The Odyssey, but not epic poetry

The question of adaptation has been an open one in culture since people began doing them in other media, as it were. Just like the fact that sex wasn't invented in 1968, this is not a 20th century or now 21st century phenomenon. The Odyssey, the epic poem ascribed to Homer, was most likely just a written rendition of what had been oral tradition for many years or even centuries before the point where he is acknowledged to have written it (~8th century BCE.) But legends of this sort have been the subject of books, plays, operas (one of my favorite moments in Amadeus refers to this quandary, when Wolfgang argues against constantly using the same, old subjects) and more recently, film and TV. No one is ever going to get it "right" because there is no "right." The best creators understand that this is their world and welcome to it and I'm assuming that's what motivated writer/director Christopher Nolan in the latest film adaptation of The Odyssey.

Now, right up front, one has to acknowledge that even in a three hour film, which this almost is, there's almost no way to reasonably encapsulate all 24 books of the original poem, so things are going to be left out. Nolan does follow some of the same narrative pattern of the poem by first introducing Odysseus (Matt Damon) already living with the nymph, Calypso (Charlize Theron) and trying to remember everything he went through after he and his followers left Troy. To his extreme credit, he also weaves in a few more elements that would likely have been excluded, such as the eating of the lotus flower causing Odysseus' lack of memory (a different adventure in the poem) and the inclusion of the Laestrygonians destroying most of the expedition; a moment that most have likely never heard of if they hadn't read the original story. I also appreciate that he weaves in actual history to the proceedings, as one of the concerns of the time is the encroachment of the Sea Peoples, who are cited in the historical record as the most likely primary cause of the collapse of much of civilization after the Bronze Age (~12th century BCE.) So there's enough here to make an epic story. But I'm not sure there's enough to make an epic film. The main theme that Nolan operates from is the actual desire of Odysseus to forget what he has done and what kind of person it makes him. In doing so, it ascribes a very modern perspective to a very old story. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, intrinsically. Again, this is Nolan's interpretation and the theme that he assigns to the protagonist is a very understandable and, indeed, laudable one. It's not at all in tune with the poem, given that Odysseus and his crew raid the Cicones, allies of the Trojans, on the first step of their journey home and promptly sack their town, slaughter all of the men and sail off with the town's money and all of their women to be slaves of one kind or another. This is how it was done in 750 BCE.

Nolan also focused more on the case of the suitors than the poem does. That story is prominent in the poem, but not to the extent that it's the focus around which the story revolves. We spent almost as much time with Telemachus (Tom Holland) and Eumaeus (John Leguizamo) as we did with Odysseus. I realize that's an attempt to not only give an emotional attachment for a modern audience to revolve around but also to give some agency to Penelope (Anne Hathaway) who otherwise has comparatively little in the poem, in contrast to other women like Calypso and Circe (Samantha Morton.) If Odysseus is not only trying to get home for 20 years but is in conflict with himself over whether he even wants to make that attempt, it's nice to know something about the people he's going home to. But that focus on the suitors also meant that some of the other stories were kind of given short shrift. The most notable is the encounter with the cyclops, Polyphemus. In the poem, Polyphemus speaks normally as he's eating Odysseus' men and Odysseus eventually gets him drunk to get him to talk to them as humans, rather than dinner. That's the point where he falls asleep and they blind him in order to escape. But the whole point of that encounter is that Polyphemus, as a host, violates Zeus' law which is supposed to be emblematic of the collapse of proper society and was a main theme of the film. Instead, it's just a cyclops who looks more like a mutant derivation than an entire race of them (the island on which they land in the poem is inhabited by many of them) and the whole episode becomes just a run-in with a monster which, again, minimizes it and denies another opportunity to point out one of the central themes of the story.

