read this in school and in an abridged version, you really didn't get a full picture of what the Odyssey is. So one thing that surprises people is the first four books of the Odyssey, they're sometimes called the Telemachy, don't start with Odysseus. They actually start on Ithaca, which is where Odysseus is from. And they start with basically what the situation is on Ithaca after Odysseus has been gone for 20 years, right? L eft for the Trojan War. Trojan War lasted 10 years, and Odysseus has been gone an extra 10 past that. And so when we open on Ithaca, we've got his wife, Penelope, his son, Telemachus, and their home has basically been invaded by suitors for Penelope's hand because everyone assumes that Odysseus is dead. And so we get a real picture of what's going on there in Ithaca. And then Telemachus, who was an infant when his father left, goes out on a journey to try to figure out what's happened to his father. And so he goes and visits, in particular, Menelaus and Helen, so other people who were there at Troy with his dad, to see if anyone knows what's happened. Interesting point, this is where in the Odyssey, we actually get the narrative of the Trojan horse. Menelaus and Helen both tell the story of the Trojan horse to Telemachus. And so that's what the first four books are all about.

Cam: 04:02

After those four books, we move into another section, roughly books five through eight. In book five, we open on Odysseus, who has essentially been kept captive for a while by the nymph Calypso, who wants to keep him there as her lover.

Emily: 04:17

Yeah, eight years he's been there.

Cam: 04:19

Eight years, a long time. Finally, however, the gods tell Calypso that it's time to let Odysseus go. So she helps him put together a raft, sets him adrift, and after a harrowing few days at sea and a shipwreck, he washes up, barely alive, on the island of the Phaeacians.

Emily: 04:39

Yeah. And we get some initial interactions there. And then we move into the, I guess, the third section of the Odyssey, books 9 through 12. And this is really the part that everyone knows and people tend to think of, oh, this is the Odyssey. This is what the Odyssey is about. So while Odysseus is there in the land of the Phaeacians, Odysseus narrates his travels after leaving Troy. Really, it only comprises a few books out of the much larger poem. But this is where we get, you know, the lotus eaters and Polyphemus and the Lystragonians and the cattle of the sun and like all of this. And Odysseus, what he basically does is narrate from his departure from Troy up until his arrival at Calypso's Island. And in the course of these travels, he has lost all of his ships and all of his men. And if we can take the Iliad as a source here, he would have started off with 12 ships. So he's lost a lot of men, and he is the only one left. And that's where all of the sort of adventure parts of the Odyssey really happen is in that narrative. So it's not even part of the action, it's told as like backstory.

Cam: 05:51

That gets us to the beginning of book 13. The Phaeacians help Odysseus return to his home country, the island of Ithaca, and the remainder of the poem, books 13 to 24, revolve around his attempt to reintegrate himself into the life of the island of Ithaca. This is complicated because once again, suitors have invaded the island looking to marry Penelope, and Odysseus has to find a way to gather intelligence about what's going on and to formulate a plan for dealing with them. He disguises himself as a beggar, feels out potential allies, including his son Telemachus, to whom he reveals his identity fairly early on, infiltrates his household to gain some sense of what the suitors have been up to, and eventually plots the murder of the suitors before he is reunited with Penelope. And then the poem ends when the family members of the suitors threaten to take their vengeance against Odysseus for what they regard as the murder of their family members, and further fighting is stopped only by the intervention of the goddess Athena.

