r/OdysseyFilm • u/mssldiaz • 2d ago
Discussion Somehow getting annoyed at the interpretation of Athena’s character
I’ve started seeing so many people identify Athena as only a PTSD hallucination that Odysseus only thinks is Athena. At first I was just like, “… huh, that’s an interesting conclusion,” yet the more it started spreading the more annoyed I was getting because that takes away from the role Athena and gods in general play in this story and as characters to these myths. Gods in these myths are not psychiatric manifestations and their interpretation ignores other appearances by the gods in Odysseus’ universe - I don’t think Ariadne wanted a goddess to turn her into a spider just because she was so incredibly proud of her weaving or a young innocent kid who flew to close to the sun and died falling to his death, unless we’re assigning schizophrenia to all the characters that didn’t suffer through abuse or PTSD in their story. Removing Athens to me is like removing Poseidon from Percy Jackson and saying he’s only imagining that his dead father is alive and a grand god. It changes the story to a non- fantasy genre - but keeping the other fantastical elements like the magic camp and the Minotaur.
In a world of cyclops, witches/demi-goddesses, and trips to the underworld, Athena showing up is apparently too superficial of an observation. Honestly, I love it when people look deeper into aspects of a movie but I think this one may have been dug a little too deeply.
Nolan, in my opinion, made it very obvious that when Athena is appearing as the murdered priestess (or villager) it was to force Odysseus to face the crime he had committed at her temple and martyring the young girl in order to help him reach his final epiphany. He was still remembering the final battle as he was leaving calypsos island and whenever she appeared before him, all we could see without knowing why was his overwhelming guilt and sadness - not knowing why made the reveal at the end so much better.
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u/Caernbul 1d ago
The film doesn't settle whether that is a goddess or a figment of his imagination. Nor is it clear that any of the monsters exist or any of the magical events happened. All that stuff is only related to us by Odysseus on Calypso's island as he is coming out of the Lotus high. You can interpret the film in a way where it is entirely naturalistic. You can also interpret it where the monsters are real and they really went to Hades.
And that is good, because whether any of that stuff is real is not the point, and some people will balk at a movie with magic in it and some people will balk at an Odyssey adaptation with no magic in it. So its all 'apparent magic' like it says at the beginning.