"The Odyssey" review — Homer’s great voyage home comes to life in eerie, haunted Nolan epic
“Then I defy the gods.”
A storyteller, with his loud, stirring voice, strikes a thunderous note through the halls of the great house of Ithaca — a cameo by rapper Travis Scott. He begins the song of Odysseus, the once-king of the island nation and the titular character of this tale, who left their shores twenty years ago to serve as a general in the armies of Agamemnon. Some say that Agamemnon started the war when a prince of Troy stole his brother’s wife. Others say it was all in the name of trade. No one in Ithaca knows if Odysseus is alive or dead, but the news of his greatest exploit has travelled the seas in song. At the end of ten years of impossible war, Odysseus has the thought that will finally cripple Agamemnon’s enemy. “A war!” the storyteller declares. “A man!” A man, yes. A great man. A hero. A traitor. A trickster. Some English versions of the text call him “ingenious.” But this version of the great voyage home seems to disagree with the praising of the hero. A “complicated man,” to quote the beginning of the Emily Wilson translation of the original text. While Zeus’ law compels the people of these ancient islands into a tenuous friendship with strangers, it is this worship of the gods that Odysseus used to bring the city to its ruin. And if one defies the gods, perhaps they should not be surprised to find themselves cursed.
Perhaps it’s only destiny that Christopher Nolan, who’s become a veritable cinematic mythmaker in the last two decades, would eventually turn his eyes onto one of the greatest myths in the Western canon. Now deep into a career made up of science fiction meditations on love and historical character studies about power and destruction, Nolan’s distinct palette of ambitious and unique blockbuster craftsmanship seems rather suited for modernizing The Odyssey into a film with smash-hit appeal. The film interprets the twelve thousand lines of poetry into a fast-paced, brash, and brutal action spectacle. The horde of characters is given the faces of movie stars, filled out by a smattering of Nolan’s frequent performers. And it all sparkles. Nolan updates the material with fervent intensity, constructing one of the most primal and often profound films in his canon yet. The classicists in our midst might balk at the apparent lack of “historical accuracy” (how could you ever be accurate to a folk tale?) to the Greek Bronze Age, but the visions of ancient violence are far less interested in being a representation of Grecian mythology and life than they are a broad appeal on the themes of revenge, justice, and the nature of stories. It’s The Odyssey as proto-narrative for civilizations, redefined by the actioneer’s camera.
The backdrop of this tale of a long-overdue homecoming is the Trojan War, a mytho-historical conflict some three thousand years old. After spending ten years in vain laying siege, Matt Damon’s Odysseus finally constructs a plan to break down the “impregnable” walls of the city of Troy, with a fake-out offering of peace to the goddess Athena. The plan is a success, leading the armies of the fearsome Agamemnon (played by Benny Safdie) to overtake the city in a night of fury and violence, an act of destruction that only becomes more barbarous as the film goes on and more of the battle (slaughter? hunt?) is revealed. With their victory secured, Odysseus and the men of Ithaca depart the shores of Troy for home, with a slight sightseeing detour planned. But quickly, disaster befalls the ships, with the episodes including encounters with a cyclops, the giant Laestrygonians, the sea monster Scylla, a visit to the underworld, and the witch Circe.
Back in Ithaca, in the “present” day, Telemachus (Tom Holland), Odysseus’ son, is battling for control of his homeland. The elders of Ithaca have determined that his mother, Penelope (played by Anne Hathaway), must remarry. A large gathering of suitors, including the scheming Antinous (played by Robert Pattinson), has arrived at the palace to win Penelope’s hand in marriage. The film tells its story across a non-linear structure (a shocker!), mirroring the structure of the text, with the past and present weaving through and defining one another. Odysseus recounts the tale of his misguided voyage to the kindly nymph Calypso (played by Charlize Theron), while Telemachus hunts for news about the father he never met from the king of Sparta, Menelaus (played by Jon Berenthal). The story of the Trojan horse, perhaps the most famous piece of iconography from the entire Iliad-Odyssey cycle and a truly astounding set piece, becomes a ghost that haunts Odysseus: his most legendary act of cunning might just be the source of his greatest shame.