Emily: 06:56

So the movie The Return is really adapting the second half of the Odyssey, right? Odysseus' arrival at Ithaca and the subsequent actions there. There are some nods in the movie to earlier parts of the story. So we get a hint at the Telemachy. There is a moment where Telemachus says, I'm going to go find out information about my father. He leaves, he comes back, but we get nothing in the film about what's happened while he was gone. And we get some throwaway references to the adventures in ways that are really there for people who know the story. So there's a moment where the swineherd is feeding the pigs and makes a comment of like, well, we haven't been turned into animals yet, a nod to Odysseus' experiences with the witch Circe, who turns all of his men into pigs at one point in his adventures. There's a moment where, I believe it's Telemachus asks Odysseus, well, who are you? And he just says, I'm nobody, which is a nod to the story of Polyphemus when Polyphemus asks Odysseus for his name, and he says, I am no one. And then there's also some rumor that has gotten back to Ithaca about what Odysseus has been doing. And the rumor is that basically he's like shacked up with some woman and has abandoned Penelope, which of course is a nod to his, I guess, forced stay on Calypso's island. But there's no mention of these, like the stories per se, you just get this idea that Odysseus has just had this very painful journey, and he doesn't really talk about it. And when he shows up on Ithaca, they've really sort of transposed his arrival at Phaeacia in the poem to Ithaca. So he washes up naked, shipwrecked, looking really rough on Ithaca, which is very different from how he shows up in Ithaca in the poem itself.

Cam: 08:50

At the same time, the film also includes a lot of familiar beats from the second half of the Odyssey as it tells the part of the story in which it's interested. First and foremost, in the film, as in the poem, Odysseus adopts disguises as a matter of course.

Emily: 09:07

And a disguise as a beggar at that.

Cam: 09:09

Yes. And he'll spend much of the film concealing his identity from the other characters on the island. Secondly, the film focuses heavily on his relationship with Eumaeus, the swineherd. This is the first person Odysseus encounters in the film when he returns to Ithaca. Eumaeus basically takes him into his home and nurses him back to health after the shipwreck. And as the film progresses, Eumaeus becomes one of Odysseus' key allies.

Emily: 09:38

Which is also true in the poem. We also get the recognition moments from the poem that are key. So the recognition by his old nurse, Eurycleia, who recognizes the scar on his leg from an old accident. And then the one that gets me every time. And if you're a dog person, you're going to feel it too. when his old hunting dog, who's been forlorn without Odysseus there, still alive, recognizes Odysseus and is arguably the first being to recognize Odysseus on the island, recognizes his old master and then promptly dies. And it makes me cry in the poem and it makes me cry in the movie too. But it was well done. So we get those sort of recognition scenes from poem in the film.

Cam: 10:30

And finally, there are a number of important moments that take place within the house of Odysseus in the poem that are echoed clearly in the film. First, one of the themes that runs throughout the film is Penelope's efforts to delay any decision she has to make about the suitors by telling them that she'll only make that decision once she's finished weaving a funeral shroud for Odysseus' father, Laertes, who is an old, ailing man. Throughout the film, there are scenes of her weaving and then unweaving the shroud at night when nobody is watching in order to buy herself more time. Second, the climax of the film, like the climax of the poem, revolves around a competition staged by Penelope to select a new husband based on who can draw and shoot Odysseus's bow. And third, of course—spoiler alert—

Emily: 11:23

Yeah, we should have said that earlier. Spoiler alert for this whole movie.

Cam: 11:26

Spoiler alerts aplenty. Third, the film really culminates with Odysseus's revenge as he and his helpers essentially murder the suitors who have been harassing Penelope and other residents of the island in the great hall of Odysseus's palace.

Emily: 11:41

And finally, we get this sort of key sort of recognition moment after the suitors are dead around the bed of Odysseus and Penelope and what the real bed of Odysseus and Penelope is. And it's done a little differently in the film from the poem, but the key sort of points is there is that Odysseus recognizes the bed that Penelope directs him to is not actually their marital bed. So we have these familiar beats, but we also have some divergences, if we want to call it that, from the Odyssey. And maybe not divergences, maybe it's a particular focus that is somewhat different. And that the film is really focused on the human story and on the characters of the story. And so one thing that's significantly missing is any mention of the gods as active characters in the world of these people. And if you've read the Odyssey, you know that Athena was very particularly hands-on in Odysseus's life and in this poem, a nd she is there present a lot in the poem. And that is something that is missing. But I think it's not a detriment to the film, because it is really focused on the people, and the characters, and exploring the characters, and elaborating on them in interesting ways. And so we're going to turn to some of the key characters in the film to sort of think through more how the film is treating them and thinking about them.