Another of those themes was the rejection of divinity. Unlike in the poem, Odysseus frequently questions any kind of faith in the gods. That walks hand in hand with the perspective of a man who rejects the 10-year-war and wholesale slaughter that he's just been a part of, because why would the gods bless something like that? The fact that Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter to make sure they had the favor of the winds is just reinforcement of that question. In that respect, I appreciate not only the central thrust of that idea but also that all of "the gods", with one exception, were left to appear as they were to the ancient Greeks: as forces of nature. "Zeus" was the crack of thunder. "Poseidon" was rough seas. Yes, "the gods" might have been there and Poseidon might have made it difficult for them to return because of what they'd done to Polyphemus (one of his many sons) but there was no way to verify that in the same way there's no way to verify the influence of any kind of divinity. That's what faith (or lack thereof) is and Odysseus was a man who had lost it, in more ways than one. The lone exception was Athena (Zendaya) who appears multiple times to simply ask the questions that bring the story along. I thought that was smart and it follows with Athena being one of the more human-approachable of the Olympians in many of the myths (the other one who has a significant role in the poem is Hermes, alas.) It's just too bad that it didn't transition from those elegant themes into the dialogue.

Straight up, the dialogue was weak. Most of it was boilerplate and overly obvious. If you had to fill the dialogue balloons of your average adventure story, these lines would've fit right in with little effort. I can't think of a single memorable line from the film, which is disappointing, especially considering the source material (i.e. epic poem.) Likewise, none of the performances really stood out to me except the two pig people: Leguizamo as the earnest pigherd and Morton as the witch who sees people for what they truly are. Given the opportunity to make Circe the villainess that many have presented her as over the centuries, Nolan stuck to the poem and made her a far more understandable and sympathetic character (She and Odysseus become lovers and live together for a year in the poem...) But, unfortunately, as with the rest, none of Morton's lines really stick out to deliver that. It was more about her ability to deliver through acting; again, to her credit. On a technical level, it's perhaps fortunate that none of the dialogue was that great, since a fair amount of it gets lost in the SFX noise. It might have been just a product of the sound system at the theater we were in, but I've heard other complaints about the sound mixing, as well. It's also notable that, despite the poem being replete with sex and sexual encounters, the film has none of that. That's not really surprising, as sex has never been a major driving force in Nolan's films and, again, this is his interpretation. It's just kind of funny to see such a major element of the poem become completely invisible.

In the end, it's a decent film that present an interesting moral quandary for its protagonist and one that I'd be willing to see again but one which I also think falls fairly short of most of Nolan's other achievements (Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception, even Oppenheimer.) I also appreciated some of the timing of it, not least the encounter with Scylla and Charybdis since we just finished our third chapter which revolves around namesakes of those legendary creatures. I wrote that story 15 years ago after first imagining my interpretations (ahem) of them 35 years ago because, of course, I'd read The Odyssey. I'd still recommend sitting down for three hours and watching the film, so that's my interpretation of it.

Still no story 2

So here's a great example of how attempts at storytelling (and, likely, test screenings) have evolved in the past 20 years. The Devil Wears Prada was a film based on a hit piece novel that wasn't interested in anything except presenting its subject, a thinly-disguised facsimile of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, as a bestial overlord. A limp Hollywood nod toward feminism in 2006 was tacked on at the end. As I asserted in my last post, there wasn't really a story to be told there as that wasn't the point of the novel in the first place. Two decades later, the same writer and director team (Aline Brosh McKenna and David Frankel, respectively) had either fully absorbed the transition in attitudes of criticism in the modern era or realized that without even the skeletal framework of the book they really had nothing to build a film around. Consequently, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is constructed of the most obvious and turgid of plots imaginable and it makes the film not only as predictable as the original, but also lacking even the mild moments of shock humor that emerged then. If the original was a hit piece, the sequel is about as inoffensive as anything could be and still be using the word "devil" in its title.

