Nolan Through the Eyes of a Layperson

The essay analyses Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) in light of Auerbach’s reading of Homer (»Odysseus’s Scar«) and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Drawing on Auerbach’s distinction between the Biblical and Homeric traditions, it relates Nolan’s treatment of the Odyssey to the former and argues that it departs from the latter. It suggests that the pivot of this difference lies in the centrality of the concept of guilt in Nolan’s work. In light of the social changes the essay attributes to the 21st century, it traces the development of Nolan’s oeuvre and identifies a growing presence of the dimension of film-as-waste-object. This is linked to the question of the past achievements of cinema as spectacle, and the essay asks what that same spectacle offers viewers today.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!