Zhong Shu's Christopher Nolan Interview
A Chinese Doctoral Candidate Asks Nolan Genuinely Intelligent Questions
I am on the record as saying that Nolan’s Odyssey is very flawed film in both concept and execution. It is clunky due to the time restrictions imposed by Nolan’s insistence on using real film. Most of the actors had weak performances because Nolan is much more cinematographer than actors’ director. And frankly I’ve come to view his incompetence at sound mixing as a deliberate signature.
All that said, unlike a Marvel movie which these days is just content slop, The Odyssey is at least worth discussing.
I disagree intensely with many of Nolan’s answers but he least gave his own honest answers. Zhong Shu’s questions were refreshingly intelligent.
I had my AI divide up the interview into identifiable subsections for anybody who wants to discuss this interview in the comments.
I had it summarize Zhong Shu’s questions as well as Nolan’s responses. Keep in mind these are an AI summary and you are better off watching the 17 minute interview yourself if you want to get what was really being discussed.
I. “Are You a Bard for a Civilization at Sunset?”
Question
Zhong Shu opens by asking whether Nolan sees himself as a bard for a civilization entering its twilight, much as Homer preserved the memory of a heroic age after its passing.
What she’s really asking
Is The Odyssey fundamentally a story about decline?
Is Nolan consciously making films for a civilization that senses it has passed its peak?
Is the role of the artist changing from creator to preserver?
This is the question that frames the entire interview.
Dark Herald Comment: Nolan certainly seems to view himself that way. While Nolan is himself a Gen X-er, he is clearly a member of that subset called the “Echo-Boomer” A first wave Gen-Xer whose world view indistinguishable from a Baby Boomers. It allows him to navigate a comfortable exisentence
II. “Why Tell the Story of the Bronze Age Collapse Now?”
Question
Why adapt a story that was itself written centuries after one of history’s greatest civilizational collapses?
Underlying question
What does Homer offer modern audiences living in another period of uncertainty?
Dark Herald Comment: Nolan’s use of the Bronze Age Collapse as a setting was intriguing, but ultimately he blamed it on the collapse of Xenia… Rather than the combination earthquakes, drought, Völkerwanderung, hyper-interdependent kingdoms that collapsed in a domino effect, and iron arriving in Bronze Age. But sure, it was all the collapse of Xenia. Absolute Boomer slop.
III. “Did the Greeks Already Believe They Had Fallen from a Golden Age?”
Here she explores the Greek understanding of history.
Rather than progress...
the Greeks often imagined decline.
This leads naturally into...
Homer
Hesiod
memory
myth
Dark Herald Comment: The Bronze Age Collapse overshadowed Greek culture in a way we really don’t get but that I’m very much afraid our great-grandchildren will. It produced a belief in Catastrophism was integral to their worldview and probably had a lot more to do with Plato’s Atlantis then the eruption of Santorini on Crete.
IV. “What Is the Moral Center of The Odyssey?”
Nolan answers:
Xenia.
Not warfare.
Not revenge.
Not glory.
Hospitality.
The sacred obligations that make civilization possible.
Dark Herald Comment: It is however, very much Nolan’s own interpretation of Xenia. It would have left Homer scratching his head and explaining, that “no, Odysseus couldn’t have violated Xenia because the Trojans and the Greeks were avowed enemies. Xenia is a hospitality custom applied only to strangers seeking shelter.
V. “If Paris Took Helen...Does Her Consent Matter?”
She isn’t asking gossip about Helen.
She’s asking whether the moral legitimacy of the Trojan War depends upon Helen’s agency.
Nolan’s answer surprised me precisely because he refuses to settle it.
Dark Herald Comment: He refuses to settle it because either answer completely undermines his story. Lets say Helen is dragged kicking and screaming from her palace. It’s the only home she’s ever known, she has her daughter torn from her arms while Paris loots her home and king Priam refuses to return her or the treasure. If this is the case then the Greeks are unambiguously justified in their war on Troy. It’s as morally clear as a sunny day, and Nolan’s story only works if all war is morally ambiguous Boomer Slop.
