ODYSSEY: Dead Men Die

"Mankind had to inflict horrible things on itself before the self, the identical, purposive, male character of man was formed, and something of that still recurs in every childhood." (Adorno/Horkheimer in the "Odyssey" chapter of "Dialectic of Enlightenment"/"Dialektik der Aufklärung") Even in its day and age Homer’s "Odyssey" was testimony to a deep societal crisis and an attempt to overcome the same by violently restoring the "good old days". In "ODYSSEY: Dead Men Die" this propaganda is mercilessly put on trial. A dysfunctional family clashes during a screening of the newest Odyssey-blockbuster: the frustrated cinema landlady, her angry son and the no longer relevant Odysseus-actor, who abandoned his family years ago. They all genuinely yearn for a better world, suffer from the social conditions and seek their salvation in seemingly overcoming these; until the servants, blinded by rage, begin to revolt… "ODYSSEY: Dead Men Die" is a spectacular music theater farce, a cinematic stop-and-go cruise, an apocalyptic musical and theatrical firework of styles, a jarring requiem for the patriarchal order, in which the greatest tragedy of our era - that all resistance preserves that which it is directed against - is only bearable as grotesque.