A few nights ago, I watched The Odyssey with my thirteen-year-old son.
For nearly three hours, there was no AI, no phone, no pausing to search who a character was or what would happen next. We simply watched.
In today's world, that almost feels extraordinary.
As the credits rolled, I realized I hadn't just watched an epic about ancient Greece. I had watched a story about every family that has ever loved, lost, waited, left, and hoped to return.
Thousands of years have passed since Homer first told this story, yet it still feels strangely familiar.
Because The Odyssey was never really about monsters.
It was about home.
Every generation has its own Odyssey
When people hear The Odyssey, they often think of Cyclopes, sirens, sea monsters, and angry gods.
But beneath all the mythology lies a story every human being understands.
Leaving. Growing. Getting lost. Temptation. The choices we make. Waiting for someone we love. And eventually, finding our way home.
Perhaps that is why this story has survived for nearly three thousand years.
Not because it tells us something new. But because it reminds us of something we have always known.
Before the journey home, there was a war
Many people — including me before watching the film — associate The Odyssey with the Trojan Horse.
Yet I later discovered something fascinating. The famous wooden horse isn't actually part of Homer's Iliad.
The Iliad tells the story of the final year of the Trojan War — the rage of Achilles, the courage of Hector, and the heartbreaking cost of glory.
The Trojan Horse belongs to the stories that follow. Then comes The Odyssey.
The war is finally over. The hero has won. And only then does the real journey begin.
That may be the most timeless idea in the entire story.
Sometimes winning the battle isn't the hardest part. Learning how to come home is.
Watching before reading
One thing stayed with me after leaving the cinema.
If I had simply handed Homer to my thirteen-year-old son, I suspect he would have found it difficult. The language is ancient. The mythology is unfamiliar. The cast of gods and heroes is overwhelming.
Like many classics, it can feel more like homework than adventure.
But after seeing the film, everything changed.
Now he already knows Odysseus. He knows Penelope. He understands why Telemachus spends years searching for a father he barely remembers.
If he opens the book one day, he won't be entering an unfamiliar world.
He'll be returning to one.
In an age when reading has become increasingly difficult for many children, perhaps films like this can serve an unexpected purpose.
Not replacing great literature. Introducing it.
Curiosity has always been one of the greatest invitations to read.
I noticed that shortly after the film's release, editions of The Odyssey quickly climbed bestseller lists, with some retailers temporarily selling out.
Perhaps people weren't choosing between the movie and the book. Perhaps the movie simply reminded them that the book was waiting.
Home means something different after you've left
As an immigrant, I couldn't help seeing another layer in Odysseus' journey.
Home is a simple word until you leave it. Then it becomes something much more complicated.
Sometimes home is a city. Sometimes it is a language. Sometimes it is your parents growing older on the other side of the world. Sometimes it is the child sitting beside you in a dark cinema.
Living in Melbourne has taught me that home is not always where you were born.
Sometimes home is where you slowly become yourself again.
Perhaps that is why The Odyssey feels just as relevant today as it did thousands of years ago.
Every generation has its own seas to cross. Every generation has its own reasons for leaving. And every generation, in one way or another, is trying to find its way home.
A mother watching beside her son
As I watched the film, I realized something else.
My son is at the beginning of his own journey. Odysseus is at the end of his. I am somewhere in between.
One day, he will leave home. Not because he wants to leave me, but because that is what children are meant to do.
Our job as parents has never been to stop them from sailing.
It is to make sure they always know where home is.
Maybe that's the truest kind of longing.
That is why stories like The Odyssey continue to matter. Not because they belong to ancient Greece.
But because they belong to all of us.
That evening, I watched the film beside my son.
One day, he'll have his own Odyssey. And wherever life takes him, I hope he always knows the way home.