One of the very few directors whose name alone can open a film is (Sir) Christopher Nolan and arguably his films are a bigger box office draw than even Tarantino’s over the course of Nolan’s career he has set himself ambitious projects getting bigger in scale and reaching a pinnacle with 2023 Oppenheimer that won a Best Film Oscar along with six others including Best Director. The Odyssey is arguably his biggest and most ambitious film to date but can he match let alone top what he has done before?
The Odyssey story….
It’s an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking to adapt Homer’s epic ancient Greek literature into a film even if it does run for almost three hours. The story follows Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his 10 year journey to get home to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus (Anne Hathaway & Tom Holland) after the Trojan war. He and his troops are just as likely to be killed in the perilous return as they were at Troy and with Whatsapp still thousands of years away there was little way of knowing if Odysseus had survived. It leaves Penelope having to contend with a court of courtiers headed up by a weasly Antinous (Robert Pattinson) keen to take her hand in marriage but for his own ulterior motive. It is a court full of drunken revelry in scenes Nolan must have based on a relieved staff at Montecito when Meghan & Harry were away on an extended fake royal tour.
The Odyssey alternates between the court and in typical Nolan style occasionally back and fore in time too. So the epic return journey takes in all the major events of the 24 books that make up Homer’s original and to that end we see a horrifying cyclops, the Trojan horse ( that’s presented in a far more persuasive fashion than a horse on wheels outside the gates of Troy, the giant supersoldier Laestrygonians, the possessive Calypso (Charlie Theron), a treacherous Circe (Samantha Morton) as well as Athena (Zendaya) the goddess of warfare, strategic planning and 1980’s poster shops with pictures of female tennis players scratching their arse (maybe that last bit is not quite right).
It is no easy feat to juggle all these elements but it is done quite brilliantly condensing all the elements into manageable chunks and balance them all with no detriment to the story as Odysseus endeavours to get home with an ever diminishing troop that fall prey to monsters, sieges , dissenting troops falling prey to their own desires rather than follow Odysseus inspired if single minded leadership.
What stands out?
Nolan’s pedigree has enabled him to attract a starry cast that includes several of his regulars (Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Elliot Page) but it is Samantha Morton, Tom Holland and John Leguizamo who are exceptionally good in a film that is uniformly excellent in nearly every departments with nods even to the work of the late great Ray Harryhausen.
The one element that really excels is Ludwig Goransson’s score that takes several of the set pieces to a higher level most notably in the siege on Troy as Odysseus troops emerge from the horse. A driving thundering score pulls you into the rapidly escalating battle within Troy that is both exciting and frightening and it’s an effect that is repeated again quite brilliantly in a climactic scene. The score is surely due for recognition when awards season begins in the Autumn.
And so…
But that’s a minor consideration because The Odyssey is an absolute triumph of ambition and quite how Nolan could equal let alone best this film will be his biggest challenge ……maybe one day he will get to make his James Bond film!
related feature : Spielberg directs Nolan’s ‘Interstellar‘
related feature : Robin Hardy discusses the now lost plans for a Wicker Man sequel
Here’s The Odyssey trailer……