The cast assembled is not only staggering in terms of sheer star power, but in the depth of the angry, heavy performances given to the epic. It’s a “who’s who” of Nolan’s regular players leading the charge, including Matt Damon (also from Interstellar and Oppenheimer), Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar), Robert Pattinson (Tenet), Benny Safdie (Oppenheimer), and Elliot Page (Inception), as well as some new faces in the forms of Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron, among many others. Matt Damon takes the ensemble story on his shoulders in his thrilling, grizzly performance as Odysseus. Odysseus is, thankfully, depicted as the “complicated,” often troubling protagonist he is in the original poem. While Nolan tones down the infidelity (in Homer’s text, Odysseus has children with both Circe and Calypso on his way home), he doesn’t compromise on making him a character the audience often struggles to root for. His voyage home is as much a story of redemption as it is merely overcoming the horrors of the Aegean Sea. Damon’s thoughtful, weary performance — which is interrupted with hauntings by Zendaya’s Athena, the goddess of wisdom and strategy — keeps the film grounded in his mourning and heavy soul.
Holland takes the second chair as Telemachus, who struggles to find a place in the shadow of the father he’s never known. Holland’s boyishness as a performance serves him well, as the character struggles to prove his worth as a man. Hathaway’s Penelope plays much of the action behind a screen, but when the script gives her a moment to shine, she’s ready to deliver. There’s a fire burning at the core of Penelope, a fundamental anger at her social station, which Hathaway brings to life with exacting intensity. Pattinson serves as an excellent foil for Telemachus and Penelope as the snarky, snivelling Antinous, whose braggart showmanship makes him a particularly hateable antagonist. The rest of the smaller parts are filled out remarkably well, including a rather emotionally adept turn by John Leguizamo and the imposing figure of Benny Safdie. One of the smaller performances that sticks out in my mind is Samantha Morton’s Circe, whose sinister-tinged-with-pity performance is as creepy as it is compelling. The film struggles to give all of its characters their proper due, but when the likes of Lupita Nyong’o can give so much in relatively little screentime, the film feels like it’s bursting with exciting, unexplored corners, rather than an underbaked cast.
As Odysseus and his crew sail across the waters from Troy to Ithaca, they encounter all manner of frightening monsters and otherworldly entities, a rather fantastical diversion for Nolan. There’s a bit of tension between the mythological hand-waving of Homer’s legendary epic and Christopher Nolan’s love of explaining stuff, even when dealing with the fantastical. Nolan strips much of the divine, literal presence from this version of The Odyssey. The gods are forces of nature, as the Greeks themselves would have seen them, rather than as enfleshed beings (the exception is Athena, but that’s a beautiful twist that I won’t give away. There’s a perpetual tension between the actions of the characters and the violent, unknowable world that surrounds them. Is Poseidon really mad at Odysseus’ crew, or did they just so happen to catch a bad storm? Is Zeus really giving his blessing to our hero, or was that just a convenient rumble of thunder? Nolan’s never liked giving “outs” to his characters. They are always, in some way, victims of their own fates, never simply the will of the gods, or some other “deus ex machina” force. Odysseus, as he’s depicted here, is a Nolan protagonist: a very capable man whose skills end up being his undoing. That’s not to say that Nolan never allows the unexplainable or mythical to shine through in the film. In fact, he’s never been more comfortable sitting in the divine mystery than he is here, a lesson that Odysseus will soon have to learn himself.
