Christopher Nolan: Hollywood's last hero

Christopher Nolan has described the Homeric source material of his new film of The Odyssey as “foundational” for his work. On the surface, it’s a banal comment, too vague to either prove or deny. Yet a closer look at Nolan’s previous films gives the claim genuine validity — almost to the degree of rendering this latest movie a meta-commentary, and in thematic terms at least representing a large-scale restatement of his artistic philosophy. Nolan was briefly attached to direct Troy, a version of the other poem attributed to Homer, the Trojan War epic The Iliad, eventually overseen by Wolfgang Peterson. But the fragmented story of the solitary male wanderer, mining his cunning and resilience to get back to his family, is an altogether closer fit for Nolan’s habits and obsessions. In part, Th