On Screen · Late Bronze Age, c. 1300–1100 BC · Ithaca, Ionian Islands, Greece
Christopher Nolan defends Agamemnon's dark armour in The Odyssey against accuracy critics
Nolan told Time magazine that the king's costume draws on blackened bronze Mycenaean daggers, while admitting the Bronze Age record is fragmentary.
News reports
Ithaca, Greece Christopher Nolan has defended the look of his film The Odyssey after critics questioned its historical accuracy. In an interview with Time magazine, he said the team had researched every aspect of the film thoroughly. The film adapts Homer's epic and opens in cinemas worldwide on 17 July, HuffPost UK reports.
Questions have circulated on social media since the first trailers appeared last year. They cover everything from the costumes to the American accents of the cast. The latest trailer drew attention for the armour worn by Benny Safdie as King Agamemnon. Some critics compared it to Batman's costumes in Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.
Blackened bronze for a king
Nolan said knowledge of the Bronze Age rests on "very fragmentary archeological records". To explain the dark metal of Agamemnon's armour, he pointed to Mycenaean daggers.
There are Mycenaean daggers that are blackened bronze. The theory is they probably could have blackened bronze in those days. You take bronze, you add more gold and silver to it and then use sulfur.
Christopher Nolan, director, in Time magazine
He said the costume designer, Ellen Mirojnick, used costly materials to set the king apart from everyone around him.
With Agamemnon, Ellen [Mirojnick], our costume designer, is trying to communicate how elevated he is relative to everyone else. You do that through materials that would be very expensive.
Christopher Nolan, director, in Time magazine
Inlaid daggers of this kind are known from the shaft graves at Mycenae, from the 16th century BC. Their blades carry scenes in gold and silver set against a dark metal ground. Nolan himself described the blackening of bronze as a theory. He did not say that any armour of this kind has been found.
Heroes in the dress of Homer's time
Nolan also defended a second choice: showing the characters as Homer's first listeners might have pictured them. He argued that this follows the earliest images of the story.
The oldest depictions of Homeric characters tend to be depicted in the manner of people living in Homer's time. So there's a pretty strong case there for portraying things that way because that's the way the first audience received the story.
Christopher Nolan, director, in Time magazine
The Iliad and the Odyssey are usually dated to around the 8th or 7th century BC. They tell of heroes set several centuries earlier, in the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenae was a centre of power in Greece. Nolan's argument rests on this gap between the world the poems describe and the world in which they were first heard.
Nolan said he hoped sceptical classicists would still enjoy the film. He compared their objections to complaints from scientists about his earlier film Interstellar.
Hopefully they'll enjoy the film, even if they don't agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar. But you just don't want people to think that you took it on frivolously.
Christopher Nolan, director, in Time magazine
The Odyssey is Nolan's first film since Oppenheimer. That film was a box office success and won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Cillian Murphy. The cast of The Odyssey includes Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong'o. It is due in cinemas worldwide on 17 July.
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