The Odyssey Underworld Scene, Explained
The most spectacular sequence in Cristopher Nolan’s The Odyssey doesn’t involve a horse or a sword. It barely even involved a ship.
Instead, it arrives at around the halfway point of the movie, along with the most adventurous movements in Ludwig Göransson's score, as Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his crew travel to the far west and the Underworld.
Filmed at dusk on the black sands of Hjörleifshöfði in Iceland, the scene is both a visual marvel and a pivotal moment in the story as it sets up blind Tiresias’ prophecy, reveals the consequences of Agamemnon’s hubris, and compounds Odysseus’ guilt for leaving his fallen comrades behind.
Why Odysseus travels to the Underworld
In short: Odysseus goes to the Underworld to hear blind Tiresias’ prophecy. This decision comes after he escapes the Cyclops and encounters the sorceress Circe (Samantha Morton). When they arrive on her island looking for food, Circe initially turns his men into pigs but later comes to an agreement with Odysseus to let them go.
Before they depart, she explains to Odysseus that he has gone too far off course to find his way back and that his only hope of returning to Ithaca is to travel to the far west (“where a river of ice meets a river of fire”) and find Tiresias in the Underworld. When they arrive, they must sacrifice two animals and pour their blood onto a shield, as the dead can only speak after drinking it.
Everything that Sinon and Tiresias tell him to do
One of Nolan’s biggest additions to Homer’s poem was to bring Sinon (Elliot Page), a character from Virgil’s The Aeneid, into the story and to use him as a kind of composite character for the siege of Troy. The young soldier first appears at the very beginning of the movie on the beach outside the city, where he’s quickly pinned to the wooden horse by two arrows shot by Trojan soldiers.
In Nolan’s movie, Sinon is the first ghost who appears in the Underworld — where he asks why Odysseus lied to him and left him to die on the beach. Odysseus explains that Sinon needed to believe the lie that the horse was empty in order for his plan to work and for the war to be over. He also pleads with him to understand that he was very much with him when he died, close enough to even smell his blood.
Tiresias then rises from the black sand to tell Odysseus his prophecy, explaining that the prodigal King will have to pass both the Sirens and the strait of Messina (where he will have to choose between Scylla taking six of his men or the whirlpool Charybdis killing all of them) in order to return home. He also warns him that his men will kill and eat the sun god Helios’ cattle, and that this selfish act will result in their demise, leaving Odysseus alone.
A little later, Sinon thanks Odysseus for giving him a proper burial before explaining that Odysseus’ other fallen comrades from his travels are not so pleased with how he left their bodies behind. Odysseus promises that he will make amends by travelling west again as soon as Ithaca is in order, but before he can say more the dead appear and chase Odysseus and his crew back to their boat.
Why Agamemnon is in the Underworld, and who’s missing
The other main character we get to see in the Underworld is Agamemnon, who glides eerily towards them before drinking from the sacrificial blood. He then ruefully explains to Odysseus how he died: stabbed in his bed by Clytemnestra — his wife and Helen’s twin sister — as just revenge for sacrificing their daughter to the gods in exchange for favourable winds. Before leaving, Agamemnon offers Odysseus some advice for when he makes it back to Ithaca, recommending that he disguise himself and survey the situation before revealing his true identity to anyone.
Narrative-wise, the sequence covers everything it needs to for the movie version of The Odyssey, but regarding the source material Nolan takes plenty of directorial license. In translations of Homer’s poem, during the Underworld scene, Odysseus encounters various figures from his past who each offer him plenty of food for thought. These included a young soldier named Elpenor (who Sinon basically fills in for) and his mother, as well as some well-known gods like Sisyphos and Heracles.
The biggest omission is probably Achilles, a character who notably isn’t mentioned once in Nolan’s movie (though he is probably represented by Sinon, too). In Homer’s poem, the legendary warrior appears in the Underworld to talk to Odysseus about his regret over dying so young and the emptiness of being a hero in the afterlife. If I had to guess, I’d say that Nolan tactfully left this out so as not to conjure the memories of Brad Pitt in Troy — whose evocative monologue about how the “gods envy us” would potentially be as distracting as his flawless torso.
Regardless, it’s probably the best scene in the movie.
