[Digital Today reporter Jae-won Choi] Christopher Nolan’s film 'Odyssey' has been at the centre of debate since its casting and design were first revealed. After its release, the film earned substantial praise and strong box office results, but debate between classicists and general audiences is still continuing, IT outlet Ars Technica reported on Aug. 2 (local time). The heated reaction to a modern adaptation of an epic poem from around the 8th century BC itself shows the film’s presence.

'Odyssey' follows the long journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after spending 10 years in the Trojan War. He faces the one-eyed giant Polyphemus as well as the Sirens and Circe, among others. Back home, his wife Penelope is holding out against many suitors seeking the throne. Odysseus’ son Telemachus believes his father is alive and sets out to find him.

Nolan tells this familiar story on a vast IMAX scale while unfolding it as an unexpectedly private emotional drama. He opens the film with a scene of a bard recounting the fall of Troy and preserves the original’s non-linear structure. The story layers stories within stories, and Odysseus, in a state that seems like lost memory, gradually recovers fragments of the war and his return. The central question is what Odysseus tried to forget, and what truth he must face to return home.

In this interpretation, Odysseus is not portrayed as a simple hero. He is a figure who has turned away from the devastation his cunning brought to Troy. The film builds toward the moment when he acknowledges before Penelope that one reason for his long absence was the torment of conscience. Some complained that the screen time of certain famous actors is short, but in Nolan’s films, screen time does not mean importance. Zendaya’s Athena, Elliot Page’s Sinon and Samantha Morton’s Circe, all with brief appearances, reveal the guilt and the cost of violence that Odysseus has avoided.

In box office terms, 'Odyssey' also showed a strong presence. It has already posted more than $700 million in box office receipts and fully recouped its production cost of about $250 million. It has also surpassed the overall box office performance of his previous film, 'Oppenheimer'. With multiple Oscar nominations and wins expected for its technical work and the actors’ performances, a backlash was perhaps a natural development.

At the centre of the controversy is a harsh review by classicist Emily Wilson (Emily Wilson). Wilson criticised the film, saying it focuses too heavily on Odysseus’ point of view, reduces the roles of female characters and the gods, and does not sufficiently show the perspective of war’s victims. She also took issue with the dialogue and even the choice of filming locations. Some, however, argue that while Wilson says she is evaluating Nolan’s artistic intent, she did not in fact sufficiently take that intent into account. They say Nolan did not try to faithfully reproduce the original, but instead humanised the gods, made supernatural events look like natural phenomena, and reconstructed the source with his own themes.

Nolan is a creator, not a scholar. That is, he did not try to make an 'Odyssey' that is historically accurate and 100 percent faithful. He reinterpreted the classic in modern terms and, in the process, found his own incomplete but meaningful truth. In that translation is also an act of inscribing personal choices and perspectives onto the original, adaptation is the same. There is no single correct answer to Homer’s 'Odyssey'. In every era and for every creator, works are reborn in different ways, and Nolan’s 'Odyssey' also deserves a place in that long lineage.

Interest in 'Odyssey' is also intense in South Korea. As of 3:44 p.m. on Aug. 5, its release day, it ranked first with a reservation rate of 47.9 percent, beating 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' at 34.2 percent. The number of reserved viewers stood at 537,440, and it has joined the summer box office competition in earnest with its domestic release.