Cam: 13:19

So let's start with the titular character of the poem, Odysseus, played in the film by Ralph Fiennes.

Emily: 13:25

And wow, I mean, okay, Ralph Fiennes looks real rough. He clearly got into good shape, but you believe that he is someone who has been living a fairly difficult life for many years.

Cam: 13:31

Yeah, they've done a good job making him look like a really sinewy old sailor.

Emily: 13:46

Yeah.

Cam: 13:47

The main choice, though, that the film makes is to reimagine fundamental elements of Odysseus' character. In the poem, Odysseus is defined by two attributes. First, he's someone who has suffered much, and second, he's clever. He possesses what the ancient Greeks call metis, cleverness. The film really leans into Odysseus as a character who has suffered, although it imagines that suffering in a slightly different way than does the poem. One aspect of that suffering is the fact that Odysseus has lost all his friends. He set sail for Troy with 12 ships full of the young men of Ithaca who accompanied him to war, and he's the only person who comes back. That element is very, very strong in the poem and in the film. And there are conversations early on when characters in Ithaca express their grief about the fact that no one has come home and Odysseus has to confront that grief.

Emily: 14:44

Yeah.

Cam: 14:46

The film also, however, imagines that Odysseus is suffering because of what he's done.

Emily: 14:51

The violence.

Cam: 14:52

The violence he's performed against other people. This is a theme that is, again, introduced fairly early on as Odysseus, still disguising his identity, has a conversation with Eumaeus and two other herdsmen in their hut late one evening around the fire. One of the characters, a young herdsman named Philoetius, believing Odysseus to be just a veteran of the war who was washed up on the shores of Ithaca, is really interested in hearing stories of adventure and glory, and how the Greeks won the Trojan War. What he gets instead is a haggard, pained response from Odysseus, who describes the suffering of the Trojans in the final years of the war. He describes a city in which there's very little food. The people are desperate for peace. And then he describes how Odysseus' trick with the Trojan horse basically brought about the death of the city. As Odysseus phrases it, we burned the city to the ground and then we drowned the flames in blood.

Emily: 15:57

Yeah.

Cam: 15:58

And as he tells this story, the camera lingers on his face and you can see that the character is carrying the weight of those actions.

Emily: 16:05

Yeah. And then we'll say that's just a thing that film does a lot is really focusing on the actors faces, particularly Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche to convey a lot of subtext. And they do phenomenal jobs like as actors in those moments.

Cam: 16:21

Yeah. The acting is stellar, especially in this scene where, you know, again, the actors are really inhabiting these characters in ways that convey what they're thinking on their faces.

Emily: 16:32

Yeah.

Cam

16:32

So you can watch Philoetius in particular, who's excited and asking questions like, well, you know, what happened with the Trojan horse? And as he hears Odysseus' story and the pain in Odysseus' voice, you see Philoetius' face change.

Emily: 16:46

Yeah.

Cam: 16:47

He's really not sure how to process what it is that he's hearing.

Emily: 16:49

Yeah. And I think this taps into a larger theme as well of the film, which it really is, I think, interested in the effects of violence. And not just on people who are mistreated, who are recipients of the violence, but people who perpetrate it. And, you know, we perpetrate violence at what cost to ourselves, I think is one of the big questions the film is asking, through the character of Odysseus in particular, but also his interactions with others.

Cam: 17:18

Yes.

