The gods above – Zeus, Athena and that crew – must be smiling about director Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” The film adaptation of the epic poem has reintroduced Ancient Greece into current discourse. Using what he has called the “ur-text” of Western literature, the director has made a picture that provides spectacle, a good story and Olympus-level filmmaking. At the packed screening I attended (on a Thursday afternoon!), the audience was rapt.
Cheers for Nolan and the Greeks – Homer is No. 1 on the bestseller list!
Nolan, of course, won Oscars for his 2023 film “Oppenheimer,” and he’s been attracting moviegoers for decades with pictures such as “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “Interstellar.” He has big, complex ambitions. The announcement of his intent to film “The Odyssey” sent a lot of people (including me) to read or reread Homer’s opus in anticipation.
That preparation made me aware that adapting “The Odyssey” has some challenges. While the epic poem offers some obvious set pieces and primal dramatics, Odysseus’ long voyage home after the Trojan War makes up only about a third of the work. Homer gives almost equal attention to the suitors – all louts – pursuing Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, during the warrior’s 23-year absence. Further, the predicament of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, is a large part of the story. Telemachus is inexperienced and vulnerable. The malevolent suitors view him as weak, an obstacle to their schemes and a candidate for assassination.
Nolan’s attempt to balance these threads kept me at a remove during the beginning of the movie. The director famously likes to play with time schemes, and he does some shuffling here. At first, the film leaned heavily on the domestic dramas of Penelope and Telemachus, which offer fewer opportunities for action and are weighed down with exposition.
My interest was piqued once Odysseus and his men were finally off on their journey and battle the Cyclops, who chomps down on warriors like carrots. Several subsequent sequences enthrall: a fight with the gigantic Laestrygonians; Circe turning the soldiers into pigs; Odysseus tempted by the Sirens’ song; the passage through the treacherous Scylla and Charybdis. Nolan is noted for his commitment to “practical” effects, limiting the use of computer-generated imagery, and you can feel the difference. Those sets were built, not green-screened. Those crowds are real.
In the poem, and in the film, the character of Odysseus is not a moral, physical superman. He might be “wily,” but he’s proud to a fault and regularly screws up. The men under his command don’t have a high survival rate; his frequent refrain is “we’ll have to bury those guys later. We need to get out of here.”
The casting of Matt Damon in the role tells us a good deal about Nolan’s approach to the material. Despite his muscularity, Damon is not Henry Cavill or Chris Hemsworth, a formidable superhero. He’s human-scaled. Talented and intelligent, Damon has done his best work when he doesn’t stray too far from his movie-star persona; he’s not a character actor. But he fits into Nolan’s concept and gives an able performance, even when he must hide his face behind a cloak for the last third of the picture.
Nolan’s concept – what is it, exactly? At least one of his stated goals is to make “The Odyssey” accessible to modern audiences. To achieve that, the director, who also wrote the screenplay, uses a verbal style that opts frequently for colloquialism instead of the heightened language that audiences are accustomed to in period pieces. That choice didn’t work all the time. I accepted the American accents, but I found it jarring for ancient Greeks to proclaim, “It’s okay!” Nolan’s defense of the approach is that the use of more classical-sounding language is as much of an artifice as the use of more contemporary idioms. Maybe I’ll get used to this different convention eventually. But I’ll note that the most successful performance in the film – Anne Hathaway as Penelope – is played in the classical mode.
The editing of “The Odyssey” is sometimes brilliant and sometimes shaky. There are quick cuts to discordant, flashback images that are so fast it’s difficult to comprehend their intent. Structurally, after several years under a spell on Calypso’s island, Odysseus returns to Ithaca without a transition. The final long sequence of the movie detailing his revenge upon the suitors doesn’t allow for the kind of big action set pieces of the journey home, so we are thrust back to the sack of Troy. It gives the movie a climax that makes visual sense, but the dramatic logic is confusing.
As is common these days, “The Odyssey” is available in a daunting number of formats: Imax/70 mm, Imax Digital, regular 70 mm, Dolby, Digital XL, regular digital and so on. The absolute optimal way to see the picture is Imax/70 mm, a format available only in a handful of cinemas worldwide, including – locally – Providence Place in Rhode Island. That said, if you haven’t yet booked a ticket in Providence, you’re probably out of luck.
Nolan filmed the entire movie using huge Imax cameras, the first time that has been done. I saw the movie in 70 mm. I’ll see it again in Imax in a couple of days. I bring up format because I found parts of the movie dark or with a washed-out color palette. I can’t be sure if that was the fault of the format, the projection at the theater where I saw the movie (Boston Common), the print or the movie itself. Or my aging eyesight. I appreciated many beautiful frames, but the look was another reason I’m reluctant to make any definitive declarations about the movie’s final place in the pantheon of Nolan flicks or its status as the best of the year. Without having sampled every iteration of the movie, I’d suggest going to a good Imax theater if you can.
Of the three primary characters, Tom Holland, as Telemachus, is the least epic and the most insecure. Holland is a likable, popular actor, not without resources and in line with Nolan’s aim to make the movie approachable. But his presence is mild. He can’t use the affability that makes a good Spider-Man. Robert Pattinson as Penelope’s chief suitor, Antinous, keeps his villainy in check, although I enjoy him more in these kinds of roles when he’s about 10 percent more playful.
Since this is a Nolan movie, the supporting roster is packed with name actors, many of whom only have a few minutes of screen time. Jon Bernthal as Menelaus and especially John Leguizamo as the blind servant Eumaeus get enough to do to make impressions. There has been a manufactured controversy from the right wing about Nolan’s supposedly “woke” casting, centering on Elliot Page, who is trans, as the soldier Sinon, and Lupita Nyong’o, who is Black, as Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world. Page is fine, and Nyong’o is gorgeous. If you have a problem with any of that, don’t see the movie and please shut up. You’re embarrassing yourself.
When a film is as hyped as this one has been, it’s difficult not to be steamrolled. But “The Odyssey” is going to be talked about for the next several months, if not years, and for movie lovers it’s a “must-see.” Nolan has exercised his clout to make Greek myths become a beat in an international cultural pulse. That’s an admirable flex for a filmmaker.
“The Odyssey” Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, Jon Berthal, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o and Elliott Page. Rating: R. Running Time: 2h 52m.
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