The Homeric Odyssey, the world’s most justly celebrated homecoming story, is a fable about the salvation of more than Odysseus. The recent film The Odyssey may save Hollywood as well. People, all of whom are story-swapping creatures, still yearn for captivating narratives, and Hollywood has been drifting away from captivating narratives for decades, part of the reason it has lost a good portion of its audience. Casablanca, staring Humphry Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was captivating; the cartoonish Toy Story, the nation’s first entirely computer-animated feature film, was merely entertaining and novel.

Literary scholars are still disputing whether The Odyssey attributed to Homer, a blind poet, was written by a single hand or whether it was a product of multiple narratives, much like the books of the Bible.  And, of course, scientifically minded historians hope to clear up any confusion through a discovery of historical facts. A movie soon to be available, The Odyssey, is on close inspection faithful to the original story.

Both scholars and movie goers should shake off all confusion.  Homer’s Odyssey is a story laced with fables – fabulous occurrences – that has as its center the homecoming from burning Troy of the weary warrior Odysseus. And Odysseus in Homer’s telling is entirely human, unlike Achilles in The Iliad, half god, half man.

Odysseus is a Promethean character, favored and cursed by the ancient Gods. The wily Prometheus stole fire from the Gods at Mount Olympus and shared the gift with mankind, a sin of lèse-majesté for which he was punished by being chained for all eternity to a rock, where a bird of prey continually fed on his liver. That image, while fanciful, is not anti-factual; it is poetically true in the same sense that Shakespeare’s imaginative, fact-based creation of the character of Lear is true. Some Shakespearian scholars and virtually all poets might say that the character of Lear is truer than truth.

So too with the Homeric character of Odysseus.

Somewhat like Troy itself, with its tall towers and matchless impenetrable walls, Hollywood, which seized and bewitched audiences in the post-World War II period, today lies smoldering in ruins, some critics say. The old town ain’t what it used to be. The glamor and glitz is gone. Few of us any longer devote much of our attention to magazines covering Hollywood, also on the wane, highlighting the fabulous, nearly mythical “journeys” of new celebrities or stars and starlets of the silver screen.  Pornography in many cases has dampened rather than excited public enthusiasm.

Odysseus in the Homeric narrative and in the film has been absent from his home for twenty years – ten years spent at war in Troy, and ten years spent wandering at sea. His wife Penelope has been persistently loyal to Odysseus, along with their son Telemachus. In his absence, 108 suitors have been seeking Penelope’s hand in marriage – and Odysseus’s status and estate. Odysseus was the King of Ithaca, both rich and famous, Penelope Queen of Ithaca.

Penelope does not dampen their desire, but she frustrates their ambitions by means of a clever stratagem. She tells her suitor she will answer their proposals once she has finished weaving a burial shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’s father. What she weaves by day, she unweaves by night. The suitors to a man protest that Odysseus is no longer among the living: Penelope must choose.

Here is Homer on Penelope’s clever stratagem:

So they urge on marriage, and I wind a skein of wiles. First some daimōn breathed the thought in my heart to weave a garment, after setting up a great fabric in my halls fine of thread and very wide; and I straightway spoke among them: “Young men, my wooers, since godlike Odysseus is dead, be patient, though eager for my marriage, until I finish this garment—I would not that my threads should perish useless—a shroud for the hero Laertes against the time when the fell fate of grievous death shall strike him down; lest any one of the Achaean women in the land blame me, if he were to lie without a shroud, who had won great possessions.” So I spoke, and their proud hearts consented. Then by day I would weave the great web, but by night would unravel it, after having placed torches by me. Thus for three years I went unnoticed and persuaded the Achaeans; but when the fourth year came, as the seasons rolled on, as the months waned, and many days had revolved, then verily by the help of my maidens, disrespectful bitches, they came upon me and caught me, and upbraided me loudly. So I finished the web against my will perforce. And now I can neither escape the marriage nor devise any counsel more.

The past tense used by the suitors of Penelope is deadly serious, and Penelope’s intelligence and cunning – like Odysseus’ own fiery intelligence and cunning — symbolize marital fidelity, patience, and resourcefulness, making her one of the most celebrated and heroic female figures in Greek mythology.

When Odysseus returns home, Penelope need not “devise any counsel more.”

It was Penelope who suggested that Odysseus dress as a beggar so that he might move unnoticed among Penelope’s clamorous suitors. Both she and her son Telemachus knew of a certainty that Odysseus had not died at Troy.

The movie under review is faithful to the Homeric epic, and its timeless subjects are the same: the arduous journey home, where the heart’s desire may be quenched; the heroic faithfulness of Odysseus’ wife and son; the unsoiled marriage bed; and the pleasure that arises when one‘s life comports with godly strictures.

Who says you cannot go home again? God smiles on courage and faithfulness. A little of both will find a way.