Emily: 17:19

Yeah. So next we should talk about Penelope, Odysseus's wife. And the film, which I will say I love the choices it makes with Penelope, partly because it coincides with my own reading of the Odyssey. But it really does lean into a depiction of her that is just as clever as Odysseus. And in particular, we talked about the ruse of the weaving. And I will just say those scenes were just entrancing to watch, just watch Juliette Binoche weave. Just the way that she does it is just really compelling. And you can also tell that Juliette Binoche went and learned something about weaving convincingly. And then when she rips it out, like it's just, it's such a moment the film keeps coming back to, which is, I think, key for Penelope's character. And it's just handled so well in the movie. And they use a red thread for the thread on the loom. And so it adds a real visual intensity to those scenes as well. But the other moment where Penelope's cleverness comes out is the first scene that she and Odysseus have together. When he is still in disguise, he's still pretending to be this beggar. And in the poem, this scene is a little ambiguous. And I've had many a discussion with students about, does Penelope recognize him? Does she not? Is she playing along? Is she not? And, you know, in the text, you can argue it both ways. It's ambiguous. I tend to come down on the side, Penelope knows exactly who he is because she's as clever as he is. And the film clearly takes that position. You see her recognize him. And this is, again, one of those brilliant moments where it's just a hold on the actress's face. And you watch the thoughts go across her brain of realizing who it is, realizing he's still in disguise, being kind of ticked off at him for it too. And then they have this whole conversation where the pretense is that she doesn't know who he is, even though she knows who he is, and he knows that she knows who he is, but they're not admitting it yet to each other. They're doing this kind of dance and it's just brilliant. I don't know that I can imagine a depiction of that scene that would be more satisfying to watch.

Cam: 19:33

Yeah, it's a really interesting scene because among other things, Penelope is clearly angry.

Emily: 19:38

Well, I would be too.

Cam: 19:40

And she expresses that anger in ways that amplify some of the concerns that are developed in earlier conversations between Odysseus and the other characters. One of the things she shouts out quite angrily is, why do men go to war? Why aren't they satisfied at home? Why do they rape people? Why do they murder women and children? And Odysseus has no response. He just sort of stands there. He won't even look at her. He's got a posture that indicates that he's really, really having a hard time with this conversation. And then she poses a direct question, right? Did my husband rape? Did my husband murder women and children? And people who have read the Odyssey can, of course, answer that question. Yes, of course he did. But again, Odysseus just can't answer the question.

Emily: 20:26

Which is all the answer Penelope needs to know what the answer is.

Cam: 20:29

Exactly.

Emily: 20:30

Yeah. And in some ways, Penelope uses those confrontational questions as a chance to kind of vent at him without venting at him. And so I think it speaks to her control in that moment. Because she doesn't just let him have it and she doesn't reveal that she knows. And I just think it speaks to the larger cleverness of the character. And of course, this leads into this contest with the bow that Penelope sets up. Is she setting up the contest of the bow because she knows it's Odysseus and the only person who can pull off this trick is Odysseus? And so she's doing this to get him to reveal himself. And in the film, that's clearly what she's doing. So you get this very active, clever Penelope, who's also weighed down by her grief, her worries, her fight to kind of keep the household together and to not give in to the suitors. And it's a really just wonderful portrayal of that character, I think. I really liked it.

Cam: 21:38

Finally, that brings us to the character Antinoos, the primary antagonist in the film.

Emily: 21:44

Yeah, the leader of the suitors, kind of.

Cam: 21:46

This is where we see the strongest divergences between the film and the poem. In the film, Antinoos is a pretty nuanced character. He has a lot of similarities to Odysseus himself. Like Odysseus, he's clever. Like Odysseus, he's a bit of a schemer. And that depiction of Antinoos as someone clever sets him up as a potential partner for Penelope.

Emily: 22:13

Yeah, you get this idea in the film that he actually cares about Penelope, unlike the other suitors, and that's expressed pretty explicitly. And he's also the only suitor you see Penelope actually have real conversations with. And so there is a sense that's built there that they might actually be compatible, you know, in a different world at a different time and a different place, right? Whereas in the poem, you know, he's kind of functionally indistinguishable from all the other suitors other than that he's their leader.

