One of the most striking aspects of The Odyssey film is the absence of the gods who are present almost everywhere in Homer’s poem.

They are not entirely absent. Their names are mentioned, and they are spoken of, but they no longer intervene directly in the story as they do in Homer’s telling. They do not make decisions, punish, or offer their help. This seemingly minor difference profoundly changes the meaning of the story.

For example, in Homer’s account, Odysseus is able to resist the enchantment of the goddess Circe because Hermes warns him of the danger and gives him a plant called moly to protect him. Hermes tells Odysseus what Circe does and gives him the means to resist her magic. In the film, however, Hermes is nowhere to be found. Odysseus distrusts the food Circe has prepared and resists the spell through his own intuition, courage, and vigilance, ultimately saving both himself and his men.

A similar transformation takes place with Calypso.

In Homer’s account, Odysseus’s departure from Calypso’s island is made possible by Zeus’s decision and Hermes’s intervention. In the film, however, there is no divine command. Instead, there is Odysseus’s conscience.

Odysseus, whose only wish is to return home to his beloved wife Penelope and his son, suddenly realizes—with bewilderment and pain—that he has spent years on an island with Calypso and has forgotten everything else. The fact that a person can suddenly become aware of something they have been immersed in for years brings to mind certain psychic processes and moments of insight that we encounter in therapy.

The Lotus flower that makes him forget everything, in turn, evokes the defense of denial that many people resort to in order to cope with pain. What Odysseus is trying to escape through this profound act of forgetting is, ultimately, his guilt.

As the man who conceived the idea of the Trojan War, he carries a profound sense of responsibility for the devastation inflicted upon the city and its people. His guilt becomes an obstacle to his desire; the destruction that once took place outside him is now directed inward, toward the self. He becomes unable to experience the reunion he longs for.

Once again, we see Odysseus caught in a form of psychic conflict that could belong to any human being: a man whose desire is under attack by guilt and who therefore cannot reach fulfillment. Indeed, throughout the film, what we initially take to be Athena’s watchful gaze is ultimately revealed to be a representation of the remorse that refuses to leave him.

In the poem, the gods are the primary forces determining what happens to the hero. Their anger, their mercy, their assistance, their punishments—everything happens because of the gods and through the gods.

In the film, however, we find both the gods who punish and bring about destruction, and those who forgive and open the way home, within the human being himself, somewhere close to the conscience.

The gods are no longer on Mount Olympus. They are within us.

Perhaps the greatest battles are no longer fought at Troy or in the temples of Athena, but within the human being.