Film Adaptations

Peter Brook's version of The Mahabharata is my favorite adaptation of the story. Many Indians were not enchanted with it. One man explained that it lacked the costumes, jewels, glamor, and aspects of Indian culture that make the story meaningful to him. I noticed that it has only three Indian actors, the boy who is told the story by Vyasa while Ganesha records it, Draupadi, and one of the Kaurava warriors. In the film, even full brothers are of different races. No problem for me; it's a story about humans, about "the human race" as one character in the movie says. It is a story that speaks to the human experience.

A movie about an ancient Greek tale is coming out soon. I am going to see the film before reading the book. I want to judge the film on its own terms.

In Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, isn't played by a Greek woman. People are angry, but I'm willing to bet that none of the other characters are played by Greeks either.

If the story is a human one, the races of the actors don't matter.

If it's just a monsters and heroes movie... well, again, the races of the actors don't matter.

People throughout Western culture have been reading this book for centuries. Could it be more meaningful than old Hollywood spectacles would lead us to believe?

I don't know. I only read The Iliad, in which, for me, the silence of the women struck me deeply. If I'm remembering correctly, when Helen finally speaks, lamenting, not years of war, but the violation of Hector's corpse, Homer gives her a short self-absorbed speech that amounted to: I'm such a whore.

The movie Troy was not a great adaptation of the book. The adult Briseis explaining to Achilles that war is wrong felt silly; the writers were putting modern ideals on ancient people. So, if casting in The Odyssey amounts to nothing more than race-swapping, then it, too, will be silly.

If Nolan gives us the difficult journey of a man trying to return home, it may be a meaningful story.

Honestly, I'm more interested in Agamemnon's homecoming, I doubt the film will give much attention to Aeschylus's Clytemnestra.