SPOILER ALERT: This article includes details about The Odyssey.
There is a specific moment in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey that made me realize that the film’s hero, Odysseus, is an asshole.
When Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his homies are escaping the lair of Mr. Cyclops, the small army renders the giant blind after piercing his eye. Odysseus turns around and takes a beat to look at their adversary in triumph before firing one more shot to add salt to his wound. As a result, Cyclops chases the men to their ship, freaking everybody out.
On the boat, one of his men asks Ody, “Now why the fuck did you have to shoot that arrow at Cyclops?! Now his daddy is gonna be really pissed!”
Cyclops’s (aka Polyphemus) daddy is Poseidon, God of the sea. That’s not the God you want to piss off when you are sailing home after taking down Troy. Instead of relishing in the comforts of home, Odysseus and his band of merry men now have to weather the wrath of Poseidon thanks to Ody and his desperate need to be the alpha.
All of the events of The Odyssey could have been avoided if Odysseus had just sailed straight home and minded his own business. Yet, here we are.
However, if it weren’t for Odysseus’s ego, we wouldn’t have Christopher Nolan’s summer buzzy epic The Odyssey, based on one of the oldest works of literature by Homer. Nolan takes on the valiant challenge of creating modern cinema from this ancient text driven by Greek mythology and forced upon us during high school English.
The Odyssey is a fine feat of filmmaking and is more than enough reason to rush to your closest theater and experience it in all its IMAX 70MM glory. Some are even traveling cross-country to witness the fiery action of the Trojan horse scene in a large format, bringing back hope to the forever-struggling Hollywood box office.
With a soul-shaking score by the incomparable Ludwig Göransson, Nolan puts his all into his follow-up to Oppenheimer. He creates an epic for an epic with stunning visuals and sweeping shots of mythological locales shot with Hoyte van Hoytema’s fine cinematic eye. It’s a riveting moviegoing experience. As a film, it’s… fine.
I have a great appreciation for Nolan and his boldness to adapt the oldest hero’s journey into a film for a moviegoing audience that, these days, approaches cinema with their arms crossed and a permanent look of “impress me” on their face. Nolan has an unshakable demeanor as he carries a burden of satisfying audiences and the pressure of box office expectations. With films like Memento, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk, Nolan is one of the few directors in Hollywood who can — and does take risks by making impossible storytelling possible, no matter how good or bad the outcome (We’re looking at you, Tenet).
The Odyssey has a cast of many familiar, talented faces, which leads to a game of “How many of these actors were in a Marvel movie?” Damon (who appeared in Thor: Ragnarok) leads a cast that includes Odysseus’s grieving wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway), who refuses to take another suitor until she’s done with her latch hook art project. Odysseus also left behind his boyishly earnest son Telemachus (Tom Holland), who is determined to find his dad.
The film is a showcase of stunt casting at its best, and I ain’t too mad at it. It’s fun, but it doesn’t really do much for the movie. It’s pretty to look at, but difficult to engage with. Everyone makes the best of the time spent on screen even if they are underused (I needed more Elliott Page as Sinon and Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy).
Robert Pattinson takes on the role of douchebag suitor Antinous alongside Corey Hawkins’s s Polybus. The great John Leguizamo is Odysseus’s blind, but faithful servant Eumaeus, while Zendaya assumes the role of Goddess Athena, who is constantly trying to talk some sense into Odysseus. And let’s not forget Charlize Theron as Calypso, a nymph who holds Odysseus captive for seven years as he gorges himself on memory-erasing lotus flowers.
The remainder of the cast is a sparkling constellation of Hollywood luminaries: Mia Goth, Samantha Morton, Benny Safdie, Jon Bernthal, Himesh Patel, Will Yun Lee, Logan Marshall-Green, Travis Scott (yes, that Travis Scott), and, last but not least, the talented Bill Irwin as Polyphemus (aka Cyclops).
