As with Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and many other timeless literary figures, so it is with Ulysses. Every generation gets the Ulysses it deserves. Writers take what is universal in these creations and add their own contemporary stamp on them.
Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie Odyssey portrays Ulysses as a guilt-ridden war veteran, afflicted with an Hellenic version of PTSD. During the sack of Troy, while his comrades rape and loot, Nolan’s Ulysses, portrayed by a wooden Matt Damon, collapses onto the ground, wracked with remorse.
Nolan’s Ulysses is the spiritual brother of Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Both are destroyers, despairing over the destruction they have wrought.
In Oppenheimer, President Truman meets Dr. Oppenheimer in the Oval Office, and is repelled by his visitor’s display self-guilt. “Don’t let that crybaby back in here,” he orders, as Oppenheimer is ushered out. Had Nolan visited Homer in Ionia and shown him his script, Homer probably would have said the same thing, though in Greek.
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