'The Odyssey' and the Death of RomanceWhat Nolan's 'The Odyssey' reveals about love in a culture of endless choices.
Last night, I finally watched Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in IMAX—as Nolan intended. Visually, it was breathtaking, but I left the theatre feeling strangely unmoved. Which surprised me, because I’ve always loved Christopher Nolan’s films, despite not being much of a cinephile. Perhaps it’s because the film strips away much of the wonder that made Greek mythology so enchanting. The gods become distant figures, the world feels more grounded than mythical, and the story places almost all of its attention on Odysseus and the brutal realities of his journey home. What surprised (and bothered) me most, however, wasn’t the lack of fantasy. It was the lack of romance. Not romance in the conventional, flowers-and-kisses sense, but romance as in its devotion, the longing, yearning. The quiet certainty that someone is worth crossing oceans for. The Odyssey has endured for thousands of years not simply because it’s an adventure, but because at its heart, lies a marriage tested by time, distance, temptation and war. Odysseus fights monsters to return home, but home has always been Penelope. Without that emotional anchor, the journey feels oddly incomplete. The film never fully captured the cunning intelligence that makes Odysseus such a compelling figure in the first place, nor did it make his longing for home feel as desperate and romantic as it should have. His journey should feel driven by an almost aching desire to return to his wife, but that emotional urgency never felt firmly established in the opening act, which made the story harder to invest in. And then I started thinking about the stories we’re telling today. Not just in films, but across popular culture. It feels as though romance has quietly slipped into the background. Grand gestures have been replaced with convenience. Feeling deeply known by a romantic partner has become increasingly rare. I even recently came across a story about a husband giving the luxury YSL skincare he’d won to his female coworker instead of his wife. Whether intentional or not, it perfectly captured something that’s bothering me for a while. We’re beginning to treat our relationships the same way we treat the products we consume: easily replaceable, transactional and always in search of the next upgrade. Don’t get me wrong, history wasn’t some romantic fairytale. Women were often denied agency, treated as property and expected to live within rigid social roles. But somewhere within those deeply flawed societies also existed an ideal of romance. Men were expected to pursue. To protect. To court. To demonstrate, through both grand gestures and everyday acts, that the woman they loved mattered. When a lady entered the room, a gentleman stood. When she descended a flight of stairs, he offered his hand. He walked her home after an evening together, not because she was incapable, but because he wanted to make sure she arrived safely. These customs weren’t universal, nor were they always sincere, but they reflected a culture that believed love was something to be expressed through action. Today, many of those rituals have quietly disappeared. So much so, that we’re pleasantly surprised when someone holds the door open, remembers the little things we’ve said or simply follows through on a promise. Even responding to a text can feel like an act of exceptional effort. It makes me wonder what happened. Somewhere along the way, we’ve become more connected than ever, yet less intentional with one another. Convenience has replaced courtship. Availability has replaced pursuit. We’re told that love should feel effortless, but perhaps we’ve forgotten that romance has always required effort. We haven’t de-volved as human beings. We’ve simply stopped believing that love is worth the work. And why is that?
Perhaps it has something to do with the media we consume. Many contemporary stories celebrate independence, and rightly so. We’re told that we don’t need another person to be happy, that fulfillment comes from being our best selves first. There is wisdom in that, since I, too, believe that no one should rely on a relationship to give their life meaning. You can see this in books like Elle Kennedy’s Off-Campus series, where the characters are encouraged to pursue their own careers, friendships and personal healing outside the relationship. The romance is healthy precisely because both people have identities that exist beyond each other. But then I think about Love, Rosie. The emotional force of that story comes from years of missed timing, unspoken feelings and the stubborn belief that one person can remain important across an entire lifetime. Rosie and Alex are separated by distance, misunderstandings, other relationships and the ordinary chaos of growing up, yet the story keeps returning to the idea that some connections do not simply disappear because life moves on. They keep choosing each other, even when it would be easier not to. That kind of devotion, the belief that a person is not easily replaceable, feels increasingly rare in a culture built on endless options. Maybe that is why modern romances didn’t hit as hard as the old, it’s because: we’ve learned the importance of independence, but we’re still trying to remember how to deeply choose someone. For most of human history, the people you met were the people in your village, your town and your workplace. Today, we carry an endless catalogue of strangers in our pockets. If someone disappoints us, there always seemed to be another profile to swipe to, another conversation to start, another possibility waiting just beyond the screen. The abundance of choice can quietly convince us that people, too, are replaceable. And then there’s art. The great romances that have survived for centuries, like The Odyssey, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights. They weren’t stories about finding someone perfect. They were stories about devotion, sacrifice, longing and choosing the same person despite every obstacle. Even many of the love songs that endured weren’t about casual attraction, but about yearning for someone who mattered deeply. I’m not saying those kinds of stories no longer exist. They do. But they no longer seem to define our culture in the way they once did. We seem more interested in stories about self-discovery than shared devotion, more fascinated by chemistry than commitment, more comfortable celebrating the beginning of love than the quiet decision to keep choosing each other, day after day. It is no wonder why romance feels different now. Not because we’ve stopped falling in love, but because we’ve stopped treating lover as something sacred. Sincerely, Cherie. (PS: Please don’t come for me if you disagree with this essay. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and if you loved the film, I’m genuinely glad you did. I’m simply approaching it as someone who loves ancient history, mythology and Christopher Nolan’s work. This is just my personal reaction, and being a fan doesn’t mean we have to love every single thing a creator makes.) The Whiffler is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell The Whiffler that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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