In cinema as in geopolitics, 2026 will be remembered as the year the West declared war on complexity. If on the military level, the new Gulf War between the United States and Iran is becoming bogged down in a grueling battle of attrition, on the cultural level, the big screen offers a perfect reflection of this crisis with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Two seemingly distant arenas, yet united by the same original sin: total strategic illiteracy and the rejection of the mêtis, that analytical cunning that for millennia has been the true driving force of Mediterranean civilization.
The Hollowed-Out Myth: Nolan’s Muscular Ulysses
Nolan’s cultural sin is consummated by the erasure of the two logical pillars of Homer’s poem: the deception of “Nobody” in Polyphemus’s cave and the ordeal of the nuptial bed with Penelope. In the 2026 film, the encounter with the Cyclops is stripped of dialogue and reduced to a silent survival horror, while the epic olive tree bed rooted to the ground is replaced by the fetish of a golden brooch.
Stripped of his verbal intelligence, Matt Damon’s Ulysses ceases to be the master of deception and becomes a common soldier, a traumatized veteran who passively endures the fury of events. Even the direction stumbles with obvious color distortions—such as the sudden and controversial transition of Penelope’s dress from green to blue between two consecutive shots—defended by the production as “psychological expressionism,” but perceived by audiences as a clumsy attempt to mask a continuity error with specious intellectual superstructures.
The 1954 Precedent: When Directing Speaks European
To understand the extent of this cultural reductionism, one need only look to the past. In 1954, Italian director Mario Camerini directed the monumental Ulysses, produced by Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti. Although the leading role was entrusted to Kirk Douglas—the very embodiment of the athletic Hollywood hero—the screenplay, co-written by European intellectuals such as Ennio Flaiano and Vitaliano Brancati, asserted the supremacy of brains over brawn.
Camerini’s Ulysses defeated Polyphemus (Italian wrestler Umberto Silvestri) with wine and logic, and reunited with Penelope (Silvana Mangano) by claiming the immovable secret of their shared memory. That work demonstrated that when the direction has European roots, the myth resists trivialization: the hero doesn’t need to be an invincible superhero, because his true weapon is the word, the ability to understand the enemy’s psychology and turn it to his advantage.
From the big screen to the Persian Gulf: the Pentagon’s shortsightedness
This cinematic short circuit is dramatically mirrored in the reality of the 2026 Gulf War. The Donald Trump administration is confronting Iran, a millennia-old civilization with a profound historical memory, applying the same muscular linearity as American action cinema.
The Pentagon’s insistence on carpet-bombing Iranian underground bunkers—such as the fortresses of Natanz and Yaz, dug beneath hundreds of meters of solid granite—is the geopolitical equivalent of Nolan’s direction. US strategists know perfectly well that GBU-57 super-penetrating bombs cannot physically destroy those installations protected by the rock. Yet, they continue to strike the entrances in a sterile visual spectacle, promptly thwarted by the Tehran army, which reopens the tunnels within days with standard earth-moving equipment. It is the illusion of visible force: spectacular impact is preferred to the intelligence of a long-term strategy.
The need for a European “director”
The new Gulf War demonstrates that the “head-on” approach and muscular unilateralism do not produce winners, but only international isolation and uncontrollable escalation. If the management of this crisis were entrusted to a political “director” with a profound European sensibility, the axis of the conflict would be reversed.
Europe, which grew on the ruins of centuries-old conflicts resolved only through multilateralism and the rule of law, knows that a millennia-old civilization cannot be defeated by aerial retaliation. A diplomacy of the mêtis would seek a win-win solution: not the unattainable destruction of the enemy, but the integration of Iran into a regional security system, exchanging the lifting of economic sanctions for rigorous control of maritime routes and sensitive programs. A framework agreement that allows both sides to protect their strategic interests while saving face.
As long as the West continues to prefer knee-jerk reactions to the study of history, it will remain condemned to producing soulless films and endless wars. Whether in Ithaca or Tehran, Homer’s lesson remains unchanged: faced with the labyrinths of history and granite mountains, brute force is merely a charade destined to fail. True victory has always belonged to those who know how to use their intelligence.
