{"id":1646,"date":"2026-08-24T08:07:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1646"},"modified":"2026-08-24T08:07:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:07:04","slug":"westward-the-course-of-empire-takes-its-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1646","title":{"rendered":"Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As a British-American who has portrayed American dominance across space (Interstellar<\/em>) and time (Tenet<\/em>), Nolan both explores and exemplifies the \u201ctranslation of Empire,\u201d the shift in cultural and political dominance from Europe and especially Britain to America, which means the United States.<\/p>\n

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Nolan is a didactic filmmaker\u2014he always has something to teach us, and he is not afraid to do so in ways both subtle and heavy-handed. Heavy-handed, say, in the parallels between The Dark Knight Rises <\/em>and Dickens\u2019 A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>\u2014in case you missed them, Commissioner Gordon quotes from the most pathetic passage of that highly pathetic novel at the memorial for the not yet dead Bruce Wayne. Subtle, when the only two unanswered political statements in Oppenheimer<\/em> are General Groves\u2019s comment about Manhattan Project counterintelligence officer Boris Pash that \u201cThis is a man who\u2019s killed communists with his own hands\u201d and Republican E. O. Lawrence\u2019s line about racial integration that \u201cI want to vote for it, not talk about it.\u201d Subtle, when in The Odyssey <\/em>the wannabe warrior Sinon is played by the wannabe man, the former Ellen Page, and when the face that \u201claunched a thousand ships\u201d is played by the striking and (thanks to makeup) scarred Lupita Nyong\u2019o, rather than a conventional beauty.<\/p>\n

In Homer\u2019s Odyssey<\/em>, Odysseus is able to regain and maintain the throne of Ithaca after killing the suitors because Athena intervenes to protect him from their relations. In Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/em> (note the definite article in the title; this is no Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula<\/em>, boys and girls), Odysseus excludes Telemachus as much as possible from the actual killing and goes into exile with Penelope, to the west. Telemachus is left to rule Ithaca, hopefully with wisdom and with the manliness his father tried to keep him from exemplifying.<\/p>\n

Unsubtly, The Odyssey<\/em> is\u00a0a film about the end of the world. As Nolan says in his interview with Zhong Shu (the podcaster and Ph.D. student Zhuge Yiyang): \u201cI think for me, it partly comes out of having worked on Oppenheimer<\/em> before this, which is very much a film about the end of the world, about the collapse of civilization ultimately. So, I think yeah, I definitely carried that sensibility into this adaptation of the Odyssey<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Odyssey is about the end of one world, Odysseus\u2019s \u201cworld of palaces and trade and language.\u201d It is also about the beginning of a new world, with the knowledge that world too will end when its peoples no longer sing their inherited songs with their tales of ancient crimes. The crime of the Trojans, according to Homer but barely alluded to in Nolan\u2019s movie, was Paris\u2019s abduction or seduction of Helen\u2014and Troy\u2019s refusal to yield her up to end the war. The crime of the Greeks, according to Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/em>, was to abuse hospitality and reverence for the gods through the Trojan horse trick\u2014conceived and executed by Odysseus himself: \u201cone man\u2019s trick to break Zeus\u2019s law forever,\u201d as he says.<\/p>\n

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In Nolan, as well as in Homer, Odysseus is an exemplar of rationality. In Nolan, he is virtually as much a Promethean as his archetype, the American Prometheus<\/em> Robert Oppenheimer. Knowing that his men are doomed by the gods to die, Nolan\u2019s Odysseus claims, \u201cI can still save them from the gods,\u201d to which the blind prophet Tiresias says, \u201cbut not from themselves.\u201d Odysseus\u2019s men have a nature they cannot overcome, perhaps an ultimately bestial nature, disguised in human form, as Nolan\u2019s witch Circe pronounces. Odysseus is the exemplary man, \u201cA Man!\u201d as both Homer and Nolan\u2019s bard agree. For Nolan, as he says to Zhongshu, \u201cthe gods are real, but they are inside people.\u201d Odysseus\u2019s humanity is revealed in that he not only talks to Athena but also in that Athena talks to him.<\/p>\n

But is what is within us ultimately under our control? Can Odysseus\u2019s men help being beasts in human form? Can Odysseus do more than just manipulate religion? Calypso, played by the actual Hollywood goddess Charlize Theron, tells Odysseus, \u201cYou must give yourself to the storm, give yourself to Poseidon, take your punishment\u2026 Zeus won\u2019t let him kill you\u2026.\u201d In the movie, the raft brings Odysseus all the way to the shores of Ithaca. Is it possible to submit to gods if, like Nolan, but unlike his Greeks and Trojans, who have \u201ccommon gods,\u201d we think the gods are real but inside us?<\/p>\n

Nolan offers an Odyssey that shows both the illusion and how it is worked. It is a tale from \u201ca time of apparent magic,\u201d and for nearly three hours it makes the magic appear and yet not be real. But can real lessons come from anthropogenic gods and fake miracles? At this moment in the translation of empire on a round globe from East to West, are we willing to take them from anywhere else?<\/p>\n

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As a British-American who has portrayed American dominance across space (Interstellar) and time (Tenet), Nolan both explores and exemplifies the \u201ctranslation of\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nWestward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way - Urban Economy news<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1646\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way - Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As a British-American who has portrayed American dominance across space (Interstellar) and time (Tenet), Nolan both explores and exemplifies the \u201ctranslation of\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1646\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-24T08:07:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1646#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1646\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/be7753cb687f443815cc81e8407f68ad\"},\"headline\":\"Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-24T08:07:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1646\"},\"wordCount\":874,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1646#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/3653cee783845f9f9d0bb9bd1f7c6451.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Movies\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1646#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1646\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=1646\",\"name\":\"Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way - 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