The Odyssey is a cousin of Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 Troy, another mythological epic with a smoking hot, sexy cast. It’s exactly how Homer envisioned. But just because the film is filled with great actors doesn’t mean it’s gonna translate to a good film. The film tells a better story than Troy, but further proves that bringing a mid-6th-century BC text to life is a balancing act of literary reverence, creating cinematic appeal, and dodging comparisons. It makes me ask what Mr. Nolan has to add to The Odyssey cinematic oeuvre besides technological advancements and whether it’s worthwhile.
I would answer with an emphatic, resounding “Sure.” It’s the kind of “Sure.” you say to your friend who is really feeling themself in a questionable outfit and is fishing for a compliment. The outfit isn’t gagworthy as they think it is, but it’s good enough.
Turning something as ancient as The Odyssey into a cinematic epic that it was meant to be is an impossible feat, but again, Nolan knows how to sculpt the impossible into something possible no matter how good or bad the outcome. Nolan crosses the finish line with The Odyssey to a nice smattering of polite claps rather than a overwhelming wave of uproarious applause.
Nolan has made himself at home in the ranks of Cecil B. DeMille, David Lean, Robert Altman, and Peter Jackson when it comes to epic ensemble-driven films. Even the star-studded cast did their job well, but the movie as a whole could have used an injection of soul. The dots didn’t quite connect.
Damon’s Odysseus has more swagger and hubris and less majesty and altruism. That’s hard to root for, and that may have been Homer’s intent: to make Odysseus a selfish asshole.
A flawed hero is always welcome, but when you’re not on board with his life choices, your eye wanders elsewhere to find a character to invest in. In Nolan’s Odyssey universe, Odysseus is comparable to a guy that is afraid to admit he’s interested in buying a Cybertruck.
Bottom line: he’s a colonizer. That’s his job. He and his men are going to these islands and squeezing their resources and interrupting the lives of its inhabitants. For instance, Circe (Samantha Morton) was just minding her own business, and they “politely” broke into her home. She had every right to turn them into pigs.
As for the aforementioned Cyclops situation, he was just minding his business, living his best life with his sheep and cave o’ cheese when all of a sudden these men are attempting to murder this poor creature in his own home.
It’s all the result of Odysseus wanting to “explore”. But I guess colonizers be colonizing. But for a guy who seems to be in touch with his inner spirit, he seems to enjoy his job a little too much.
The colonialism of it all aligns with the movie’s controversy of Nolan shooting scenes in a region of Western Sahara near the city of Dakhla. Actual sovereignty of Western Sahara has always been a hot-button topic, but it’s been militarily occupied by Morocco as of late. As a result, the native Sahrawi population is being repressed.
The US and UK have been negotiating with the Moroccan government to film there and have since recognized Western Sahara as part of Morocco. Appropriately, it’s giving colonizer energy.
If audiences can overlook colonizer controversy, then they’ll be able to sit through Nolan’s decision to use modern dialogue and American accents against a backdrop that would suggest otherwise. Again, a bold decision that I applaud, but I did not totally align with. At times, I was expecting Telemachus to casually tell Penelope that her weaving was “fire”. The dialogue felt too modern coming out of some actors’ mouths, while other actors’ words put the world into focus. It’s a respected, but questionable choice.
The modern dialogue may be a distraction, and the stunt casting may be blatant, but Nolan remains committed to his vision of Odysseus and his colonizing adventures – and his insatiable need to just do whatever he wants. He insisted on being strapped to the mast to hear the sirens’ song just to say he did it, AND he left his fellow soldiers behind on more than one occasion. In particular, he screwed Sinon over. Odysseus is that misguided, chaotic friend who loves his family, but loves himself more.
Nolan adds another cinematic notch on his belt with The Odyssey. It could be in the running for the epic film Hall of Fame, which includes staples like Gladiator, Spartacus, and Ben-Hur. Nolan sculpted a primordial narrative into a cinematic epic that echoes the epics of Hollywood’s golden age. With a modern, and at times a “whelmingly” heavy hand, The Odyssey expands Nolan’s epic storytelling skills and his ability to make people have no choice but to see his films in theaters — and in the best format possible.
