The Odyssey: A Pūrākau for the Ages
The Odyssey is a new movie by Christopher Nolan currently in theatres.
Here are some thoughts by Ihaka Brown
Storytelling is one of our most important arteries of culture as human beings. Although some of them are fictitious in nature, they carry messages and lessons to the next generation, whilst also teaching us about what our tūpuna considered important enough to emphasise. In Iran, the legendary archer Arash preserves the story of a great sacrifice that protected their ancestral whenua. In the Arabic sphere, Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves was told around campfires and within homes with a potent reminder of the pitfalls of greed. In Haudenosaunee storytelling, the Three Sisters of frequent pūrākau were a totem of their agricultural traditions.
The more empirical of Western academic historians tend to consider storytelling such as these pūrākau as exotic trinkets. As Māori, we know our pūrākau are one of the many taonga that serve as bridges to our tūpuna. Through stories, we can reach into their world and see how they thought, saw and spoke.
One pūrākau that is rarely scoffed at by the West is the Odyssey. It is perhaps due to its literary image, with T.E. Lawrence famously remarking that it is the greatest ‘novel’ ever written. The truth is of course most of the tūpuna of ancient Greece would have heard it orally, from the storytellers, performers, or tōhunga of their time.
The commercial success of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Greek Epic shows there is still a worldwide interest in this pūrākau, and the lessons it carries. Nolan decided to assume his role as a bard within a whakapapa of thousands of years of storytellers, with his own variation of the story. Fresh off his apocalyptic vision of atomic warfare in Oppenheimer, he makes a specific focus on the death of the prosperous Bronze Age due to a collapse of manaakitanga, the erosion of kotahitanga and the frequent breaking of wairua tapu in the realm of the Greek gods. A pessimistic, cinematic mōteatea that laments the mamae of uncontrollable and unstoppable violence. Perhaps Christopher Nolan wanted to marry the image of the age of nuclear warfare in Oppenheimer, with a parallel in antiquity.
Adaptation and variation in pūrākau are not an unusual thing across cultures. I whakapapa to the universally acknowledged Kurahaupō waka, and I have seen within my Rangahau how the stories around its haerenga shift and transform across iwi, hapū and whānau. The details, tūpuna, or conclusions shift, often to emphasise a message or kaupapa that is important to the rohe or iwi. I am personally happy to see storytellers like Nolan find how persisting pūrākau can carry relevant messages into today. At the same time, I respect the critiques that question how much creatives can play around and mutate these enduring stories.
For Māori, it should be common practice to ask WHY telling our pūrākau is important. Just remembering them for memory’s sake will turn us into western museums who hold taonga purely for the purpose of holding them. Learn your pūrākau and find the place within your community where it can best hold mauri. Find the pieces of our stories that resonate with our struggles today, construct your storytelling style (complete with some flair), and keep the bridge to our tūpuna alive for the next generation.
Outside of these philosophical discussions, my other whakaaro on Nolan’s Odyssey are quite mundane. The score is sensational, the effects are breathtaking, and the visuals are gorgeous. Engari, the needs of Hollywood spill into the movie as you will hear overly expositional, dumbed-down, dialogue and suffer from some out-of-place casting that was likely done to fill the runtime with a lineup of showbiz heavyweights. I think my final rating for this movie would sit at 7/10.
Ihaka Brown (Ngāti Kuri) is a Kaiako in Te Tohu Tiaki Taonga