Review
Culture
Film & TV
Paganism
5 min read

Kaos shows why we might think twice before inviting the old gods back

The illusory glamour of Olympian gods titillates us once more.

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles.

A mock classical ceiling painting depicts modern version of the classical gods.
Ye gods above.
Netflix.

The old gods are making a comeback all across Western culture. This is a conclusion increasingly reached by a spectrum of culture-watchers; some religious, some not at all. But, if true, the boldest and brashest example of this comeback may well be the new Netflix series KAOS, starring Jeff Goldblum, released last month.  

Kaos is a genre-busting mythological dark comedy-drama. One might say a modern re-summoning of the pagan gods.  

Charlie Covell, the writer and mastermind behind the show, and a self-confessed mythology geek, has created a colourful, high production, and often funny depiction of what the world might be like if the gods of Olympus still ruled over us. The plot follows several different strands taken from Greek mythology - most obviously Orpheus’s journey into the Underworld to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice - and weaves them together into a larger narrative, retelling the downfall of the gods. 

As the show opens, Zeus reigns as king of the gods from his fantastically kitsch mansion atop of Mount Olympus. So long as the sacrifices and adulation of humankind keep rolling in, he is happy. But when he wakes one day to discover a new wrinkle on his forehead, this triggers not only a kind of mid-life crisis, but also possibly - so he fears - the end of the world as he knows it.  

Goldblum plays Zeus as, well, Jeff Goldblum: quirky, nervy, paranoid, and not a little menacing in an understated way. In other words, perhaps more “Jeff Goldblum” than you’ve ever seen him on screen before. It is certainly a compelling and sometimes hilarious portrayal.  

“A line appears, the order wanes, the family falls, and Kaos reigns.”  

This is the prophecy that has haunted Zeus for aeons. What he doesn’t know is that he shares this personalised prophesy with three other mortals in the story - Eurydice (Aurora Perrineau), Caneus (Misia Butler), and Ariadne (Leila Farzad) - all of whom will play an unwitting role in bringing about the overthrow of the world order under the Olympian gods (hence: KAOS). The early episodes establish who these mortals are and begin to draw their disparate stories together.  

Counterpoint to Zeus is his brother, Hades, ruler of a literally black-and-white underworld, with David Thewlis brilliantly cast in the role as the world-weary and ailing keeper of the realm of the dead. Something is amiss down there which threatens the whole system of human souls and what happens to them. When he tries to warn his brother, Zeus’s disdain for Hades and his problems only makes matters worse. Also in the frame of this dysfunctional family are Hera (Janet McTeer) and Poseidon (Cliff Curtis) - brother and sister (and wife in Hera’s case) to Zeus, as well as being lovers behind his back, who are poised to put into effect their own betrayals, if Zeus goes too far off the rails. 

Last, but not least, since he proves the bridge between the gods and humans is Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan), one of Zeus’s many children. (But the only one who comes to visit.) A hedonistic agent of chaos from the outset, Dionysus seems to be the only one of the gods with any genuine interest or admiration for humans. Impressed by rock-star Orpheus’s passionate love for his wife, Eurydice (“Riddy”), it is Dionysus who helps Orpheus break into the Underworld to get her back when she dies, thus triggering the series of events that could let to the fulfilment of the prophesy. 

The illusory glamour of the gods of Olympus seem to titillate us once more. We don’t really believe in them, but we’d kind of like to see more of them all the same.

Smart, stylish, twisty and certainly original - (the entrance to the Underworld is through a dumpster bin around the back of a bar) - Kaos is an ambitious multi-stranded epic about power, fate, love, and family. But perhaps above all, it is saying something about the relationship between humanity and the divine. At one point, one mortal tells another that the only good things in life are human. This feels like a statement of underlying intent. And the way the gods (especially Zeus) become more capricious, more sadistic, more vengeful as the story unfolds, the more it feels like we’re encouraged to agree. Defiance of the gods is the real mark of virtue here. Rebellion against the gods, the natural outworking of that defiance. 

The irony is that whatever distaste which Kaos succeeds in cultivating in us, the viewer, for pagan forms of the divine may help explain why, historically, Christianity swept aside all the pantheons of pagan worship of the first millennium in the wholesale way that it did. Jesus Christ literally incarnates that bridge between the divine and the human. And what’s more, the message he preached claimed that, far from disdaining humanity, God loves them so much that he was willing to be the sacrifice for their good. And not the other way round, demanding incessant and capricious sacrifice by humans instead.  

