‘An intermission is a must’: why Greek cinemas are adding a loo break to The Odyssey

In Athens’ picturehouses, an interval is always a ‘non-negotiable’ – a chance to buy a beer, nip to the toilet – or pop the question

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As the lights rose during a recent screening of The Odyssey at the Arian open-air cinema on the Athens riviera, nervous laughter floated into the breeze. Moments earlier, Odysseus’s men had morphed into pigs during a grotesque feeding frenzy fuelled by drugged cheese and wine. Now, as the Bangles’ Eternal Flame played on the house speakers, no one seemed especially tempted by the concession stand’s hotdogs.

This is presumably the sort of scenario Christopher Nolan hoped to avoid when he decided against an intermission in his nearly three-hour-long adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. In the epic’s country of origin, however, directors do not get the final word.