A Greek perspective on Nolan’s The Odyssey: the ‘Oppenheimer of Ithaca’

I watched Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, but for three hours I was transported somewhere much older than Brooklyn. As the opening images appeared, I wasn’t only watching the screen. I was watching my childhood classroom return to me – only this time, it belonged to someone else’s imagination.

That is the strange privilege of watching Homer as a Greek living abroad. The story first told in my native language is deeply familiar, yet it can still surprise me. Long before I understood Homer as...