Nolan changed The Odyssey to make a point about the leadership dilemma
When institutions are under attack by people who hide behind the rules, should leaders break those rules?
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
In Christopher Nolan’s movie, Odysseus had to confront the challenge of ignoring the rules of Greek civilisation to defeat enemies of Greek civilisation.
PHOTO: UIP
Gautam Mukunda
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has taken more than US$900 million (S$1.15 billion) worldwide in three weeks before even opening in China, Japan or South Korea. The director, whose other credits include Oppenheimer and three Batman movies, cashed his blank cheque from Hollywood on a three-hour adaptation of one of the founding texts of Western literature, in which he recast the hero’s most celebrated achievement as a crime. Nolan’s movies have a unique combination of commercial success, critical acclaim and intellectual heft (who talks about the ideas in Avatar?).
Stretching across 20 years of those movies is a deep engagement with one of the defining leadership questions of our time. When institutions are under attack, from inside or out, by people who hide behind the rules those institutions create and enforce, should leaders defending them break those rules? And if they do, how do they ensure that they aren’t destroying the very things they are trying to preserve?