Word on the street is that neither Meryl Streep, reprising her role as the tyrannical editor of fictional fashion magazine Runway, Miranda Priestly, nor Anne Hathaway, likewise returning as Andy Sachs, journalist stooping once again into the world of haute couture, wanted to do a sequel. What had been said in the first film had been said and that story was finished, which is always a perspective I can find myself in alliance with. What usually draws performers back in is an attempt to say something new and/or different about their characters. That was not the case here in any way so what may have led them back is not only a pile of money but also a lack of other decent projects at the moment, if not both. But that's all speculation on things I don't know about. What I do know is that the story as presented is really just the same plot from the first film, without any of the shock value and instead attempting to fill out the stick-figure characters of that film and make Priestly more human (thus, distracting from the title as anything other than a marketing slogan) and Sachs able to stand on her own, rather than solely within the shadow of Priestly. What it doesn't do is make either of them more interesting or, once again, give any justification to their characters' regular assertions that the fashion world is crucial to the existence of modern society and thus attempt to justify Priestly's absurd behavior. That world is still shallow and self-important, which is exemplified once again by multiple sequences of characters parading past or with clothing while not advancing anything even resembling a story. The scene of Priestly, Sachs and likewise-returning Stanley Tucci as Nigel Kipling entering Milan was less a scene than a reproduction of the post-breakfast walk in Reservoir Dogs (Here's our stars, walkin', lookin' cool) except that the latter at least served as the opening credit roll.

And, again, with the plot being as predictable and formulaic as it is (Sachs once again working for Runway, Priestly once again mistreating everyone while trying to keep the magazine relevant in the world of the Internet, Kipling once again being the backstop to everyone and often to his own detriment while mild crises ensue, etc.), what it can't depart from in terms of the formula established by the first one is that a) money rules the fashion world in the same way that it does most of everything else and b) much of modern society is beholden to the largesse of ridiculously wealthy people who occasionally deign to look in on the lives of the peasants. In fact, one of the opening statements of this film is how journalism has been dying because good stories (like, say, films other than this one) aren't as important as advertising clicks. Runway finds itself in the same scenario which is a laudable statement to make. The main problem is that said scenario doesn't find resolution (aka Hollywood happy ending) in the hands of the main characters of this play, but instead the largesse of yet another billionaire. What it's saying is that we've basically returned to the 18th and 19th centuries: if you're an artist, you either find an agreeable and very wealthy patron or you're out of luck because those masses can't save you (and usually won't, anyway.) Somehow this message is delivered at the end of the film as if it's a good thing, since said wealthy patron isn't an idiot Tech Bro but instead a reasonable and intelligent woman. But that still means that culture and, thus, society in the perspective of the fashion world is completely dependent upon the rich to sustain it. That's a reality that we're all living with now and it's a message that should make everyone sigh in frustration, rather than applaud for the fact that dragon lady Priestly and somehow-still-crusading journalist Sachs have won the day at the end.

I have a hard time believing that McKenna's script was written with that in mind, which is probably just another indicator that it wasn't really written to deliver a message or tell a story, but just to provide an opening to reuse the scaffolding of the first film. Just as Sachs and her circle of friends said in the first film and repeated here: Ya gotta pay the rent, so... To Hathaway's credit, her performance here shows the maturity of the last 20 years and is a significant improvement over that first effort. But the rest of them are as one-note in this film as they were in the first and even more characters are added in to give their  own contributions to parts and lives that don't seem to serve much purpose; not least Kenneth Branagh, who plays Priestly's husband who at least doesn't serve as part of the excuse for her attitude (i.e. no one would think twice about her acting that way if she was a man) but is otherwise the complete waste of one of the better actors (and directors) of the modern era. Similarly, Patrick Brammall is the boyfriend whom Andy once again feels guilty about abandoning when there's even less reason for that role to exist, since this story isn't about her supposedly ignoring her principles to make money but embracing them to do the same thing. And Emily Blunt once again serves as the snooty foil, this time not just for Andy but for everyone, but still lacks the humor that would have made her character somewhat interesting.

So, yeah, still not my thing. It was worth the time to hang out with some new friends and talk films, though, so that's something. On that note, as you've noticed, things have been sparse around here in recent times, not least because we abandoned our Michigan Theater membership a year ago and, thus, haven't seen a whole lot of new things. So I'm going to return to some previous material in the near future (Back to the Bat, as it were) and we are at least seeing The Odyssey tomorrow, so there will be that. Hopefully the lack of material hasn't lost the few of you who still sometimes pay attention.

