The Odyssey (2026) has been immensely well-received by global moviegoers. It offers sweeping IMAX cinematography, and director Christopher Nolan delivers a respectful treatment of the source material about kingship, family, and loyalty, balanced with bold reinterpretations of several ideas. One example is how civilizational collapse at the end of the Bronze Age is reimagined as having been accelerated by the Greek coalition’s actions at Troy. And Odysseus’ (Matt Damon) relationship with Athena (Zendaya), especially with the twist at the end of the film, is ambiguous and subversive. Other supernatural encounters feel fantastical yet grounded.

But one of the primary reasons why The Odyssey is so successful is that it is a character study—of the king of Ithaca and how his crafty, deceptive nature contributes to his own misfortunes and to catastrophe in his wider world. The period of the Trojan War was circa 1200–1184 BCE, corresponding roughly to the mid-Rigvedic period (1500–1000 BCE), when the Rigveda of the Indo-Aryan pastoral-priestly tribes was being committed to memory. The Homeric era was around 750–700 BCE, almost a 500-year gap from the Trojan War. Homer still came considerably earlier than the post-Vedic transition of the Buddha’s time in the fifth or fourth century BCE. Nevertheless, the Buddha and the early sangha would probably have recognized in Odysseus similar lessons that Homer offered: that Odysseus, despite his wit and strategic thinking, is actually an avatar of unskilful speech, in particular of lying (Skt: mrishavada).

Odysseus’ karmic debts pile on in the very first scene of the film, when his soldier Sinon (Elliot Page) dies for a lie: that the Trojan Horse is a gift for Athena in the heart of Troy. In the film, Sinon is an unwitting participant in Odysseus’ deceptive strategy, while Homer portrayed him as an accomplice. Nolan handles the inherited material excellently with a scene in the underworld, where Sinon confronts Odysseus for his dishonesty in a dramatic reunion.

The fundamental deceit of the wooden horse is that Sinon claims it to be a parting gift for the temple of Athena inside Troy, from the supposedly retreating Greek army. Rather, it is a means to sneak a commando force led by Odysseus into Troy and open its otherwise impregnable gates from the inside. This would have been recognized by ancient audiences, certainly among Homer’s listeners, as a fraudulent and dishonorable tactic—a tacit admission that the war had already exhausted its strategic objectives and had caused immense suffering and loss on both sides. As Helen of Sparta (Lupita Nyong’o) would put it, she was just the excuse for Greek hegemon Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) to seize Troy’s trade routes. The very motivation for attacking Troy was based on untruths.

The wooden horse is Homer’s most famous representation of bad faith behavior, even as a military tactic. It’s a transgression worthy of a repentance like Ashoka’s after his battle at Kalinga. In contrast, Odysseus regrets the fruit of his actions, but his self-regard for his genius and craftiness sees him repeating the same habitual patterns almost immediately after setting sail for home. His journey back to Ithaca, when taking into account the interventions of Poseidon and Zeus, takes a decade.

Homer’s heroes are figures with positive, even divine qualities, but we can also learn from them as cautionary tales. Men like Achilles (dead by the timeline of the Odyssey), Odysseus’ overlord Agamemnon, and Odysseus himself are epic in the sense of being destructive to everything around them, and inexorably headed toward fates characterized by poetic justice or irony. Agamemnon returns home in glory only to be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra (also played by Lupita Nyong’o) in revenge for sacrificing their daughter to win his war.

Odysseus’ epic wartime deceit on a mass scale is the foundation of his flawed character throughout the original poem and the film. It’s a huge karmic debt that must be repaid, and not even a sympathetic Athena can expunge it. In the Musavada Sutta, the Buddha notes that violating the fourth precept is almost like a gateway drug: it opens the door to further deception, which hardens into habitual patterns that eventually become karmic imprints. “When a personage, spurning the hereafter, transgresses in just one thing—lying—there is no evil they would not do.” (Iti 25) Odysseus’ “big lie” of the wooden horse, devised at a desperate moment to win the war, turns into many smaller, subtler lies, including falsehoods of intentional omission or misdirection against his own crew. Homer also presents themes of predestination. The foreknowledge Odysseus gains from conversing with the shades of Hades does not help his crew. He is the only one to make it back home.

While karmic retribution is a far cry from being condemned by the gods, it is similarly inexorable and unavoidable. Every encounter Odysseus has, from Polyphemus the Cyclops to his meeting with his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) and wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), generates more deception and falsehoods. Even his homecoming is characterized by disguise and subterfuge. Nevertheless, his reunion can only be fulfilled after being shipwrecked by Zeus and kept in enchanted, helpless captivity by Calypso (Charlize Theron) for seven years, itself a form of karmic justice.

Our protagonists are active contributors to their collapsing world, resulting in hushed, fearful whispers about the invaders from the sea, 10 years after the fall of Troy. Nolan argues that Odysseus’ soldiers were in some sense the Sea Peoples because they violated Zeus’s Law: a version of the Golden Rule that exhorts one to be hospitable toward the visitor and welcome the stranger into one’s home. It is a brilliant retelling of Homer’s reminder that his complex characters resonate 3,000 years later because the themes they engage with remain simple, visceral, and timeless: how we conduct ourselves in the face of difficult choices, confront death, and coexist with others.

Like all civilizational literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey offer devotees of all faith traditions profound meditations about how our own choices define our karma, even in the face of fickle and overwhelming gods.

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Dance Is Evidence: Rethinking History Through the Moving Body – Gandhara, Buddhism, and The Greeks
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Alexander the Great and the Buddha: A Cross-Cultural Evolution