Cam: 22:43

Right. They're all there to eat up Odysseus' food, drink all of Odysseus' wine, and eventually, hopefully, one of them will take away Penelope. And Antinoos in the film is definitely more complex than that. And I think that one of the effects of characterizing him in this way really is to ensure that the audience doesn't see the suitors entirely as one-note villains.

Emily: 23:06

Yeah.

Cam: 23:06

But to actually see that there is some identifiable motivation behind at least Antinuos' actions rather than just, hey, let's eat all of Odysseus' food and drink all of Odysseus' wine.

Emily: 23:16

And abuse all of Odysseus' people.

Cam: 23:18

And abuse all of Odysseus' slaves, yes.

Emily: 23:20

Yeah. I mean, I will say, like, we found this character so compelling to watch, and it was a really unexpected thing in the film, obviously. And I don't know that we fully understand the reasons the film made for the divergence. Like, we've offered some, but it's possible there's more going on there. Like, it's one of the issues that we've wrestled with, of like, why do this with Antinoos? You know, what's going on? What are they trying to do?

Cam: 23:42

That's true. But at the end of the day, you know, you end up with a character that actually generates some—sympathy might be too strong a word, but...

Emily: 23:50

Yeah, because he's still violent. He's not like a good person. But then again, neither is Odysseus.

Cam: 23:55

Right, exactly. And you understand that.

Emily: 23:58

Yeah.

Cam: 23:58

Right, that parallel between the two men, you understand a little bit of what makes Antinoos tick. And in large part, you know, the script deserves a lot of credit for that. But so does the actor Marwan Kanzari, who manages to hold his own against two other really phenomenally talented actors in Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.

Emily: 24:16

Yeah, yeah. It was one of those performances where you're like, I don't know who this person is and I want to go look up other things that he's done so I can go watch it. It was that kind of performance, for sure. And so all of these choices about the characters that the film makes really do pay off in the film's climax. So in the climax, Penelope has set up this contest with the bow. You've got Odysseus's bow. She says, I will marry whoever can string this bow and shoot it through 12 holes in 12 axe heads had been set up in a line. And this was like a trick Odysseus could do. And whoever can do this, I will marry. And she kind of throws in some, you know, you don't want to be any less worthy a man for me than my previous husband was, which is why I'm going to make you do this, right, to demonstrate that you are worthy of marrying Odysseus's wife. And what happens, people try, people fail, like most people can't even string the bow. And then Odysseus, still in disguise, steps up to take his turn and is able to string the bow and shoot it through the axe heads. And lo and behold, Odysseus is revealed, more or less. Not all the characters quite pick up that it's him, but it becomes obvious pretty quickly.

Cam: 25:33

And that gets us to a really powerful, intense scene in which Odysseus and his helpers essentially kill all of the suitors. It's a scene that's pretty difficult to watch.

Emily: 25:44

Yeah.

Cam: 25:44

Because it makes it clear that Odysseus, even though he labors under this trauma that he suffers because of the violence he's dealt out in the past, is still capable of delivering really ferocious violence in the present. The scene really dramatizes the impact of dealing out that violence on the suitors and on Odysseus and his helpers. So there are a number of camera angles that show us the suitors' faces as they're being killed. And on several of the suitors' faces, you can see terror, you can see pain. There are moments when the camera lingers on Odysseus' face as he's killing the suitors, especially one moment where after the initial fight is over, he executes one of them in more or less cold blood by cutting his throat. And there too, the camera lingers not just on the suitor's face and you see the fear, but the camera also shows us Odysseus's face as he delivers the killing blow. And Ralph Fiennes gives Odysseus a really interesting expression. It's an expression that conveys complex emotions. He's resigned. He's exhausted. He doesn't feel great about what he's doing, but he's doing it anyway.

Emily: 26:53

Yeah.

