[Now is the Age of Culture] What Did Odysseus Destroy?

After watching director Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' and leaving the theater, the word 'homecoming' came to mind before 'return.' I thought it was a story about going back to one's hometown, but once the film ended, I found myself questioning what it means to return.

Odysseus is a hero of the Trojan War. He is the strategist who led the war to victory and king of Ithaca. Yet in Nolan's film, the first thing that catches the eye is not the glory of a hero, but the fatigue and guilt of a man who has endured a long war. What made him this way?

The film places the answer between 'Zeus's Law' and the Trojan Horse.

In ancient Greece, welcoming a stranger as a guest was an important custom. One provided food and shelter, and the guest did not harm the host. This is xenia, which refers to the mutual obligations between host and guest. Zeus was regarded as the god who upheld this order of hospitality.

Nolan revives this ancient custom within the film through the phrase 'Zeus's Law.' What is interesting is that Odysseus is the very person who breaks that law.

The Trojan Horse represents his most brilliant stratagem. He concealed soldiers within it and had it brought into Troy's walls, ending the war. Yet in the film, Odysseus does not remember this act as glory alone.

The horse, accepted as a gift of peace, became an instrument of massacre. He exploited trust to bring down his opponent. In war, it was a strategy that brought victory. But after war ends, can one continue to remember it only that way?

What Odysseus confronts repeatedly in his heart may be precisely that moment. For a cause he believes in, is it acceptable to exploit even what others believe in? Before this question, Odysseus is no longer a simple hero.

He is both a victim of war and one who waged it. He lost comrades and wandered far from home for long years, yet he is also the one who destroyed Troy. Nolan erases neither of these two faces.

The scene with the Sirens is striking for this reason.

The Sirens do not appear merely as beings who seduce. They are closer to a voice that plays back what Odysseus wished to forget: the lost people, broken promises, life before war. What he longs for may not be only the land of Ithaca. Perhaps he longs for himself before war began. But time does not turn back.

One can return home, but not return to who one was before leaving.

The same applies when he takes up the bow again. To reclaim his home, he summons again the body and skills of a warrior. Within this lies the irony that a man who returned after war must again take up sword and bow to protect an ordinary life. Thus this film's homecoming is not a simple return. It is returning home while carrying the time one has lived through.

This ancient story does not feel unfamiliar in today's world.

Even today, wars break out in various parts of the globe. Each war has its justification. It is said to be for protecting the nation, for justice, to prevent greater sacrifice. Yet as wars drag on, circumstances arise that cannot be explained by the original justification alone. Once an opponent is defined as an enemy, human promises are easily pushed aside. This is where the irreversible destruction and suffering that Odysseus caused come to mind.

Does a purpose we believe in right give us the right to disregard the other's humanity?

This seems to be why Nolan invoked 'Zeus's Law.' That law is not a grandiose rule. It is opening one's door to a stranger, not harming a guest, keeping promises—an ancient common sense that people can only live together on the premise that they can trust each other.

War destroys such common sense first. And once broken trust does not return through victory alone.

In the final scene, Odysseus returns to Ithaca. He meets Penelope and encounters his son Telemachus. It is the home he has long awaited.

Yet he boards a ship again. Only after seeing this scene does the film's title take on a different resonance. For Odysseus, homecoming was not the place where everything ends.

He must live on after returning. He cannot forget what has passed. He must spend his remaining time bearing what he has done and its consequences.

The sea is at his side from beginning to end. At first it was the path that blocked his way home; at last it becomes the path he must sail again.

What Odysseus destroyed was not only Troy. What he exploited for victory in war was the trust between people.

When that trust crumbles, the boundary between enemy and ally shifts. No one can trust the goodwill of the other. The collapse of civilization begins not at the moment great walls fall, but when such small promises disappear one by one.

In that sense, 'Odyssey' is not a story that celebrates a hero's victory. It is a story of one human who cannot forget what he did even after his triumph.

And it asks us today as well: Which is harder—winning in war or continuing to live as a human being after the war ends?

Odysseus has finally returned home. But what returned was not the world before war.

The homecoming has ended, but the time he carries has not.

Perhaps that is why Nolan shows the sea once more at the end. That life continues even after the hero's story ends. And in that life, what lingers longest may not be the memory of victory, but the memory of what was destroyed and for what purpose.