How Christopher Nolan Made Ulysses Feel New Again

I am a huge Christopher Nolan fan. I once sat through his entire Batman trilogy back-to-back at IMAX. And no, I didn’t wear a bat suit, only because I didn’t own one and sparing my family a lifetime of cringe.

One thing Nolan does brilliantly is take an old, familiar story and make an audience feel its power again. Yesterday, I watched that happen in front of me.

I was guiding a group through the National Gallery of Victoria when we stopped in front of John William Waterhouse’s enormous Ulysses and the Sirens.

Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus, in case anyone spent high school thinking they were two different blokes.

I first encountered the story at school, when a classmate reading aloud pronounced ‘Ulysses’ as ‘Useless.’ We laughed so hard that tears ran down our faces. What can I say, we were trapped in a literature lesson and grateful for even the smallest flicker of entertainment.

But in front of the painting yesterday, half the group suddenly snapped to attention. They were nudging each other and telling me excitedly that they had just seen Nolan’s latest film The Odyssey.

Many thanks, Christopher Nolan.

Sailing home, Ulysses was warned about the Sirens, whose singing was so enchanting that sailors steered their ships straight onto the rocks. Ulysses wanted to hear them, but preferably without ending up dead. So, he ordered his crew to block their ears and tie him to the mast, with strict instructions to ignore whatever he yelled once the singing began.

Waterhouse paints this exact moment: the Sirens circling, the crew straining at the oars, Ulysses fighting the ropes and begging to be released while the music drives him temporarily mad.

We keep returning to old stories because they remind us of our timeless human traits. You still want the irresistible thing. You just like to believe you are sensible enough to handle it.

It is every person who has ever said, ‘I’ll just check Instagram for five minutes,’ only to resurface two hours later, knowing far too much about a stranger’s kitchen renovation.

The technology changes. What doesn’t is the siren song.

PS. Ulysses survived. Awkward journey home though, explaining he didn’t mean any of the outrageous things he yelled at his crew when tied to the mast