Cam: 26:53

And it really culminates with his decision to end the life of a suitor who is wounded and in pain. The wounded suitor literally says, please kill me. And Odysseus does. And once again, the camera shows his expression as he does this. And it also pans over to Eumaeus and Philoetius, who really don't know how to handle this moment

Emily: 27:13

Yeah.

Cam: 27:14

And can't even bear to watch, essentially, as Odysseus finishes off somebody who's already pretty seriously wounded and is likely to die.

Emily: 27:21

Yeah. And I will say, throughout this whole scene, Odysseus does not say a word. And there's no glory in this violence. It is just violence. And that's what makes it really hard to watch. The way it's shot is it wants the audience to feel the weight of that violence. There isn't swelling music or anything cartoonish. It's really visceral.

Cam: 27:49

Yeah. It's quick. It's visceral.

Emily: 27:51

It's pitiless.

Cam: 27:52

It's pitiless and it's bloody.

Emily: 27:53

Yeah. And now an interesting moment in this scene, right, is that in the poem, like Antinoos is like the first person to get killed. But in the film, they save him for the end. And because of the way we've seen his character presented, this is much more interesting. And earlier in the film, Antinous had had the line, either way, I know I'm going to die on this island. Like, whatever happens, I'm never leaving here alive. And that, of course, sort of comes true in this final moment. But instead of Odysseus killing Antinoos, it's actually Telemachus who kills him. And Antinoos doesn't resist at all. He knows what's coming and he resigns himself to his fate and exposes his neck for Telemachus to kill him.

Cam: 28:46

Yeah, it's an interesting scene. And the interest in Antinoos that the audience has built up just by watching his decisions and watching Marwan Kanzari's performance really complicates the violence, I think, for the audience. As does the reaction of other characters on screen, especially Penelope, who is there to watch Telemachus kill Antinoos, and who tries to prevent it basically by screaming out no, just as Telemachus is raising his arm to deliver the killing blow.

Emily: 29:16

And like Telemachus's actions here, given the larger themes of the film of what does violence do to us and what does it mean to perpetuate violence, this moment where he kills Antinoos arguably sort of marks this like transition to adulthood, that part of what that transition for Telemachus means is understanding the nature of violence and being able to engage in it in the way that his father does.

Cam: 29:40

Which is not necessarily entirely a good thing, right?

Emily: 29:45

No. No, that this is complicated and dark and heavy. And we can call back to the scene that you mentioned earlier in the hut with Philoetius, right? The sort of youthful vision of war and violence as adventure and excitement and having to understand what the reality of that is like is part of becoming an adult in this world.

Cam: 30:06

Yeah. And it's striking here that, you know, one of the characters who has been agitating for violence throughout much of the movie, Eumaeus, who has left no doubt in Odysseus' mind or in the audience's mind that he thinks the suitors need to be killed, is himself really disturbed by what he's witnessing.

Emily: 30:23

Yeah.

Cam: 30:24

I mean, it's clear that Penelope knows that performing violence against other people comes with a cost.

Emily: 30:30

Yeah.

Cam: 30:30

Right. And that's why she is so horrified to see Telemachus do this.

Emily: 30:36

To see her son have to take that step.

Cam: 30:37

Right.

Emily: 30:38

Yeah.

Cam: 30:38

Especially since Antinoos isn't actually offering any resistance, and it really is an execution.

Emily: 30:44

Yeah. Yeah. That whole scene is just hard to watch. And this brings us to the ending of the film. You know, we mentioned earlier how the poem ends. This film doesn't end like that. It doesn't end with the suitors' families confronting Odysseus. We get sort of two moments. So one is we get the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope. And, you know, we get the thing with the bed I mentioned earlier. But what that transitions to is Odysseus is still covered in blood from the suitors. Ralph Fiennes spent a lot of time covered in blood. And Penelope helps wash him, wash the blood off of him. And you get this really touching moment with a couple where he's basically asking if she can ever forgive what he's done over the last 20 years. And she reassures him, you know, we will remember together and then we will forget together. And the camera sort of focuses on the blood that's washing off of him in the water as it's diluted by the water. And it's really beautiful in terms of thinking about this couple trying to find their ways back to each other. Like, how are they going to rebuild their relationship? And then on the other side, the last moment we get is actually Telemachus, who, after everything that's happened, decides that he needs to go off and figure out who he is as an adult now. And so we get this scene of a ship sort of sailing off into the horizon, which is presumably Telemachus going off on this journey to understand himself as an adult now, given everything that he's done.

