Exclusive | Christopher Nolan Calls 'The Odyssey' A Love Story: 'The Adventure Means More If You Care About These Characters'

Along with his signature themes of time, memory and perception in his movies, Christopher Nolan always made space for the exploration of love. And his latest epic, The Odyssey, as he describes it, is as much a love story at its heart as it is an adventure.

In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India in Mumbai, the filmmaker talks about The Odyssey as a love story in essence, placing himself as the 'audience' on set and keeping his perspective amid overwhelming challenges of filming on a large-scale. 

“The Odyssey is, first and foremost, an incredible adventure. When you're taking on a story of great scale, a great adventure story, you want to take the audience on a ride,” says Nolan.

But love, as in his many works, is seen as an inextricable part of adventure, irrespective of scale. “It's a love story at the heart of it. All of the action and the adventure on top of that means so much more if you care about what these characters are going through,” he adds. 

When portraying a love story on a scale this grand, Nolan prefers to place himself on set not only as the director but also the audience — a perspective that allows him to create intimate masterpieces in motion.

“I'm always trying to keep in touch with what I need to find essential and moving about the story, and what are the things that connected me to the story in the first place when I was even choosing to make the film. Those are the things I try to sort of carry with me on set every day.”

Shooting over two million feet of IMAX film across 90 days, while covering locations in six countries, Nolan says he kept this perspective intact. “I'm there to experience the story shot-by-shot in a very fragmented order. But I'm also trying to really experience the story from an audience point of view,” he says. 

Asked how he powered through overwhelming periods of filming, he responds, “I think shooting any film of any scale has those moments where it feels overwhelming.” 

For Nolan, whether you are filming something as simple as two people sitting at a table or in this case, filming across several countries, the process is always the same, a long road to something challenging but fruitful.  

“It's tough to keep your perspective, particularly when there are large-scale elements around. But that's where the people you're working with become so important; you're not on your own,” he says.

“You have an enormous number of great collaborators, from the actors who are your creative collaborators and are experts on the characters they play, to your incredible crew…that helps enormously, when you're feeling like you've lost your way."