The Odyssey is in cinemas from Friday 17 July. Add it to your watchlist
After winning multiple Oscars for Oppenheimer, the story of the bomb that changed the course of World War II, Christopher Nolan returns to the subject of warmongering. The source is Homer’s The Odyssey, one of the very cornerstones of western literature. And judging by the visceral and vivid way Nolan brings it to life, it feels utterly of the moment. This is no swords-and-sandals epic with togas and RADA accents; it’s a gritty melding of fantasy and boots-on-the-ground reality.
Matt Damon – who featured in Oppenheimer as General Groves – ascends to the lead here. He is Odysseus, the cunning if arrogant warrior-king of Ithaca. His is a journey already years old when Nolan begins the film, with a staggering shot of a huge, rearing wooden horse half sunk in the shoreline on the beaches of Troy. Together with his fellow Greeks, Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) and Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), he had left Ithaca to lay waste to the Trojans.
As any schoolchild knows, inside the wooden horse are Odysseus and his men, using this so-called peace offering to the Gods as a means to sneak inside the gates of Troy. Nolan shows the hideousness of such an enterprise – cramped, dangerous conditions, the men half-starved. It’s just one moment in this epic adaptation that shows the folly of war. Or as Circe, the witch played by Samantha Morton, puts it: “Men with their appetites…too much is never enough.”
As much as Nolan’s take on The Odyssey is the archetypal anti-war film, it’s also a story about a homecoming – a subject he’s touched on in everything from Batman Begins to Interstellar and Dunkirk. Damon’s grizzled PTSD-suffering Odysseus has spent 10 years on the beaches of Troy, away from his queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and the son he barely knows, Telemachus (Tom Holland). Since then, nobody has heard a word from Odysseus.
As we learn, on a lonely beach these past seven years, he’s been cared for by the beautiful Calypso (Charlize Theron) but also held prisoner by her. As his memories return, the story unfolds – Odysseus recounting the horrors of Troy and the terrors faced by him and his men on their perilous journey home. Nolan blends in the fantasy of Homer – monsters, giants, whirlpools and even a trip to Hades to meet the undead – in a way few other directors can manage.
Shot entirely on IMAX cameras – a first for any movie – The Odyssey looks nothing short of spectacular. The ocean scenes are so spot on, as Odysseus’s crew row harder than a bunch of Norwegian football fans, you’ll feel seasick watching the vessel bob up and down on the waves. Shots of the exotic locales – especially the Ithaca palace, shot on the Mediterranean isle of Favignana – are simply breathtaking. But Nolan works tirelessly to yoke this take on the greatest civilisation of them all to something down-to-earth.
The performances are equally grounded, even if some may find the contemporary accents a little jarring. Damon leads the line as the egotistical soldier who dismisses the idea of honouring the dead – until he comes to realise the pain of war. But in truth, in a story about the suffering the patriarchy causes, it’s the female performances that stand the tallest – Hathaway, Theron and Morton all have their moments, as does Lupita Nyong’o as Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships, and her twin Clytemnestra, and Zendaya, as the goddess Athena, Odysseus’s conscience.
Filled with blazing action, blood-curdling fights and creatures that truly bring Homer’s epic poem to life, this is Nolan at his finest. Big-screen spectacle, expertly crafted and propelled by yet another masterful score by Ludwig Göransson. A powerful and profound achievement.