To debate the historical accuracy of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is almost as ridiculous as debating the historical accuracy of Kubrick's Odyssey. It has as much interest in history as Star Wars has in science.
Critics point out that the armour and clothing is nothing like what the Greeks would have worn in those days, and that the ships are actually Viking. I don't understand why it's such a big deal, since in the very first trailer we got to see Agamemnon looking like a cross between The Dark Knight and Darth Vader, as if teleported from the movie 300 rather than Troy. That should have been a clear indication that Nolan's goal was not to do a portrayal of ancient history.
In fact, despite putting a lot of effort into giving a realistic and palpable experience, he only needed the audience to believe they were living in ancient times, not specifically in Ancient Greece, but a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.... Hold on... That doesn't sound right. (*checks notes, does a quick search*) Ah, that's the one. "In a time of apparent magic..." And he only needed that in order to fulfil his actual artistic goal. And that goal is to portray not the story of The Odyssey, but the myth of The Odyssey. I will detail in a bit.
But first, a digression. The famous abstract painter Piet Mondrian - the guy with the paintings of coloured rectangles and black lines that look as if they were drawn in Paint - said that his aim with his abstract paintings was the same as with his earlier works which were more traditional. If he painted a tree in a realistic manner, his focus would be on the relationships within. Things like: Are there more leaves on the right side than the left? In what ratio? Is a particular branch longer than another? Is there a pattern to the arrangement of the leaves on the branch? And so on. He realised that he was not as interested in depicting the tree accurately as he was in illustrating these relationships. So, he considered that anything other than that is a distraction, which he needs to strip away. Eventually, he stripped away almost everything, until he got to just three basic colours and only horizontal and vertical black lines.
Nolan's works do something similar. They have the characteristic that they are as much about the story they tell as they are about how they tell that story. Tenet is the extreme example: it is not really about something in particular, as it is a skeleton of a movie, displaying all its moving parts as you watch the story unfold in its convoluted structure. That is as much as Nolan went towards abstraction, without actually getting completely there. It's the equivalent to the third painting in the sequence above, where you can sort of make out some leaves and a tree, but the painting is clearly more about the shapes and how they relate to one another.
The Odyssey doesn't get such rough treatment, but I'd still put it somewhere between the first and second of the paintings. Even in the first one, despite it not being 100% realistic, it's obvious that it depicts a tree, but you cannot shake the intuition that it's actually about more than just that. In a similar way, Nolan's movie is obviously about an adventure in ancient times, but there are several details that make us think that it's actually about something else.
Its goal is to expose the underlying workings of a myth, while telling the story of that myth. To start with, there are a few lines of dialogue about how information is mostly gotten from songs and poems or from stories and how they relate to the actual truth. The movie ends by enunciating that songs (read: myths) are more resilient than the written word as a way of passing down timeless truths, like the one Odysseus spent 20 years discovering himself. That is how myths have survived for so long, passed from generation to generation, until eventually being written down. And even after that they are translated in several forms and languages, adapted to the times and media. The secret of their survival is that they tell something profound.
What they relate is so profound because it ties to the common psyche that all of humanity shares. Despite differences in culture, our minds work the same. We have pretty much the same hopes, desires, fears, emotions. And these are what end up in myths, because they are the most important things worth sharing with others. Furthermore, these are not things that are easy to describe as they stem from deep within the inner workings of our mind. That is why they take the form of fantastical stories, filled with allegories and symbols, whose meanings are not direct, but which we intuitively understand. All this has been well established by the likes of Freud, Jung, Campbell etc.
In other words, a myth tells a story which symbolises one's psychological struggles. While its story seems to be entirely external on the surface, it is actually about what goes on inside one's mind. What Nolan's Odyssey does is to remove some fluff from the story to expose the symbols in a more direct manner, just like Mondrian did when removing some of the details from the tree to expose its inner relationships.
Despite putting so much effort into practical effects and on-location shooting, the world of the movie seems almost uninhabited and devoid of geography. The settings look desolate and generic. Even the depiction of Hell is just a dark barren landscape and not the spectacle of lava one would imagine (as Mustafar is, for example). And Calypso's island seems more like the limbo from Inception. All this is because they symbolise states of mind. The hero's journey is much more a journey through his own mind, than it is a voyage on the seas of the Mediterranean.