Now, centuries later, in Western culture, familiarity seems to have bred contempt with that far more hopeful story. Instead, the illusory glamour of the gods of Olympus seem to titillate us once more. We don’t really believe in them, but we’d kind of like to see more of them all the same. And storytellers like Charlie Covell are only too willing to give the public what they want. If the old gods are indeed trying to make a comeback, Kaos shows us why we might think twice before inviting them in.  

Does Kaos succeed? It certainly makes a valiant attempt to marshal a large number of plot lines involving a huge cast of characters, unfortunately not all of whom are interesting enough to keep you coming back for more. And an awful lot is riding on there being a Season 2 - that is, if the threads we have followed so far are to lead on into a satisfying and meaningful conclusion.  

Without that, I’m afraid the whole thing may be left standing alone as a work of, well… chaos. 

Review
Books
Culture
Film & TV
Purpose
8 min read

You may never take the Salt Path but here's why the tale makes sense

Kindness runs deep in the architecture of reality.

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

A hiking couple sit on the grass next to a pack.
Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.
BBC Films.

The Salt Path is a phenomenon.  

An internationally best-selling book and now a movie starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. How is it that a memoir of a middle-aged couple walking the South West Coast Path from Somerset to Dorset, via Land’s End, has had such an impact? 

Well, it’s because it resonates. It rings true. It’s about life as we know it, even if we haven’t hiked the 630 miles of the path from start to finish. A journey that is also, incidentally, the equivalent of climbing Mt Everest four times over. 

In the events leading up to their walk Raynor (Ray) and Moth Winn are dealt a series of body blows. They’re left bankrupt and homeless empty-nesters, struggling to come to terms with Moth’s deteriorating health.  

It was just as the bailiffs were seeking to gain access to their farm and take possession of it that Ray spotted an old book, 500 Hundred Mile Walkies, and took inspiration. 

‘We could just walk.’ 

And that’s what they did. 

So, what are the truths about life and our human experience that this story opens up for us? 

Life is precarious  

Bad stuff happens. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, the consequence of wrong or ill-judged decisions. Other times it is thoroughly undeserved. Life turns around and bites us, hard. We’re left with our heads numb and spinning round with the persistent but unanswered question, ‘why me?’ 

For the Winns, an investment in the business of a trusted, life-long friend failed. The deal he structured left them responsible for the debts of his company. The end of a prolonged legal battle meant they lost everything, their farm, their home, their business, and the life-long friend. 

The same week also found them in a hospital in Liverpool getting the diagnosis for Moth’s chronic shoulder pain. It was not the suspected nerve damage, but rather the fatal neurological condition corticobasal degeneration. CBD. A diagnosis that was untreatable and only finally confirmed postmortem. 

Whether it’s the South West Coast Path or the familiar details of our own life, we can never fully anticipate tomorrow. We do not know what lies behind the next headland or what unwelcome surprises life may spring on us. No, we need to live in the moment. It’s pointless worrying about tomorrow and we ought to let it worry about itself. We can only live in today. As Ray reflected towards the end of their time on the path: 

“This second in the millions of seconds was the only one, the only one that we could live in.” 

Who am I, really? 

Early in the book Ray recalls: 

“I once heard a lecture by Stephen Hawking, when he said, ‘It’s the past that tells us who we are. Without it we lose our identity.’ Perhaps I was trying to lose my identity, so I could invent a new one.” 

Who are we when everything is stripped away? What defines us? Homeless and jobless, questions about where we’re from and what we do are not only awkward, they also create an existential void.  

Often mistaken for tramps, Ray and Moth noticed people treating them differently. Some quietly moved away, others were more forthright, “disgusting!” But the judgement of others does not define who we are. Yet, who actually were they in this new world of theirs?  

And then there’s the impact of failing health. Each stage of deterioration promising to erode what can be physically done and requiring a redefinition until there is nothing left at all.  

Yet identity is deeper than that. It is at the core of who we are, at the very heart of us. It is the sum of our experiences and choices, our successes and failures, of what we have gladly embraced and that which life has unexpectedly thrown at us. We are unique individuals with intrinsic value, worth and dignity. People who love and are loved. 

