THE ODYSSEY – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
War. Duty. Deception. Ambition. Morality. Truth. Throughout his career, director Christopher Nolan has touched on all of these, from the mysteries of Memento and The Prestige through the thrills of Batman films such as The Dark Knight Rises and, lately, the grander scales of Dunkirk, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer. Now with The Odyssey, the Oscar-winner retells an ancient tale weaving together all these recurrent themes. It’s a layered, visually stunning epic of honor with a grounded message about abuses of trust and power.
Based on Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey ticks off several captivating touchstones from this enduring work, such as the Cyclops and other perils that besiege Odysseus (Matt Damon, The Rip), the king of Ithaca who struggles to return home after the decade-long Trojan War. Yet here, his journey becomes a reckoning for men who act like gods, with hubris that comes late, if at all.
The gods are part of the fabric of life here, but they’re largely unseen, save for Athena (Zendaya, Euphoria). Appearing in visions, she pulls no strings, if anything, representing Odysseus’s conscience.
Framed around the Trojan Horse—an awe-inspiring piece of production design, rising from the sands of an empty beach or being rolled along logs to the city of Troy itself—The Odyssey hinges around the concept of Zeus’s law, essentially welcoming strangers with kindness, as if Zeus walked among them. The ruse that sneaks Odysseus and other troops into Troy is the height of cleverness to their commander, Agamemnon (Benny Safdie, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie), yet it betrays this ideal, something that Odysseus realizes as various obstacles keep him and his men at sea. (Though his dialogue is different, it’s hard not to think of another Nolan protagonist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, musing how he had become the destroyer of worlds.)
Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus’s wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway, The Devil Wears Prada 2), holds off partying suitors who want to take her husband’s kingdom, themselves abusing the law by overstaying their welcome. The couple’s son, Telemachus (Tom Holland, The Crowded Room), not yet old enough to rule, plots how to keep his mother and Ithaca safe with loyalists like Eumaeus (John Leguizamo, Zootopia 2), the grizzled neighboring king Menelaus (John Bernthal, The Bear), and Menelaus’s wife, Helen (Lupita Nyong’o, The Wild Robot).
Nolan’s script returns to this moral thread through a fragmented yet engrossing yarn, spun as Odysseus reassembles his scattered memories in the company of minor goddess Calypso (Charlize Theron, Apex). While Odysseus’s exploits seem larger than life, Damon’s relatable fallibility brings him down to earth, at first showing the respect Odysseus commands, then some of that Good Will Hunting cockiness that leads him and his crew astray. By the time he gains a beggar’s robes and posture, his determination has shades of humility.
Filmed for IMAX, The Odyssey gives cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema an impressive canvas, with stunning scenery from Morocco, Italy, Greece, and Iceland and massive sets, including Odysseus’s ship and the Trojan Horse. The scenes have a sense of depth and scope, from the size of Odysseus and his men compared to a colossus like the Cyclops; adrift in an immense sea; or the emotional stakes of whispered confessions. The seas seem an otherworldly blue, candlelit caves and halls both grand and claustrophobic, with action that rolls in waves and images that repeat in shards and greater wholes. The costume design by Ellen Mirojnick gives characters like Agamemnon, rarely seen without his distinctive helmet, an almost-mythical sway. Shout-out also to the sound department, capturing the roars of battle and waves, the clang of swords from silver-clad giants, and a slovenly feast around a cottage table where Circe (Samantha Morton, Anemone) has more than stew on the menu.
Although running nearly three hours, The Odyssey maintains an absorbing pace, in part to anticipation of the story’s well-known high points but new nuances. There’s poetry in Odysseus’s humbling, as he describes the Sirens’ song (“all the promises I failed to keep”), and in Penelope’s welcome rage. Hathaway conveys not just her intelligence and brittle heartache but anger, erupting over her missing husband and the kingdom’s elders who don’t see her fit to rule, despite keeping the throne intact for decades.
Holland mixes a chafing temper with dawning maturity, showing Telemachus charting his own course. Leguizamo, nearly unrecognizable under white hair and aging makeup, is wonderful as his fiery and wistful adviser. Himesh Patel (Enola Holmes 3) gives Eurylochus, Odysseus’s right hand, the tension of loyalty and exasperation. Robert Pattinson (The Drama) takes on the punchable swagger of conniving suitor Antinous while Elliot Page (The Umbrella Academy) appears as Sinon, the young soldier whose death among many in Hades haunts Odysseus the most.
A thoughtful telling of a literary classic, The Odyssey delivers rousing moments along with hard-earned wisdom.