The characters are all archetypes, representing various aspects of the human psyche. The Mother-Father-Son trio is to be seen as a unity, that identifies the mind of a person. The Father is the more rational part and the one that defines one's moral values. The Mother is the more emotional side, while the Son is the one that brings the balance, who has to make decisions for himself using the guidance of the other two. He is the ego, the self.
The suitors and servants represent all the confusing, sly, mischievous thoughts and feelings that we confront day by day, though not all of them are bad.
Thus, the story is that of a mind that has lost its moral compass and has fallen into a state of disarray. There are few hopeful thoughts, while the bad ones are more and more frequent, consuming resources and corrupting the mind with each passing day, bringing it to the edge of despair. Emotions are basically held captive as they retreat into a self-imposed cage. They must not burst out because rash decisions can only have bad consequences.
The situation has become in need of an urgent resolution. The ego is willing to accept a compromise solution, but without the confidence of strong values to back him, the cautious and protective part restrains him. Instead, he seeks to rebuild that moral backbone, but all he has available are second-hand sources. His success hangs in the balance.
It's actually interesting to point out that, despite not being the protagonist, Telemachus is actually the main character. On his fate lies everything: the resolution of the psychological struggle, the peace of mind, and by extension, the fate of civilisation.
But solving the psychological struggle is purely in the hands of the Father. It is no coincidence that he starts out on Calypso's island. When a mind has gone so far astray, it needs to detach itself completely, to be able to see things from outside itself, to look at its own thoughts and emotions from far away, rather than be entangled in them, to understand how a previously healthy mind ended up so distraught. And that is what Odysseus does: starts with a blank slate and puts all the pieces in order.
The journey begins with a rational decision. Instead of choosing to follow the emotions and run away, the Father acts out of a sense of duty. But that duty is slowly converted into a goal and when a goal is put above all else it becomes corrupting, because it supersedes even the deepest principles. That is why Agamemnon is portrayed as a hulking black figure without a face, that moves as if untouchable, invincible. He is the most abstract element of the movie, because he is a concept, not a man. He is the unshakeable urge, the desire, that when followed it slowly corrupts.
The fall of Troy is explicitly called out by Odysseus as the moment of complete corruption. The walls represent the invisible barrier that blocks us from accessing our deeper mind directly - the place from where our thoughts and emotions mysteriously stem from. The Trojan soldiers have stylised white armour, that seems to be out of the Marvel Universe rather than the Bronze Age, hinting that they are more like some antibodies of the mind than actual people.
The horse trick was the climax of the corruption, letting desire become the ultimate principle, replacing the seemingly inviolable Law of Zeus that the mind of the trinity held so strongly.
I found it amusing that Odysseus also explicitly mentioned emerging from the belly of the horse as the moment of realisation that the mind is compromised, because "the belly of the whale" is a common point of inflexion in myths. Usually it's a symbolic one, not an actual belly (e.g. the trash compactor in A New Hope), but, as stated, The Odyssey is showing us in more direct ways how a myth functions.
In myths the gods are exterior manifestations of our unconscious mind. We have no access to those depths, thus our minds create intuitive representations. That is why Athena seems more like a personal figment of the imagination rather than an all powerful goddess, and why Odysseus complains that the gods don't speak in ways humans understand [1], but she replies "Who doesn't understand pain?" Pain is how we mature and grow, as it is the mind's signal that something is not right, that there is an inconsistency between how it acts and what it truly values. The gods represent the unshakeable principles of life. They are the North Star. They do not change. The soldiers may have beheaded a statue of Athena, but not Athena herself. But the compass can become adrift and end up not pointing to the North Star anymore. When Odysseus saw that his actions had led to the betrayal of the goddess that lay in the unassailable Troy of his mind, that is when he became aware of the psychological pain he had fostered for so long.
