My years of teaching classic books have taught me a couple of lessons about how to use films. First: Never expose students to a film based on a book before they have read and discussed that book. If they read the book first, they will judge the film by its standard — always a good exercise. If they watch the film first, they will evaluate the book based on the film — always a disaster. Consider the tsunami of ill-informed commentary churning in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s overhyped blockbuster The Odyssey.
Second: Choose the film that best reflects your appreciation of the book. My favorite adaptation of The Odyssey is the 1997 miniseries directed by the famed Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky. Publicists hyping Nolan’s film have disparaged this series, just as fans of Emily Wilson’s unmusical translations of Homer have disparaged far better ones by Robert Fagles and (best of all) the poet Robert Fitzgerald. Konchalovsky’s miniseries is not perfect. The special effects are uneven, but I have never seen the difference between gods and men better depicted than in the scene where the beautiful, gilded Hermes (Freddy Douglas) floats effortlessly in the air alongside Odysseus (Armand Assante), who is climbing a precipitous rock face hundreds of feet above the sea. Hermes has been ordered by Zeus to help Odysseus, but he makes no effort to hide his indifference, even amusement, at the plight of this salty, scrappy mortal who at any moment could fall to his death.
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