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The Odyssey has taken global cinema by storm in recent days, backing up its rave reviews with overwhelmingly positive audience feedback, while raking in hundreds of millions at the box office. At the same time, controversy continues to surround one key aspect of the movie, which has divided fans of Christopher Nolan’s work.
Many moviegoers expected Nolan to follow a Hollywood tradition when it comes to ancient epics, by writing The Odyssey’s dialogue in a formal, purposely archaic English, and have the film’s stars perform it in the kind of antiquated British accents associated with Shakespeare. Indeed, everything from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator to the 2004 movie Troy has followed this tradition.
But The Odyssey’s director has changed tack, by having his dialogue acted out in a more informal register, and making almost everyone in the film speak with an American accent. In doing so, Christopher Nolan takes after his cinematic hero, as his approach to dialogue while telling a story from the Classical world mirrors one of Stanley Kubrick’s best movies.
The Odyssey’s American Accents Are Its Most Controversial Feature
Ever since the first trailer of The Odyssey was released, controversy has swirled around its writer-director’s decision to render the movie’s dialogue in modern American English. Most of us are used to watching ancient epics on the big screen in which everyone speaks old-fashioned British English in a formal register, even if their actors are American.
As a result, the first time we hear Matt Damon’s Odysseus, Tom Holland’s Telemachus, or Robert Pattinson’s Antinous speaking standard American English, including its modern colloquialisms, it can sound a little jarring to our ears. Nevertheless, it’s unlikely that anyone involved in the movie expected this stylistic decision to become such a talking point.
The backlash against it has been so pronounced that Christopher Nolan has had to defend The Odyssey’s dialogue against accusations of cultural appropriation. However, anyone who’s seen the full movie will surely agree that this element of the viewing experience is quickly forgotten once you’re immersed in its story.
Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus Also Employed American Accents
It’s worth noting that Christopher Nolan is far from the first director of a major Hollywood epic set in ancient times to discard English-language cinema’s customary use of Shakespearian accents for such productions. Indeed, William Wyler’s legendary chariot-racing masterpiece Ben-Hur features Charlton Heston speaking with an American accent throughout its duration.
Even more significantly, Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 historical epic Spartacus deliberately makes use of contemporary American English to differentiate between the social classes of its characters. The movie’s title character and his fellow slaves speak with American accents, whereas Roman nobles speak with archaic British accents.
Of course, the use of English in any form doesn’t earn Spartacus any points for historical accuracy. Yet, Kubrick’s inspired decision to have different types of characters speak English in different vernaculars helps to suspend disbelief, by giving audiences a greater sense of the gulf in social standing between aristocratic Romans and those traded as slaves.
Christopher Nolan’s Modern Dialogue Choices Make Sense For The Odyssey
By the same token, Christopher Nolan’s employment of modern American dialogue throughout The Odyssey reinforces the sense that its story is fundamentally a grounded, human journey to which we can all relate. Matt Damon’s central hero isn’t a modern American, but he isn’t a Briton from the mid-20th century, either.
Because Damon and other cast members speak with their own American accents in the movie, we’re actually more inclined to see their characters as real people, rather than as mythical constructions for a cinematic genre. Most movies like The Odyssey tend to create some emotional distance between their characters and audiences by placing dialogue in an unnecessarily formal register.
On the other hand, The Odyssey’s British actors like Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson speaking with American accents doesn’t seem to fit this naturalistic approach to the movie’s dialogue. Perhaps the thinking is that any major difference in accents would set their characters apart from others unintentionally. Either way, whatever worked for Kubrick is good enough for Nolan.
