A highlight of my recent vacation in Halifax was watching The Odyssey with my son Jack. We were especially lucky to be among the relatively few viewers able to experience the film in all its IMAX 70 mm majesty; Halifax is home to one of only a handful of theatres in Canada equipped to show it in that format. We loved it.
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Even if you have not seen it, you likely know the basics of the story. Homer’s 3,000-year-old epic poem is a touchstone of Western mythology and storytelling. I vividly remember learning about The Odyssey in my English class at the Royal Military College. Knowing the room was full of cadets, our professor seized upon the military hero and his long trek home from war to teach us broader lessons about literature. He wove into those discussions Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey made famous in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The pattern stretches back to antiquity: a hero departs on a quest, faces a series of trials, and returns home transformed. Campbell saw this arc as part of humanity’s common story, with each of us playing the hero in our own lives. The idea has particular resonance for military veterans, who go off to combat as heroes but find, like Odysseus, that coming home is its own difficult odyssey.
The Odyssey is the OG hero’s journey. The Trojan War takes ten years to complete, but the trip back takes another ten because of incredible challenges along the way. In Christopher Nolan’s version, monsters, witches, sirens, giants, whirlpools, storms, and a cyclops stand between the men and the homes they long for. They lose time, direction, and ultimately themselves. Odysseus appears to offend the gods, and his crew fears they are all doomed. While Odysseus survives, his men do not. He returns to Ithaca, but the homecoming is more tragedy than triumph. He arrives a changed man and finds a land that bears no resemblance to the one he left.
The quest at the heart of The Odyssey is one veterans have long faced. The journey home to the life you knew before the war can be the more difficult battle to face because, in some ways, it is impossible. The world they longed to return to no longer exists. People have moved on, circumstances have changed. The veteran has changed too. Many struggle to relate to friends and family because few can fully understand what they endured. Sometimes love is not enough to help the veteran come to terms with injuries both mental and physical. More tragically still, some survive the war but perish on their journey of recovery.
I watched The Odyssey just days before the fifth anniversary of Afghanistan’s fall back into Taliban hands, after two decades of Western military presence and fragile stability. The war began in the aftermath of 9/11, which marks its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. Canada was on the ground by October 2001 and remained involved for more than twelve years, making Afghanistan the longest non-peacekeeping military deployment in Canadian history. Far too many of our veterans—including some I consider close friends—are still on their journey back to Ithaca from that war. Both the film and the anniversary will no doubt stir up difficult emotions for them and their families. That was what stayed with me as the credits began to roll on Nolan’s magnificent film.
I was not expecting to be moved by the movie as much as I was. I was fortunate to serve in the Canadian Armed Forces during peacetime and never saw combat. I am proud of my service and the exceptional people I served with, but I left my time in uniform without any significant injury. I know how fortunate I am to have taken more from the military than it took from me. In fact, throughout my time in politics, I would often refer to myself as an “average camper” because I was never called upon to serve and sacrifice in the way so many of our citizens have. I always hoped I would have answered that call with the same remarkable character and bravery.
In my time as a parliamentarian, and particularly as minister of veterans affairs, I got to know and work with Canadian veterans who had experienced war at its most brutal. Some of their wounds were visible, others were not. Many lost friends. Most were changed in immeasurable ways and are still on their own crossing back to wellness and peace. Their experiences, and the struggles they shared with me, were guiding principles of my time in elected office. Watching The Odyssey—particularly Odysseus’s response to the life-altering toll of combat—reminded me of the “sacred obligation” we owe our veterans.
The Odyssey was moving because of the power of its story and vivid imagery but also because it was structured to offer a glimpse into the mind and soul of its hero. The savagery of war explodes onto the screen late in the film while Odysseus is a prisoner—or reluctant guest, as Nolan portrays him—on the island of the nymph Calypso. She saves the battered warrior after he washes up on her shores, but she keeps him in a state of incapacity and oblivion so that he will remain with her forever. She feeds him lotus blossoms that allow him to forget the horrors of the Trojan War and the men he lost on his journey home.
When Odysseus’s memories finally return after more than seven years on the island, they come rushing back in an extended flashback. The battle scenes reveal the deep scars he carries: survivor’s guilt and remorse over the atrocities of the conflict. The sacking of Troy becomes the missing piece in the puzzle of Nolan’s portrayal of The Odyssey. We see the exceptional planning and subterfuge by Odysseus and his crew, who use the Trojan horse and its hidden cargo of invaders to breach the city. This is the legendary “trick” that amounts to what most people know about the Trojan War. But it is what happens after the Greeks emerge from the horse that is critical to understanding the film.
The gates of Troy are opened, and the screen erupts in fire, carnage, and depravity. The destruction is so jarring that Odysseus is sent into a state of shock and reduced to sitting on the ground to collect his wits. As mayhem swirls around him, we see the moral injury being inflicted on the hero. We also learn that the image of the goddess Athena, who has appeared to Odysseus throughout the film, is actually the face of a young, innocent victim of the massacre. The revelation lays bare the torment at the heart of Odysseus’s struggle.
The flashback will no doubt have an impact on veterans who watch the film. The sequence appears as a suppressed memory, kept at bay by the medicinal lotus blossoms. It has many of the hallmarks of what veterans suffering from operational stress injuries, such as post-traumatic stress injury, experience as they struggle to process the events of war. Some try to outrun painful memories through new deployments, pushing themselves even harder. Others may turn to alcohol or drugs to escape them, much as Odysseus relies on the lotus blossoms. But these attempts to suppress what happened can ultimately make the road to recovery far more difficult.
Odysseus sees first-hand how the success of the Trojan horse leads to the utter annihilation of Troy. The experience shatters his world view, particularly because his ruse plays on Zeus’s Law, one of the themes in which Nolan roots his film. Based on the ancient Greek custom of xenia, Zeus’s Law held that travellers and strangers should be treated with generosity and hospitality, since any one of them might be a god in disguise. The idea runs throughout the film: Odysseus invokes it repeatedly, while members of his family honour it by opening their palace to beggars and travellers. All of this prepares us for the terrible irony of Troy. The “gift horse” Odysseus offers to strangers exploits that sacred obligation and leads to their destruction. His greatest triumph becomes the source of his deepest anguish.
The sight of Odysseus sitting in shock amid the slaughter reminded me of veterans who spoke to me over the years about their own experiences. Many described the same sense of being outside themselves that Odysseus seems to experience. Like him, they relied on the drills driven into them during training to regain their focus and “soldier through” the trauma. One veteran told me how desensitized and numb he became after documenting mass graves in the former Yugoslavia. Others hurt in Afghanistan described not realizing they were missing a limb or had suffered a serious head injury until they were being whisked from the battlefield, their thoughts fixed not on themselves but on the people they were leaving behind.
Military training can help you survive a battle, but it cannot heal the lasting harm of acting against what you believe. Zeus’s Law should feel familiar because it is a precursor to the Golden Rule, a central tenet of Christianity and the other Abrahamic faiths: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” It underpins the “good neighbour” principle we like to believe our society promotes and that we embody as individuals. War turns that principle on its head. Conflict often begins with violations of hospitality and respect for others, while the supposed “glory” of fighting alongside your brothers and sisters for a noble cause can leave wounds society is only beginning to understand. It takes Odysseus years to realize his journey home is as much about reckoning with this moral injury as it is about arriving in Ithaca.
