I wasn’t sure what to expect from Christopher Nolan’s film version of “The Odyssey.” He surprised me. I won’t say “pleasantly,” for Homer’s is not a pleasant tale. Nolan does full justice to the story, but it’s his nuanced take on it that makes this great film.

Yes, we get lots of monsters and storms at sea, and a lot of talk about what the gods demand of us and how they punish us for transgressions. The writer(s) known as “Homer” never let us forget that all our choices will have consequences and that any harm we do will be punished or require atonement, no matter how noble our intentions might have been. The mightiest of heroes will be laid low by the tiniest of flaws; the conquering king who sacrificed love on the altar will be tricked and slain by the one whose love he never doubted.

Nolan adds a modern psychological take on the story by positioning post-traumatic stress as another monster that threatens those who have taken part in war, have killed or witnessed killing, Time after time, Odysseus and his men must run for their lives over sand that sucks at their feet and try to launch their boats in time to escape creatures that are too big, too powerful, too many for them. The stuff of nightmares, a key symptom of PTSD.

In true epic style, Nolan finally takes us to the crux of the story: what happened after Odysseus and his men got out of the Trojan horse.

First, we see them in the horse, crammed together for days, waiting for the Trojans to come. The horse had to be partially buried in the sand so it would stay upright, and every time the tide comes in, some of the men drown. The lower part of the horse fills up with their urine and feces, and when the Trojans pull the horse over so they can haul it to the city, the men are rolled around in the muck. Swords stuck into the statue cut some of them. One man has to be held down and stifled when he panics.

When they finally get out, Nolan brings out all their terror and determination in a long, breathless sequence as they sprint down narrow streets through the sleeping town to the gates, killing any sentries along the way. But the alarm is given before they can unbar the enormous gates, and Nolan makes it a near thing before they finally get the gates open to reveal the towering figure of Agamemnon with his army behind him. The camera reverses course as the army sweeps back up through the town, yelling loudly, setting fires, overtuning statues, and killing and raping as they run for the palace.

The Trickster character is known for liking to stir things up just to see what will happen. Oyssesus is a Trickster, the strategic brain that the king brings along to find a way other than brute force for winning. Odysseus is beloved of Athena, the goddess of strategy,for this reason. She loves it even when he lies to her face, laughing as she calls him out:

“Cunning would he be and deceitful, who could overreach you

In various wiles, and even if a god should confront you.

Versatile-minded wretch, insatiate in wiles, you would not

Cease from deceits though you are in your own land,

Or from fraudulent stories that from the ground up are dear to you.” (Od. 13. 291-295).

But as Odysseus watches the Greeks tear the beautiful city of Troy down to the ground, he sinks down in shock. He had not anticipated just how much rage the Greeks have stored up for 10 years “on that damn beach” while the Trojans rebuffed all their attempts to breach their walls, their anger over the deaths of their great hero Achilles and all the other soldiers lost in battle driving them to destroy everything in their path. Even the temples of the gods are violated. And he grieves, because he senses in that moment that the destruction of Troy is going to have a domino effect on all the civilizations of the world he knows.

A major theme of Nolan’s film is the breaching of the social contract, “Zeus’s law,” that states that the stranger must be made welcome and given whatever they need. In return, the stranger may not harm any within the household. Following this law, Odysseus’s wife Penelope has been forced to host over 100 “suitors” for her hand who want to become the new king of Ithaca. Penelope, a bit of a Trickster herself, manages to hold them off for years while they eat all the food, rape the serving women, and do their best to provoke the young prince Telemachus into breaking the law so that they can retaliate and kill him. Odysseus’s men repeatedly violate this law on the long trip home, provoking retribution from both their [usually unwilling] hosts and the gods, until all but Odysseus are killed.

Cast up on the nymph Calypso’s isle, Odysseus develops amnesia about his past. In the source material, Calypso wants to keep Odysseus by her side, but the gods send Hermes (another glib Trickster) to convince her to let him go. In Nolan’s version, Calypso deliberately feeds Odysseus lotus flowers to help him forget until he is finally ready to remember, and then serves as his therapist as she takes him through the roots of his trauma. Finally, Odysseus is ready to go home. He has been punished over and over, which he accepts as atonement for the great wrong that he enabled at Troy.

However, when Odysseus finally reaches home and puts the smackdown on the suitors, it feels like the sack of Troy all over again. The rage of the Greeks against the Trojans that was stoked for 10 years finds new form in Odysseus’s rage over the 10 years it took him to reach home again, and he behaves just as they did. He has already accepted that there will be no real homecoming for him, as there rarely is for veterans coming back from war. He accepts that he will always be haunted by the ghosts of the men he led to their deaths and that he is no longer fit to be a king. He turns his throne over to Telemachus and sails into exile.