Film series: Wayfaring Strangers
Homer’s The Odyssey is complex epic poem that is foundational to Western storytelling, but, at its core, it is the tale of a troubled man on a long walk home.
Inspired by Christopher Nolan’s recent film adaptation of the ancient text, our “Wayfaring Strangers” series centers a selection of acclaimed international films that feature enigmatic characters embarking on arduous journeys that challenge them physically, mentally, and emotionally.
The series includes Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), a hallucinatory period drama about a madman seeking El Dorado during the Spanish conquests in the Americas; Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke’s debut feature Xiao Wu / Pickpocket (1997) about an aimless pickpocket who refuses to adapt to a rapidly changing world; Michelangelo Antonioni’s strikingly modernist tale of disillusionment and alienation L’Eclisse (1962); Agnes Varda’s Vagabond (1985), which chronicles the ultimately tragic adventures of a mysterious young drifter; and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), in which a hired “stalker” leads a writer and a scientist on a metaphysical journey through a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Rooted in anxieties about surviving in an uncertain, changing, and even hostile modern world, the protagonists of these films at once embody a profound sense of alienation and a profound sense of freedom. Their wanderings are less about reaching a destination than about grappling with a sense of disconnectedness—from both society and themselves.
Like the characters in these films, the song from which our series draws its title “Wayfaring Stranger” is of uncertain origins. The ballad became a well-known folk song in the Appalachian Mountains during the late 1700s but scholars debate whether it was written as a Civil War mourning song, emerged from Black spiritual traditions in the American South, or traveled to the U.S. with Scottish, Irish, or German immigrants.
