The Odyssey, based on a nearly 3000-year-old Greek poem written by Homer, is widely acknowledged as the foundational text of Western Literature. This sprawling epic brimming with gods, goddesses and fearsome creatures has endured through millennia. For his telling, director Christopher Nolan relied on Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation; incidentally Wilson is the first woman to translate the poem into English. Her text begins with the line: "Tell me about a complicated man."
This complicated man is Odysseus, revered general, renowned warrior, the wily strategist who came up with the defining deceit of the Trojan horse, who is also a husband and father and who has been away from home for 20 years. In an interview, Nolan said that he’s been telling this story in all his films for years.
In many ways, The Odyssey is a culmination of Nolan’s key obsessions — the cruel and relentless passage of time, the importance of family, the yearning to go home, the enduring ache of living with the consequences of your actions and the struggle for control.
This film is among Nolan’s best. First there is the spectacle; The Odyssey is the first feature film to be shot entirely in IMAX 70mm film cameras. The images — of monstrous creatures, a city being decimated, of furious seas and dying men — have vastness but also tactility and immediacy. They anchor us into the action. But what weaves together the magnificent vistas of this movie is the rich emotional throughline of a man desperate to return to his family, a wife waiting and hoping that her husband has somehow escaped death and a son, angry and anguished, wrestling with circumstances beyond his years.
We see Odysseus and Penelope, together in tight close-ups. They are about to be parted and he tells her to remarry if he doesn’t return. Their ache throbs in the textures of each frame. Despite the bigness of the story and the visuals, the tenderness of these moments doesn’t get lost. Instead, it seeps into the haunting image of Odysseus walking alone on a vast seashore. The beauty in this film — shot by Hoyte van Hoytema — is staggering. Even the Cyclops, a creature with one eye and a horrifying appetite for eating men, is framed with melancholic majesty.
Odysseus’ adventures are episodic and even though the screenplay cuts between his actions, the fast-deteriorating conditions in his home Ithaca and between several timelines, there are moments which feel unwieldy. It also took me some time to get used to the American accents. Nolan defended his decision saying he wanted language that had emotional, not intellectual meaning to people.He didn’t want archaic words to stand in the way of the experience. But it is a little jarring to hear Tom Holland’s Telemachus say "mom" with the casualness of a suburban teenager.
But this resistance doesn’t last because The Odyssey seduces you. The performances are so rich; Matt Damon finds the flawed heroism of Odysseus, a man who loves bountifully, fights valiantly but also fails spectacularly. Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope, embodies the anguish of a woman circumscribed by status and tradition. In a superb scene, she tells her son that she has been safeguarding the throne of Ithaca for two decades, but will never be considered for the position of ruler. Holland as the son longing for the father he has never known is also solid. Robert Pattinson as the most manipulative, aggressive and vile of Penelope’s suitors brings a terrific sniveling nastiness to his character. And there is a stand-out sequence with Samantha Morton as Circe — a witch who turns men into pigs. She’s fabulously fierce.
The Odyssey slowly accrues power — the score by Ludwig Göransson, which combines synthesisers with ancient, reconstructed Greek instruments including 35 bronze gongs, maps the emotional landscape astutely. The weight of the music gives the film a feeling of timelessness. And the last act is staggering both in scale and emotion. When Odysseus finally sits down to reckon with what he has wrought, he speaks directly to our current moment. Almost 3000 years later, too little has changed.
A few months ago, the New Yorker magazine carried an article titled Why the Odyssey Keeps Defeating Filmmakers. It ends with the line: "What’s called for in successfully adapting the Odyssey is a great director and — how else can one put it? — a movie audience capable of courage.”
We have the great director. Now it’s up to us.