While the gods themselves are largely absent from the film, Nolan, thankfully, does not skimp on the monsters. Over the course of the near-three-hour run time, it might be easy for one of these episodes to feel less significant than the rest, but the film miraculously keeps each one fresh and exhilarating. The escape from the cave of Polyphemus, a cyclops and suspected son of Poseidon, makes for a rather frightening sequence and sets the tone for the perilous adventure to come. The razing of Troy, interspersed throughout the film, makes for a brilliantly executed battle sequence that slowly slips into clutches of savagery. The visit to the underworld, in which Odysseus and his crew sail to the edge of the world, between rivers of ice and fire, is another stunner. My favourite of these stories is the encounter with Circe, which brings body horror and witchy touches to the swine transformation, heightened by Morton’s aforementioned performance. Nolan is operating in full “showoff” mode here, with the film operating on a supreme level of competence. His action sequences are big and explosive, his performances are intense and volatile, and the entire world of the film stews in a sense of mystery that’s oh so compelling. Coming off of the remarkably detailed and interior Oppenheimer — a real-world Prometheus tale, to liken it to another myth — The Odyssey is immersive and expansive. Easily his darkest and most ominous film to date, Nolan’s ready to drag the viewer into a world that seems ultimately unknowable.
There’s a visual simplicity to the film that works wonders: the production design is sparse, and the costuming is comfortable with few flourishes. The armour often appears under-designed, and the houses are often bare-bones. Even divine beings like Athena, Calypso, and Circe seem less impressive than their usual Academic, Pre-Raphelite depictions in John William Waterhouse paintings that most might use as shorthand for Greek mythology, lacking fine silks and jewellery. Everything is stone, linen, and leather. But this reliance on clean-cut aesthetics, with an emphasis on simplicity and fundamental geometry, gives The Odyssey an ever-bearing sense of cruelty and agedness. The film feels more visually engaging because of the ever-bearing sense of primality. There are obvious visual comparisons to other fantasy epics of this decade, namely David Lowery’s The Green Knight and Robert Eggers’ The Northman. It’s an old world, lacking in the flashy visuals of other fantasy tales, that borders on the mystical, complementing Nolan’s ahistorical approach to the text. This version of Odysseus’ voyage home takes place in a fantastical past, one that predates any sort of human history, where the walls between this world and the spiritual world were thinner.
This is bolstered by Ludwig Göransson’s score — who previously composed for Tenet and Oppenheimer, among other projects — whose musical compositions maintain the ever-present feeling of dread and loss with staggering effect. From haunting choral vocals and achy strings to eerie drones and deep, propulsive bass notes, the scoring not only keeps the film ever-pushing forward, but drenches the proceedings in eerie, foreboding tones. The film looks excellent, as well. The first blockbuster film to be shot entirely in IMAX 70mm, the colouring, texture, and detail wrought in every frame are astounding. Hoyt van Hoytema, who’s been shooting all of Nolan’s films since Interstellar, seems to be competing with only himself in his ability to craft dramatic, visually enticing frames. The heavy shadows over every image shroud the film in darkness, further building on the deep sense of the unknown that the film channels so well. The Odyssey is atmospheric in a way that most of Nolan’s films are, reflected by the excellent, masterful cinematography. Every aspect of the craft of this film radiates strength and confidence.
The Odyssey is one of the most accomplished works by one of the most accomplished filmmakers working today. While the age of the source text might compel some to treat this story with white gloves, ensuring a traditional interpretation of the tale, Nolan is unafraid to layer his Odyssey with moody visuals and haunting music, while never taking away from the breathless blockbuster excitement at its core. It’s an urgent, fresh update to the text that’s unafraid to make its own stamp on the story. From its excellent narrative structuring, visual distinctiveness, and rage-filled performances, the three-hour runtime rips by with incredible intensity, leaping from one enchanted island in the Aegean to the next. It also serves as a major thematic pivot for the filmmaker, who seems to be loosening his need to explain every detail of his stories. While it might not be Nolan’s cleanest film to date or the most flawless interpretation of the text — many mysteries remain unsolved and many songs remain unsung by the time the credits roll — it’s absolutely his most ambitious, perplexing, and one of his most thrilling. The Odyssey is savage, primal, often barbaric, and always ready to entertain.
The Odyssey is now playing in theatres.
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