Calypso explains to him that these inner workings of the mind cannot be controlled, yet he is the Father, he is reason, he only understands control. The mind cannot be understood rationally, only intuitively. That is why he must give himself to Poseidon and take his punishment. In fact, he got here because of the wrath of Poseidon, but Calypso also explains that Odysseus is actually there because he himself does not want to return. Thus, if we equate those two affirmations, we realise that the symbol of Poseidon is actually the mind stirring up a storm itself, to destroy its bad habits and push itself back on the right course. That is why the whole crew is lost to the will of the gods. Odysseus cannot defy the gods regardless of his ambition and determination, because the "apparent magic" of the human brain is unbreakable. That also explains why the seemingly irrational decision to not follow Agamemnon on the easy route back home is completely justified, since it is made by a mind which rationally realised it had gotten off course and decided it must choose a different path - a path of redemption.
The self-discovery is only the first half of that path. The second one is implementing a change of mindset. One does not simply walk into Ithaca and change their way of thinking overnight. Bad thoughts cannot be just thrown out of the citadel of the mind. For one, it would be a very hard fight. But more importantly, even if it were possible, it wouldn't be right, as it would be once again a breaking of the foundational principle - represented as the Law of Zeus in the movie. Peace of mind would only last for a short while, before thoughts of guilt and uncertainty (the families of the suitors) would come for revenge.
That is why Odysseus has to come under disguise, so that the mind does not react defensively. It would be sceptical that the same sort of reasoning that got it into this appalling state is also capable of healing. Only a new way of thinking, which slowly gains the confidence of the more intuitive and hidden parts of the mind, can persevere.
Once order is re-established, the Mother and Father leave the keys to the kingdom of the mind to the Son. This is why I stress that he is actually the main character. This ending marks his coming of age, symbolising the integration of all aspects of the mind into a single entity. The ego is fully mature, it is no longer split into reason and emotions, it is a fusion of the two.
The departure of the Mother and Father also depicts the symbolic death that is so common in mythology. To become a new, better self, the old one must die. "Let the past die. Kill it if you have to." No... wait. Wrong movie again! "We'll head into the unknown west, to honour my men." Meaning that one's past mistakes cannot be erased, but, by accepting them, they no longer have a grip on the mind and thus it becomes free to reshape its own future. Each thought can now once again be treated as a possible "god in disguise", come from the realm of the unconscious and which is now aligned with the harmonious principles of life.
To be honest, you can probably deconstruct many movies in this way, but for most you'd need to remove some layers from the story to get to the underlying symbols. You have to do that for The Odyssey as well, but there are fewer layers, since, as explained above, some of the symbols are described explicitly or depicted in a not so subtle way in the movie, while others are highlighted by incongruous directorial choices.
I've touched a few of those, like how Agamemnon stands out. The diversity of the cast is an obvious point of contention. It's hard to believe Nolan would make such a choice without artistic reason. The simple and obvious one is that history is just the background of the story, whereas its characters are meant to make it more universal. I think Helen is played by a black actress so that she is visually and symbolically complementary to Agamemnon. She is the object of desire, while he is desire itself. [2] Could the casting of a transgender actor in the role of Sinon also have a more symbolic meaning? After all, he is key in Odysseus's transformation, who adopts the fallen soldier's name, right after having found his true self.
Last but not least, the movie title is not stylised in any way to make it evoke antiquity, but instead uses a nondescript typeface. It may be part of Nolan's branding in general, but it also hints that this is not a story from Ancient Greece, but something that is timeless. All myths are meant to be timeless. Otherwise, we wouldn't be discussing a movie called The Odyssey in 2026.
[1] In my view, Zendaya is excellently cast in the role of Athena, not just because of her acting. She has this appearance of a hard-to-place ethnicity, which fits very well for the portrayal of a Goddess, a symbol of the unconscious, so universal yet hard to grasp, at the same time human, yet so alien.
[2] By the way, why did Nolan make Agamemnon's wife the identical twin of Helen? If Helen is supposed to be the prettiest face in the world, the one "that launched a thousand ships", then it's kind of silly to have an exact copy. Did he want to indicate that the two are to be seen as one? That it is actually Helen - the object of desire - who killed Agamemnon once he finally obtained what he sought for so long?
[3] Another interesting thing to point out is that despite the diversity, all the characters speak with American accents, which could narrow the meaning of the subtext down to a specific culture and time.
