Christopher Nolan talks with Patrick Stoner about the most difficult part to film in his sprawling critical & box office hit.
"Flicks is a program devoted to exploring the latest creations from Hollywood. Each week, WHYY film critic Patrick Stoner provides up-to-the-minute coverage of top films, stars and moviemakers.
Christopher Nolan discusses the challenges of adapting *The Odyssey* for cinema. He reveals that the journey was the most difficult narrative element to translate from poetry to film, requiring a shift from episodic storytelling to a cohesive, thematic development that serves the characters and the overall visual medium.
The Odyssey is a commercial and critical success.
Director Christopher Nolan is known for his complexity,
all the way back to Batman Begins, through Oppenheimer, and now this.
When I met with him, I asked him, what was the most difficult thing to do?
The journey, the adventure, or the hubris?
I think the answer is probably not what you'd expect,
because I think the journey itself was actually the hardest narrative.
You're right, that wasn't what I expected.
Yeah, well, and the reason being that the journey
is what a lot of us remember of The Odyssey.
Yes.
But when you look at the structure of the poem, it's 24 books.
The journey itself is really only about four books in there.
In the poem, they are fairly confined and fairly episodic,
and cinema has different requirements than poetry.
Exactly.
It's a visual medium.
It's a visual medium, and the narrative rhythms are different,
and the journey presented a lot of narrative problems,
because it can't just be episodic.
It has to be thematically developing things that are important
to the characters and the rest of the story.
You wind up really having to flesh out and embrace
what is just indicated in shorthand in some ways.
With all adaptations, the things that puzzle you the most,
the things that are hardest, as you burrow in on it,
you realize, oh no, this is going to actually be the strongest.
That's really why it was there.
Why it was there, and it gives you this problem you have to solve
that then strengthens the whole thing,
and very often presents the things that you're most excited about when you make a film.
You're so well known for having everything planned out so well,
but I'm wondering, you're looking at something and saying,
you know what, that doesn't communicate exactly the way I thought it would.
Do you make an adaptation at that point,
or do you like to have things set and have them done?
It's a constant process of adaptation.
For me, what I'm doing as a director is I'm making a plan
with particular guardrails around the narrative or particular parameters,
and then I'm inviting people into this world.
What I have to do is I have to be the audience.
I have to be, in a way, the narrative police.
I've just got to always have my eye on,
okay, this is something fresh, something new.
There's a different way of doing it.
Is it going to work in the puzzle as a whole?
Is it still the relevant place?
You must deliver the vision.
It's a pleasure.
It's always good to talk to you.
Thank you.
I'm Patrick Stoner.
Flix with Patrick Stoner explores the craft and culture of films and streaming series
that enhance our communities for television stations and websites around the country.
