I wanted to love Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey,’ but something is missing
Walking into my advance screening of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” earlier this week, I was certain of one thing: Nolan would deliver the kind of artistically ambitious spectacle that’s rarely seen in Hollywood anymore. Regardless of how engaged I am in any given Christopher Nolan movie, I always appreciate his tenacity in taking hundreds of millions of dollars from a major studio to bring his own particular vision to life. I got to see “The Odyssey” in 70mm, and Nolan is pretty much the only filmmaker who can bully an anonymous multiplex like my local AMC theater into showing a movie on film.
So I can’t say that I was disappointed by “The Odyssey.” Yet unlike what seems like the majority of film critics (including TG’s Malcolm McMillan), I wasn’t blown away, and I doubt “The Odyssey” will make my top 10 list at the end of the year.
But it’s a wholly satisfying experience at the movies, the kind that only comes from a handful of currently working directors. I felt the same way after seeing Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” another passion project produced on a massive scale. I didn’t love this movie, but I’m grateful that it exists.
‘The Odyssey’ can only do so much with its familiar story
Aside from the works of William Shakespeare, it’s tough to find any piece of world literature that’s been as extensively adapted and retold as the myths of the ancient Greeks. Nolan has shown an aptitude for interpreting modern mythology with his Batman movies, but there’s only so much variation that can be applied to such towering icons, and that’s true for Odysseus as much as it is for Batman. As he did with Batman, Nolan focuses on the main character’s inner torment, although “The Odyssey” is more of an ensemble piece than Nolan’s Batman films.
Matt Damon delivers a strong, if occasionally overly grumbly, performance as Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War who embarks on a decade-long journey to return home to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) in Ithaca. This version of Odysseus is haunted by his actions during the war, and Nolan does his best to bring additional emotional resonance to this grandiose story of gods and armies. Damon plays Odysseus as a man racked by guilt over his actions during the war, his failures as a leader on the journey back to Ithaca, and his shortcomings as a husband and father.
The movie remains somewhat removed from that angst, though, and the same is true for the mix of anger and longing that Penelope and Telemachus feel toward the man who’s been missing from their lives for nearly two decades. Nolan takes some liberties with the story from the epic poem attributed to Homer, but he still hits the major highlights, and those well-worn story beats take precedence over any truly affecting interactions between characters.
The overwhelming grandeur of ‘The Odyssey’ is more than enough
An opening title card describes the setting as “a time of apparent magic,” and Nolan downplays the cosmic forces aligned both for and against Odysseus, only directly depicting one member of the Greek pantheon, Athena (Zendaya), in the form of a soft-spoken young woman who appears to Odysseus in visions. That doesn’t mean that “The Odyssey” is a strictly naturalistic take on ancient history, though, and its fantastical elements are the highlight of the nearly three-hour saga.
Samantha Morton is both creepy and sympathetic as the witch Circe, who turns some of Odysseus’ men into pigs during a truly horrific sequence. Both the hulking cyclops Polyphemus and the sea monster Charybdis are awe-inspiring feats of special effects, and Nolan conveys the terror that Odysseus and his men feel when facing them. These aren’t the sometimes cheesy depictions of gods and monsters from vintage movies like “Clash of the Titans” or “Jason and the Argonauts”; they’re tactile presences that represent genuine, immediate threats that the audience can feel.
My favorite Nolan movies are pulpier tales like “Memento,” “The Prestige” and “Inception,” so I would have been happy for “The Odyssey” to further lean into supernatural fantasy. Given that the entire movie was shot with IMAX cameras, the visually bombastic moments are the most captivating, and as much as I was entertained by Robert Pattinson’s sniveling villainy as Penelope’s sleazy suitor Antinous, I would have been happy with more action sequences and less teeth-gnashing.
Ultimately, though, what’s most important is that Nolan got to tell the story he wanted to tell, and I’d rather see his fully realized vision than some sort of studio compromise. I was happy to sit in the theater for three hours and watch “The Odyssey” unfold on 70mm. Will I spend $50 to see it again, this time in its purest form, on 70mm IMAX? No, but for anyone who wants to, the experience will no doubt be worth all their time, money and effort.
“The Odyssey” is in theaters now
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