The Devil needs a plot

Continuing my now seemingly monthly schedule of posts (I will likely get back to Spider-Noir, but it was as uninspiring as noted), I once again was propelled by an inquiry after watching a 20-year-old film in anticipation of its just-released sequel. The film in question is The Devil Wears Prada, a David Frankel production that I had long been completely disinterested in because I knew the type of film that it was: the erroneously-named "brain candy" because it doesn't actually encourage you to use the organ in question. We sat down to watch it yesterday at a friend's place because we're planning on watching said sequel (innovatively titled "The Devil Wears Prada 2" on Monday.) In the end, my suspicions were proved accurate and the 20 year wait could have gone on much longer with no loss to be known.

The film is based on a novel by Lauren Weisberger who had once worked as a personal assistant for Vogue editor, Anna Wintour. Most people assume that the book is a roman à clef as a result and Wintour has accepted the similarity between herself and Meryl Streep's character in the film, Miranda Priestly. Priestly, the tyrannical magazine editor whose presumed focus and drive on making her magazine, Runway, the best it can be in the highly competitive fashion industry is about as stereotypical a role as I've ever seen Streep take and leaves me questioning what really interested her, not least because the rest of the story is as thin as the paper it was printed on. (This was back in 2006, when people still used paper.) To wit: Idealistic young woman looking to do "serious" work as a journalist instead demeans herself to participate in the fashion world, only to absorb all of its tenets (style over substance!), alienating her friends and lover before finally realizing that that world isn't for her. The End. Pretty bow on top included (We are talking about fashion here.) You could map out the progression of this story inside the opening five minutes of the film and precisely nothing was surprising or interesting along the way as you traveled in your straight line from A to B. The story doesn't challenge you, the characters do nothing but fill their assigned roles and most of it is a demonstration of how to take an industry which supposedly thrives on innovation and taking chances and depict it as traversing the safest, most non-controversial path possible.

The cast is no different in this respect. Outside of Streep's underplayed and restrained performance (likely to allow the other actors to more fully fit their stereotypes), Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci don't bring a whole lot to the picture other than walking in their assigned paths. Indeed, I thought Hathaway was really miscast in this role, since it seemed to call for someone who could emote more at the injustice of the treatment she was receiving, rather than passively endure it as either the price of paying the rent in Midtown or because she knew she only had to keep playing this part for another 60 minutes of screen time and it would all be over. You can see the little touches of casting and writing designed to both be more "inclusive" (Hathaway's character graduated from Northwestern, in the Midwest, rather than Brown as in the novel in order to make it not entirely East Coast snobbery (Fashion is global!)) and, unfortunately, less so as, with the lone exception of Tracie Thorns, everyone in the cast is not only White but also apparently straight. In the fashion industry. The fact that they're all upper middle class to upper class Yuppies and very conscious of their assumed station in life just makes it that much more repellent. I'm all about stories about characters that are not the type of person you'd like to meet on the street. I write many of them. But I also want my difficult/dangerous/nasty characters to be interesting and none of these people are. They're mostly just contemptible, not only for what they assume about their lives but how all of those assumptions make them crucial to the existence of modern culture and society. You simply don't understand. They have to be snobs because, well, that's the business!

Obviously, I am not the target audience for this kind of thing, even if I was inclined toward films that ask you to "turn your brain off and enjoy." My version of "enjoy" is a story that asks me to think about why it's happening and who these people- these humans -are. But none of these people are actual humans, despite the late, faint attempt to convince everyone that Priestly still is one, even if she can't bother to learn her assistant's names or be conscious of the fact that they have personal troubles (aka life), as well (the "humaniziing" scene being Andrea having to emotionally extend in sympathy for Priestly's impending divorce.) That attempt to make Priestly likeable is couched in the assertion that she has to be "The Devil" because she's a woman in her highly competitive industry and if she were a man, everyone would simply look up to her/him for doing what needs to be done to succeed. I have no illusions that there are many male executives who are every bit as contemptible as Priestly in any number of industries. I have no interest in getting to know them or watching a film about them, either, as they remain, just like her, terminally uninteresting.

All of that said, I will still be sitting down in front of the sequel, if only to satisfy the curiosity of whether Frankel and writer, Aline Brosh McKenna, has learned anything in the past 20 years. All of the main cast are along for the new venture, as well. One would hope that people like Streep, Hathaway and Stanley Tucci are conscious of trying to do something new and/or different but with a huge audience out there looking for "brain candy", my hopes are not high.