Anupama Chopra reviews The Odyssey, written and directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, for The Hollywood Reporter India. Adapted from Homer's nearly 3000-year-old Greek epic — with Nolan drawing on Emily Wilson's 2017 translation, the first by a woman into English — the film follows Odysseus, revered general and wily strategist behind the Trojan horse, who has been away from home for twenty years. Anupama sees it as a culmination of Nolan's key obsessions: the cruel passage of time, the importance of family, the yearning to go home and the struggle for control. The first feature shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film cameras, its images have vastness but also tactility, held together by the rich emotional throughline of a man desperate to return to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. Shot by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, even the Cyclops is framed with melancholic majesty.
Anupama finds moments unwieldy as the screenplay cuts between episodic adventures, deteriorating conditions in Ithaca and several timelines, and admits the American accents take getting used to — it's jarring to hear Tom's Telemachus say mom like a suburban teenager. But the film seduces: Matt finds Odysseus' flawed heroism, Anne embodies the anguish of a woman circumscribed by status and tradition, Robert brings terrific sniveling nastiness to the vilest of Penelope's suitors, and Samantha Morton is fabulously fierce as Circe. Ludwig Göransson's score, combining synthesizers with reconstructed ancient Greek instruments, gives the film timelessness, and the last act is staggering in scale and emotion. Anupama's THR Bottomline: don't miss this film — and if possible, see it in IMAX. The Odyssey releases in theatres on July 17.
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