Thoughts on Christopher Nolan Directing 'The Odyssey'

It's a perfect choice of project. But also a weird one?

Perhaps it was inevitable, in retrospect, that Christopher Nolan would opt to write and direct an adaptation of “The Odyssey.” Some stray thoughts as we head into the new year:

• Homer’s epic poem is, at its core, a tragedy of time. The passing of time is also one of Nolan’s cinematic obsessions, the unsubtle antagonist of many of his films—I’m thinking specifically of “Interstellar,” where the heroic astronauts are forced to take actions that make years pass by in minutes, and “Memento,” in which the confused protagonist’s brain effectively resets a couple times per hour. Time is likewise a killer in “Dunkirk” (low fuel, rising tides, approaching Nazis) and “Tenet” (people in the future using an inertia-reversal engine to try and kill folks in the present day).

• “The Odyssey” will allow Nolan to indulge in his penchant for parallel, interwoven narratives. You have noble Odysseus fighting his way home from Troy for ten long years; meanwhile, his wife, Queen Penelope, is trying to fend off …