VI. “Should Odysseus Repent?”
A deeply modern question applied to an ancient hero.
Nolan’s answer: Greek heroes don’t operate according to modern moral psychology.
Dark Herald Comment: His answer is correct. The movie however portrayed Odysseus as a penitent. He viewed himself as a war criminal because this was basically a Vietnam movie set in ancient Greece.
VII. “What Are the Gods?”
Literal?
Psychological?
Metaphorical?
Narrative?
Nolan essentially answers: Yes.
Dark Herald Comment: Nolan is the worst possible choice to make a high fantasy movie but truthfully, he wasn’t making one of those. He was reinterpreting ancient mythology for a 21st Century progressive audience. I will grant he pretty much succeeded at that.
VIII. “Why Do Myths Continue to Live?”
Not because they’re fixed.
Because they’re endlessly interpretable.
Dark Herald Comment: This gets at the heart of the controversy. It has been repeatedly reframed throughout the centuries. Nolan has reframed it in a way that is most comfortable for Progressives to look at.
IX. “Can Innovation Exist Without Tradition?”
This is where Nolan discusses Memento.
His argument:
Innovation works because audiences already understand conventional storytelling.
Dark Herald Comment: I am agree with him. I went into that in-depth here.
X. “What Is Film Criticism For?”
One of the interview’s biggest departures from promotion.
Not: “Did you enjoy it?”
Instead: “Did you understand what it was attempting?”
Dark Herald Comment: Here Nolan is being a little grumpy, he’s mad at people like Nerdrotic who insist on looking at his movie like a movie.
Okay, Mister Nolan, fine I did understand what you were attempting and I rejected it in detail.
XI. “Can a Civilization Still Admire Greatness Without Immediately Demanding that Greatness Justify Itself?”
Dark Herald Comment: Nolan’s answer is a completely unsurprising, ‘yes.’
It’s a reflection of his own “White Privilege” lens and Progressive outlook.
The truth he couldn’t say was it’s fine to admire greatness, if the Great Man in question is not white.
XII. “Why Do Stories Survive?”
The interview ends where it began.
Dark Herald Comment: Something else I’ve gone into great detail elsewhere.
In summary: Great works do not remain culturally relevant because of their intrinsic quality, they remain relevant because successive generations actively maintain them. A lot of romantics disagreed violently with my assessment but none of them successfully challenged without resorting to poetry as proof.
Today the maintenance systems that preserve great works are reinterpreting them to support a political point of view, and in so doing their original meanings are lost completely.
Why Her Questions Worked
Frankly, I think Zhong Shu accomplished something very rare.
Most interviewers ask about:
“What inspired this scene?”
She asks:
“Are you a bard for a civilization at sunset?”
That’s not a movie question.
That’s a question you’d ask Homer.
Discuss in the Comments Below
A set of questions more worth than the one being questioned.
(I'd like to watch the full video before I comment, but watching YouTube videos is the arseing-off-at-work line I won't cross.)
The, "What are the Gods?" question is especially interesting, because Homer himself lived in a time when the Gods, and people's relationships to them, were very different from what we have today.
Set aside any question of belief versus non-belief - I think that we would all agree that someone who claimed not only to talk to God, but to have experienced God as a physical manifestation, is likely a candidate for the puzzle factory.
That was very much not the case during Homer's lifetime. Interacting with the supernatural was a normal and expected fact of life in ancient Greece. There were *no* atheists in ancient Greece, the very idea of not believing in the Gods would have been incomprehensible - it would have been like not believing in the existence of dogs today.
I think that one of the reasons that The Odyssey felt so awkward and contrived, is that it was not only directed by a postmodernist Progressive, but it was written by and cast with postmodern Progressives as well. I'm not saying that you need to believe in God to write a mythic story, but you need to at least understand how people could...