Cam: 32:25

Yeah, it seems linked in some way to the fact that he kills Antinoos.

Emily: 32:29

Yeah.

Cam: 32:29

That seems to be the moment that precipitates the realization that Telemachus has to do some self-exploration.

Emily: 32:35

And this does have nods to the poem because in the Telemachy, you know, we mentioned he goes off on this journey to learn about his father. And that journey is in many ways cast as this moment that marks a transition to adulthood for Telemachus. He has that moment in the film where he goes off on the journey, but it's not marked in the same way. And it's really this moment here at the end where Telemachus has to go away to continue that journey into adulthood and understand, yeah, what the violence he's just committed means. So that's our overview of the film. Do you have any final thoughts, things you want to mention about the film that we haven't talked about?

Cam: 33:17

I guess it's worth mentioning the cinematography. Neither one of us is a film critic.

Emily: 33:22

No.

Cam: 33:22

So, you know, I don't have much to say about it. But I will note that much of the film was actually shot on Corfu. It's one of the Ionian islands off the western coast of the Greek mainland, as is Ithaca, modern Ithaki. And as a result, the cinematography really captures the feel of Greek islands in that part of the world. In particular, the sounds are just spot on.

Emily: 33:50

Yeah.

Cam: 33:50

The sound of the insects, the sound of the wind.

Emily: 33:53

Yeah.

Cam: 33:54

Which arguably are direct references to a very famous film by Cacoyannis, Iphigenia.

Emily: 34:01

Yeah. And that film also captures that soundscape is really important to the movie. Yeah. And I have no doubt Pasolini has watched Cacoyannis' films. I would put money on that. You watch it and you're like, I have no doubts that I'm seeing Greece and hearing Greece in these moments.

Cam: 34:18

Anything you think we should add to what we said already?

Emily: 34:22

Well, I really enjoyed this movie.

Cam: 34:24

Right. I'd say two thumbs up, except I think that's probably copyrighted.

Emily: 34:28

I don't know! I really enjoyed this movie. I loved that this movie took on a part of the Odyssey that people don't really think about much, but is actually in some ways the more important part of the poem. I think they did a really incredible job adapting it, even with some of the changes. And, you know, it's not a movie that a lot of people had heard of. And I think that's just a shame because I think it's a great movie and it's got some outstanding performances. And, you know, it's not it's not a movie you can just sit down to watch any day of the week because it is heavy and it is a lot, but it's so good.

Cam: 35:06

Right. And we're going to have to revisit it in about a year anyway when the Christopher Nolan Odyssey is released. We'll have to have a discussion about which film is the best adaptation of the Odyssey, Christopher Nolan's film, this film, or Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Emily: 35:21

Oh Brother—you know that I have a soft spot for Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?!

Cam: 35:27

I do, yes. Anyway we should probably wrap this up.

Emily: 35:31

Yeah, that's all for us from today. Next time we are going to be moving to rome. We've been sitting in the Greek world for a bit, we're going to move to Rome and next time is going to be part one of a two-part discussion on gladiatorial games and the Colosseum. So, I'm Emily.

Cam: 35:48

I'm Cam.

Emily: 35:49

And this has been Have Toga, Will Travel. Subscribe to our show wherever you get your favorite podcasts and follow us at havetogawilltravel.com or on all the socials. And if you liked this episode, tell a friend about us.

Cam: 36:03

Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you next time.

Emily: 36:05

Yep. Bye, y'all.