The Wine-Dark Screen: Spectacle in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”

Christopher Nolan’s $250 million action movie version of Homer’s ancient Greek poem has grossed $1.77 billion worldwide to date, making it both his and Universal Pictures’ highest-grossing film. In her recent review for The London Review of Books, classicist and translator Emily Wilson calls the film “a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle” full of Nolanesque tropes such as “discontinuities of space and time, magic, tricks, craft, technology, rivalry, substitution, masks, miscommunication, what we remember and what we choose to forget.” 

Join us for a nuanced, critical discussion of Nolan’s latest extravaganza, co-led by two UCI undergraduates, Sabella Habtemariam (Comparative Literature | 2028) and Pilar Vitug (Literary Journalism | 2028). Drawing upon literary as well as film and media theorists (e.g., Guy Debord, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Vivian Sobchack, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam), Habtemariam and Vitug interrogate the aesthetic, sociopolitical, and technological aspects of Nolan’s revival of this millennia-old poem in a world like ours where war, displacement, and contested belonging put pressure on familial ideals of heroism and homecoming. Given the mixed reception of the film, our speakers ask: what makes this version of Odysseus—and this idea of homecoming—compelling to some audiences and troubling to others? 

Event Details:

Date Thursday, October 22, 2026

Time 5:00-6:00 PM

Location Humanities Gateway 1030

The event is co-sponsored by Classics, Comparative Literature, and Film and Media Studies. It is open to the entire academic community, including students, family, and friends.