At the end of the path Ray muses: 

“Most people go through their whole lives without answering their own questions: What am I, who do I have within me? The big stuff. What a waste.” 

I guess that’s one of the attractions of making space to walk. To lose the distractions and busyness of our over-complicated lives for self-discovery to break in. 

One step at a time 

How do you get your head around walking 630 miles? How can you appreciate the demands of climbing unknown hills and cliffs and navigating their gullies and ravines.  

On top of the terrain there’s the notorious English weather to negotiate. With little money and only a tent for respite: when it rains you get wet and stay wet, when it’s cold, you shiver and put on as many layers as you can. Even in August it can be challenging. 

Walk, eat, sleep, repeat. 

Sometimes the only thing to do is put one foot in front of the other.  

“Each step had its own resonance, its moment of power or failure. That step, and the next and the next and the next, was the reason and the future. … each day survived a reason to live through the next.” 

There is always agency. There is always the opportunity to choose today which path to travel and which attitude to serve. To give in or go on, to be a defeatist or hopeful, complaining or generous, those choices are always there, even when they’re limited. Even in the wake of unfair decisions and unexpected tragedy, we choose today the way we take. And sometimes that’s all we can muster. 

The kindness of strangers 

Ray and Moth’s story is littered with moments of kindness and warmth. From the lovelorn waitress who sneaks them the day’s leftover pasties to the generosity of a hippie commune there is a recurring theme that echoes an underlying goodness in the nature of people. And often it is those with the least who prove to be the most open-handed and thoughtful. 

On more than one occasion the Winn’s themselves share from their own meagre supply of food, especially their precious fudge bars, with those in a more uncertain state than their own. On another occasion they step into a tense and potentially violent situation with a young woman, Sealy, the subject of an abusive relationship. They offer her company and a way out, ultimately paying for her £5 bus journey to get away to family. 

There is something heartwarming about kindness, something elevating. Both the giver and the receiver feel encouraged, lighter, happier. The abiding truth continues to stand the test of time that it is ‘better to give than to receive’.  

Strangely, watching these scenes play out in my local Showcase Cinema was an uplifting and inspiring experience. You can never predict or properly anticipate when a tear will unexpectedly present itself to the corner of your eye. I suspect that kindness runs more deeply in the nature of things than we comprehend. It is part of the deep architecture of reality.

Love and relationship in tough times 

When it comes down to it, The Salt Path is about Ray’s relationship with Moth. How they face an unimaginably difficult set of circumstances and find a way through together. This is a profoundly hopeful story. And from it we can draw hope too. 

There was nothing religious about what they were doing, “It’s not a pilgrimage. Is it?”  

At one level it is purely a response to desperation. But in the midst of it all they have each other. Thirty-two years together, having begun their relationship when Ray was 18, they are still deeply in love. They epitomise the values enshrined in the marriage vows. 

“… to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part …” 

This is not slushy sentimentality but rather love that proves itself in the face of the onslaught of ‘worse … poorer … sickness … death’. 

The conclusion of their journey led Ray to a realisation: “I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home.” As the ancient poet wrote: 

“Set me as a seal upon your heart,  

as a seal upon your arm; 

for love is strong as death, 

passion fierce as the grave. 

Its flashes are flashes of fire, 

a raging flame. 

 

Many waters cannot quench love, 

neither can floods drown it. 

If one offered for love 

all the wealth of one's house, 

it would be utterly scorned.” 

(Song of Solomon) 

That’s it then. The book and the movie work because they reflect back to us the life we know, the lives we live. Yes, they’re in high relief in the choices that Ray and Moth take, but that clarifies things for us. Most of us won’t ever find ourselves in the position they were in, but we can empathise. Most of us would never think to do what they did even if we were. But for all that, we see, we understand and it makes sense. 

If you get a chance to see the film, then do. Gillian Anderson and Jeremy Isaacs are exceptionally good in their understated performances. The visual experience of the South West coast is everything you would expect it to be, sounding as majestic and immersive as if you were there. A real treat. 

For me, the most poignant and telling moment of the story happens at Lyme Regis. Moth says: 

“When it does come, the end, I want you to have me cremated. …keep me in a box somewhere, then when you die the kids can put you in, give us a shake and send us on our way … They can let us go on the coast, in the wind, and we’ll find the horizon together.” 

Support Seen & Unseen and more

Since Spring 2023, our readers across the world have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief