Mr. Klein is right to say that Mr. Nolan “smuggled” the message in without most viewers even noticing. Most of the film’s audience, including Elon Musk and even the renowned “Odyssey” translator Emily Wilson, who reviewed the film harshly in The London Review of Books, misses what Mr. Klein sees: “Odysseus and his men were not fighting the barbarians; they were the barbarians.”

 

Christopher Nolan’s Trojan Horse

By Ezra Klein

Opinion Columnist