Lavish. Extravagant. Superbly acted. Updated morality. IMAX presentation. Almost three hours long with no intermission. The list of superlatives for Christopher Nolan’s production of “The Odyssey” is lengthy.
The story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, thrall of Agamemnon, is familiar to millions. Many of us studied the story in high school (for some of us, long, long ago).
For those less familiar with the epic tale, it begins with the Illiad, the story of the war between the Greek states and the citystate of Troy, located within present day Turkiye. The wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, was taken, or fled, to Troy. Outraged, the various kinglets of Greece coalescing under high king Agamemnon (Benny Safdie – “Oppenheimer”), organized a force to attack Troy and recover Helen. Among these kinglets was Odysseus (Matt Damon). What followed was a 10-year siege of Troy.
It is at this point that Nolan’s Odyssey really begins. Odysseus cleverly conceived of a way into Troy: the infamous wooden horse, supposedly left by the departing Greeks. This gift (hence the idiom “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”) allowed Odysseus and a few soldiers to emerge from the horse once inside Troy’s walls and open the city gates to Agamemnon and the Greek army, which conquered and sacked Troy. At this point, one of the major differences between Homer (the author of “The Illiad” and “The Odyssey”) appears. Instead of reveling in the success of his trickery, Odysseus is clearly troubled, even dismayed by the horror he has visited upon the people and the culture of Troy, both of which are being destroyed by the rampaging Greeks.
After the plunder, murder, and destruction, the Greeks sail for home. It had been a long ten years, but Odysseus chooses to take his men on a different course than the rest, thinking it will get them home faster. In fact, it takes him ten more years to get home, and none of his men survive. They encounter the sorceress Circe (Samantha Morton – “The Whale”), Sirens, the Cyclops, the island of the dead, including Agamemnon who was murdered on returning home by his wife, Charybdis and Scylla, and more. Eventually only Odysseus is left, and he ends up on another island with Calypso (Charlize Theron – “Apex”) where he spends seven years eating lotus blossoms – Ithaca and family forgotten. Despite these appearances of mythical creatures, the gods themselves are absent from the film, with the exception of Athena, who appears as Odysseus’s guide and advisor. Nolan treats the other gods only as forces of nature rather than humanized beings.
Meanwhile his wife and son are besieged in their own home on Ithaca by a horde of “suitors” who believe Odysseus is dead and are vying for Penelope’s (Anne Hathaway) hand. Some are also plotting Telemachus’s (Tom Holland) death. Chief among the suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson) a cowardly underhanded plotter. Among the few remaining supporters of the family is the blind slave Eumaeus (John Leguizamo – “The Menu”).
Writer (with Homer)/director Christopher Nolan has given us yet another superlative film, with deeply visualized characters as he has done time after time before. In creating the story he not only drew on the most familiar source, but also on other ancient writing by Virgil (“The Aeneid”) and Aeschylus (“Agamemnon”). Every performance is excellent, especially those of Damon, Hathaway, Leguizamo and Pattinson. Damon is especially fine, really capturing the humanity of a man tortured by regret, guilt, and fear for the future of mankind, not unlike Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Robert Oppenheimer in Nolan’s 2023 film.
This is also the first commercial feature film shot entirely on physical 15/70mm IMAX film cameras, despite the problems in dealing with the notoriously difficult equipment. Nolan explains that the IMAX process is simply the best way available today to capture the scope of expansive stories like The Odyssey. It provides more peripheral image (26% more) to make the experience more immersive. The aspect ratio of 1.43 to 1 is similar to the 1.37 to 1 used for movies prior to the introduction of the 2.39 to 1 widescreen (Cinemascope, Vistavision, etc.). While the image and clarity are certainly higher, this reviewer found an irritating difference between the in-focus portion of the screen and the out-of-focus. Whether this was due to the cinematography, the projection, or just inherent in IMAX, I do not know. What I do know is that all showings of the film at the theater I attended had been sold out since the debut.
Nolan obviously has another historically important film here. There have been some 17 other films of “The Odyssey” ranging from the 1905 four-minute silent film “The Mysterious Island” by Georges Milies to the Coen Brothers comedic “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” in 2000. Each is its own take on the myth, but none can compare to Nolan’s epic. In it we are seeing a film auteur at his zenith … at least until his next effort.
Note: Seven cast members have worked with Christopher Nolan on previous films – Damon, Pattinson, Hathaway, Safdie, Elliot Page, Bill Irwin and Himesh Patel.
Additional note: There are some extremely violent scenes at the beginning and end of the film.
Runtime: An amazingly fast two hours, 52 minutes
Availability: In IMAX and 70mm theaters now.
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