Ellen Page is the perfect person to play Sinon, and a Catholic should be deeply excited by Nolan’s casting and writing of this character, rather than apprehensive or worried about the film being “woke”.
Let me explain.
In Matthew 13, Jesus’ disciples ask him why he teaches in parables. Christ answers them in a rather cryptic fashion: “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given…This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand…But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” Christ frames his decision to teach in parables as a way to speak to those ready to listen while those who have closed their eyes and ears to the Gospel may not even realize a message is present.
By casting Ellen Page, a woman who has surgically altered her body to pretend to be a man, as the character Sinon, Nolan gives us a parable for the transgender movement as a whole that, when properly understood, castigates our modern Western world for allowing the lies of transgenderism to contaminate our society and murder our children. Far from being some “woke” attempt to normalize or defend transgenderism, Nolan’s Odyssey reveals the tragedy of what this deeply evil movement has done to our children, and by casting Page in this role, Nolan signals the deeply Catholic underpinnings of his adaptation of The Odyssey.
Spoilers abound from here on out, for Nolan’s Odyssey in particular since it departs from the source material in crucial ways for my argument.
Also, when I use the pronoun “he”, I am referring to the character Sinon, and when I use the pronoun “she”, I am referring to the actress Ellen Page.
First, who is Sinon? The character does not appear in Homer’s Odyssey, but is a crucial character in the story of the end of the Trojan War, and he does appear in the Aeneid. He is the Greek soldier remaining on the beaches of Troy with the Trojan Horse, and he explains to the Trojans that the horse is an offering to Athena left by the departing Greeks to ensure fair winds home. Sinon has been consistently interpreted in the Western tradition as a symbol of deceit and treachery; Shakespeare uses him as a negative character comparison in several plays, and Dante places him among the fraudulent counselors in the 8th circle of Hell. Throughout most of the Western tradition, Sinon was not a sympathetic character.
In Nolan’s Odyssey, he is. Kind of. Nolan’s version of the character has something of a back story. When Odysseus left for Troy, he chose the men who would make up his army by lot. Antinous, one of Penelope’s future suitors, was chosen by lot to go but he bribed Sinon’s family to send Sinon, at the time not even a teenager, in his place. Although Odysseus saw through the ruse, he allowed Antinous to perpetrate this deception to prevent shame from coming on both Antinous’ and Sinon’s fathers. To cover up this shameful transaction, he brought a child into battle with him. Sinon fought by Odysseus’ side for ten years and was left to tell the Trojans that the Horse was a peace offering, but when they arrive they mercilessly kill him from afar with spears before he can speak. With his last breath, he gasps out that the horse is a gift for Athena, convincing the Trojans to bring the nefarious gift into the city. Through Sinon’s sacrifice and deception, the downfall of Troy is assured and the Greeks capture the city.
But Sinon’s story is not finished. When Odysseus visits Hades, Sinon comes and drinks of the sacrificial blood which allows him to speak. And when he does, it is revealed that Sinon the Deceiver is actually Sinon the Dupe. When Odysseus left Sinon on that beach, he knew the boy would die. Since dying men tell the truth, Odysseus deceived Sinon and let him believe the Trojan Horse really was nothing more than a peace offering. Odysseus let a child die for a lie that would bring down a civilization.
Is this not the story of transgender children? Before they are old enough to fully understand the weight of their actions, they are allowed, nay encouraged, to make decisions that will ruin their chance of a normal life. They are bought and sold by faithless adults, deceived and in turn repeating the deception while those who know better stand by silent to preserve their parents from social embarrassment. These children mutilate their own bodies but cannot convincingly “pass” as a member of their desired gender, even as Ellen Page does not convincingly fill out the armor of a Greek warrior. The armor is ill-fitting and seems designed to call attention to the fact that the person wearing it is not a man. And finally, as the deception begins to crumble around them, the same adults that encouraged or allowed this madness in the first place sacrifice these children on the altar of deception, allowing them to destroy their bodies and minds sometimes to the point of suicide rather than tell them the truth.
The parallels are striking. Throughout the film, Odysseus and the Greeks stand as an allegory for the destruction wrought on Western Civilization by its own sons in the last century. The Achaean cities are troubled by reports of the raiding Sea Peoples, whom Odysseus says will destroy civilization to the extent that even writing will be forgotten. He also reveals that the Sea Peoples are the Greek armies themselves, returning from war but unable to be at peace, plundering and destroying as they had trained themselves to do for ten long years outside the walls of Troy. Odysseus blames himself for breaking Zeus’ Law, deceiving the Trojans through an offering to the gods, making war using the instruments of peace. By breaking divine law, the gods have retreated from the Greeks, leaving chaos and destruction as their path.
So it is today. We have abandoned the Law of God, desecrating everything in our path and becoming the agents of our own destruction. Even those of us who were well-meaning share a great deal of the blame for going along with the deception and sacrilege for a share in the promised “progress”. One of the most visible and insane acts of civilizational self-deception we have propagated is the transgender movement, and so Nolan’s choice to cast one of Hollywood’s most visible victims of transgender ideology in this particular role is utterly fitting in the story he is trying to tell. Nolan is telling a story of our civilization in decline by returning to one of our foundational myths and making it an elegy for the West. In this context, his choice to cast Ellen Page in the role of Sinon is not only fitting; it is crucial to understanding Nolan’s deeper meaning. Could Nolan’s use of a transgender actress be itself a Trojan Horse, pretending to be an offering to the gods of woke while containing inside a truly subversive Christian message?
Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
This analysis saves the movie for me. Sinon’s heartbreaking rant in Hades is what I imagine Page herself might one day say about the way she was manipulated and deceived by propagators of transgender ideology. Whether Nolan intended this or not, the truth always has a way of permeating art. The wonderful thing about Nolan is that he just might have intended it.
Interesting take! I like your interpretation, but I can't help thinking that the motives you are attributing to Nolan might be wishful thinking. It would be awesome if it were true, though. I suppose we will never really know the thought process that goes into the planning of any movie. All we can do is reflect on how the film strikes us and hope that we are struck or affected in the way the artist intended. The question I have is whether this is a case of beauty (or goodness) being in the eye of the beholder, (Joe Wilson), or if this film actually has an objective goodness that ought to be appreciated. I really liked the use of your parallel with Christ's use of parables. I have not actually seen the movie yet, so we will have to see whether I actually have "eyes to see and ears to hear!" :)