Sound and Fury: Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’

Lovers of contemporary mainstream film fall into two camps: Those who, like me, love Christopher Nolan’s work, and those who are routinely irritated by the British-American director’s movies. 

I’ve always been less impressed with Nolan’s trademark grand scale. Yes, “The Dark Knight” trilogy and “Dunkirk” are sumptuous indulgences, but “Oppenheimer” was an over-hyped bore. 

One man’s opinion. 

I’m far more fascinated by Nolan’s mind- and world-bending explorations of time, e.g. “Memento,” “Inception,” “Interstellar,” and “Tenet.” Considering the collapsing of inner and outer space in those films, “The Odyssey” is a relatively conventional and linear piece of Nolan filmmaking, even when much of its story moves backward through intermittent retrospection. 

The built-in cunning of “The Odyssey’s” cinematic achievement is that its oversized proportions are wholly justified by its literary source material: Homer’s “The Odyssey,” the ancient Greek, 24-book, epic poem that many of us loved to hate in high school. “The Odyssey” follows the twenty-year-long sojourn of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca. In Homer’s poem, Odysseus leaves his wife, Penelope, and young son, Telemachus, to wage a 10-year war in Troy, only to be waylaid for another ten years in his return home by legions of ornery creatures, conspiratorial gods, the annihilation of his men, and the affections of the sea nymph, Calypso. 

And then there are those 108 suitors that Odysseus finds thrashing about in his house with conquering designs on Penelope and his throne. How’s that for a homecoming? 

Not only does Homer’s poem sweep across global land and sea and decades of high-body count warfare and assault, but it also enlists gods and monsters to bring moral clarity to humankind’s frailty. To that end, the most fitting modern vehicle for “The Odyssey” would be a “Game of Thrones”-level mini-series, or a “Dune” or “Lord of the Rings”-like trilogy. Although Nolan is relatively faithful to the original text, some of Homer’s juiciest plot points and themes are given short shrift or are lost altogether in service of a roughly three-hour theatrical release. Either way, to spare any expense or excess in bringing the likes of the Trojan War, the land of Hades, Sirens, Cyclopses, and Zeus’ hijinks to the big screen would itself be an epic fail.

Clearly, Nolan got that studio memo. Or maybe he wrote it. “The Odyssey” is a no-holds-barred, audio-visual siege on our nervous systems. Shot entirely with IMAX film and sporting a half-billion-dollar production and marketing budget, “The Odyssey” demands to be experienced in an IMAX theater or in a comparably enhanced big screen movie house where it promises to give new sensory meaning to the term full battle rattle. 

In keeping with its blockbuster mandate, Nolan populates the screen with some of Hollywood’s biggest names. My initial fear was that the rather vanilla Matt Damon was badly miscast as the fast-witted, giant-among-men,Odysseus, but that concern eventually gave way to an appreciation for Damon’s layered, sober performance and his battle-worn visage and physique. Damon’s sea weariness and detachment from humanity are so visceral that they serve to make us painfully anxious for Odysseus’ labored return to Ithaca. 

Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland portray Penelope and Telemachus; Zendaya skulks about as the goddess Athena; Lupita Nyong’o does double duty as twin sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra; Robert Pattinson plays the creepiest of plotting suitors, Antinous; and Charlize Theron is the literally intoxicating Calypso. Few of these marquee players make us fully forget their individual star personas, but their performances are nonetheless effective, and at moments, powerful, especially Hathaway and Pattinson. 

Himesh Patel as Odysseus’ first mate, Eurylochus, Elliot Page as the soldier Sinon, and a mostly masked Benny Safdie are unburdened by their less familiar faces and, as a result, work harder to be more memorable. Nolan smartly avoids demanding that his cast put on British accents as a way of denoting antiquity, but the use of some modern day informalities, like “dad,” is a bit distracting. 

While Nolan treats us to some wonderfully rendered monsters, he is surprisingly restrained in his reliance on supernatural elements. In particular, the gods are high profile, fully personified antagonists in Homer’s poem, but, with Nolan, the likes of Helios, Poseidon, and Zeus hover unseen beyond the onscreen action. The otherworldly pleasure of “The Odyssey” is found less in the pantheon than in the surreality of images: A naked giant with a face conceived by Picasso, entranced soldiers voraciously slurping their way through mounds of slop, ghosts intoning from the mud. 

What actually makes “The Odyssey” so magical is that, for all its Hollywood spectacle, it doesn’t sacrifice Homer’s lyricism. Odysseus’ introspection about violating “Zeus’ law,” and his remorse for the murder, rape, and pillage left in his wake, come 19 years too late, but it’s a grounding mediation on what might otherwise get mistaken for the glory of war. Even the film’s Tarantino-esque climax somehow avoids, at least by today’s standards, feeling gratuitously violent and manages to capture the gratifying mayhem that I imagined when I first read “The Odyssey” (or at least the “CliffsNotes”) as a teenager.  

Like the oral histories and myths that animate Homer’s poem, “The Odyssey” is a triumph in storytelling, with haunting narrations and cinematic flourishes coming together to carry us on an adventure that builds momentum with every frame. With Nolan’s telling, however, be advised to keep earplugs at the ready.g together to carry us on an adventure that builds momentum with every frame. With Nolan’s telling, however, be advised to keep earplugs at the ready.

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