When the news broke in December 2024 that Christopher Nolan was taking on a new project after the sweeping detonation that was Oppenheimer, nobody expected it to be an adaptation of the most famous poem/epic/novel ever written, Homer’s The Odyssey. Despite Nolan’s Olympian reputation as the “blockbuster auteur” of the century, his proclivities generally steered toward more original material or finessed portraits of specific historical events. However, that’s not why the film world was shocked.
The shock came from Homer’s Odyssey being the greatest monument to the continuity of collective memory in “Western” history, a work of such overwhelming symbolic power etched in the collective (un)conscious that the notions of myth and common era storytelling derive from it. How, in the name of Zeus, would someone then think they could show any part of its 24 books appropriately on the big screen (ideally in 70 mm or IMAX), let alone contribute something new to more than 2,500 years of discourse?
The answer: by changing how we think about stories, memory, and history itself. Almost unbelievably, Christopher Nolan mostly succeeds in this insane endeavor, which is far more complex than simply visualizing Odysseus’ epic mishaps on his 10-year journey home to Ithaca.
Fast forward some 18 months, $250 million dollars, the casting of Matt Damon (Odysseus), Anne Hathaway (Penelope), Zendaya (Athena), Tom Holland (Telemachus), Robert Pattinson (Antinous), Charlize Theron (Calypso), Lupita Nyong’o (Helen of Troy), and more, and unspeakable levels of social and other media hype, and 173 minutes of The Odyssey finally hit theaters.
The first film in history to be shot entirely on IMAX comes with extensive filmmaking lore by default, including the fact that Nolan’s crew built a soundproof blimp to minimize the immense noise produced by the cameras. Indeed, the only reason this film has been cut down to under three hours is that the 70 mm IMAX projector couldn’t take larger platters. Hopefully, a director’s cut will see the light of day soon, as The Odyssey has heaps to offer to casual viewers and cultural analysts alike. Repeat viewings for this one are warmly recommended,
Past the controversies about the historical (in)accuracy of the costumes, the “shocking” decision to use modern American speech instead of the customary elitist British accents, the right-wing backlash against the casting of people of color in crucial roles, and the general discourse on the aptitude of a filmmaker (derogatory) to adapt a literary masterpiece, The Odyssey is a bold, uncanny triumph and a wildly fresh take on a familiar story. Mild spoilers for the film’s plot follow.
Many years have passed since the king of Ithaca, Odysseus (Damon, in his typical stoicism), set out for the Trojan War, leaving his loving wife Penelope (a feral Anne Hathaway) behind. His son, Telemachus (a childishly bewildered Tom Holland), is almost of age, but a horde of 108 belligerent suitors, including the malevolent Antinous (Robert Pattinson, having too much fun, as always), vie for Penelope’s hand, romping around the castle. It is unlikely she will be able to hold them off for much longer, as nobody believes Odysseus is still alive.
Meanwhile, Odysseus is very much alive and has literally turned Hades and high water to come back home. A hero of the Trojan War, he is now a shadow of his former self. We find him stranded on a desolate island of Ogygia with the nymph Calypso, who feeds him lotuses and messes with his memory. His men are gone, but he doesn’t remember how or why. Whatever he thinks he knows about the world seems to have perished in a nightmare. A series of nightmares, more precisely.
Still, what keeps Odysseus alive is not Calypso’s strange fascination but the unyielding love for his family. He keeps stringing bits of (his) history together, weaving his own understanding of the misfortune that befell him, ultimately seeking to fulfill his destiny not as a soldier, but as a family man. To Nolan’s credit, the plot follows the Odyssey quite closely, and most of Odysseus’s most prominent adventures and maneuvers get decent screen time.
The narrative, however, is more scattershot than in Homer’s epic, permeated by frame stories and fragmented accounts in which everyone has their own version of events, their own idea of necessity. The Odyssey is not an examination of the myth but of truth and how our understanding of it depends on the stories we choose to tell. This, Nolan shows us, is a burden, not a blessing; the more Odysseus interprets his life, the more he sees it as a string of misfortunes, some, undoubtedly, of his own making. In the end, history’s victors are rarely its most honorable narrators.
At turns cosmic and intimate, deeply rooted in horror yet replete with (melo)drama and a breathtaking, fight-heavy third act, The Odyssey is a storytelling labyrinth operating on multiple levels. The narrative swivels between the material and the symbolic, the real and the imagined, acknowledging that it’s repression and fantasies, not divine guidance, that play a crucial role in how we construct reality.
The landscapes Odysseus, Eurylochus (a standout Himesh Patel), and their men traverse are hostile, liminal spaces where terror resides. Sometimes it’s the monsters that hunt you; sometimes, the monsters are you. It all depends on perspective, and here it’s the insight of the female characters, most notably Circe (a fantastic Samantha Morton) and Athena (Zendaya, in a kind and gentle apparition), that reveals what lies underneath the “nobility” and quest for glory of these brave, indomitable soldiers. Nolan’s long-term collaborator Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography remains stunning throughout, but it’s the confined spaces of a hut or a dining hall where dread really creeps in to its fullest effect.
More than anything, The Odyssey is a surprising continuation of Nolan’s obsession with memory and the ways in which people create their own (hi)stories, landing as a profound indictment of patriarchy and how the history of civilization was constructed. It begins with the Trojan horse half-buried in sand (cue The Planet of the Apes) and culminates in the severed head of Athena in Troy, warning against an ominous circularity and signifying the collapse, not of the supremacy of the gods, but of men.
Filmed in six countries and offering spectacular homages to a range of cinematic legends, including Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Bergman, and del Toro (whom Nolan cited as an influence in “humanization” of “monsters”), it nevertheless focuses inward, into Odysseus’s psyche, his fears and shortcomings, thus painting a picture of a hero markedly different from that of the infallible moral giants bookending the cultural canon. In fact, there are ways in which Nolan’s Odysseus resembles Leopold Bloom from Joyce’s Ulysses more closely than Homer’s adventurer.
This Odysseus, while aspiring to honor and honesty, is nowhere near the paragon he believes himself to be. As we examine his undertakings one by one, a picture of stubbornness, moral myopia, and even authoritarianism emerges. His journey is not meant to underscore his greatness but to deconstruct it, and Nolan remains staunch in his commitment to showing that no king is without fault, no war general a saint. Modern(ist) as it may be, it is a welcome retelling of a myth in the times when totalizing, romanticized views of “leaders” tend to push entire societies to the brink.
As a result, The Odyssey might irritate a portion of the audience; those who come in expecting the sheer scale of spectacle and a typically Hollywood-style praise of men’s greatness might be disappointed. The rest, I expect, will appreciate its dazzling scope and unapologetic meta-commentary exposing the cracks in the civilizational armor of storytelling, armor that has too often led past the delights of shared rituals and histories and into the abyss of manifest destiny and violence against the Others in our narratives.
Seen from this historical and ultimately political angle, it makes perfect sense that the greatest myth in Western culture had to be reexamined and subverted to make Nolan’s point. Nothing less would do, and it’s a small miracle how well The Odyssey comes together as a coherent work despite the insanely complex topics and stories it explores.
That’s not to say the film is without flaws, some of them quite typical for Nolan’s oeuvre. Much of the dialogue remains perfunctory or expository, and the pacing sometimes falters due to evidently savage editing and relentlessly non-linear narration. Despite Pattinson’s sublime effort, Antinous often comes across as a caricature; after horrifying moments of sadism, he is too readily reduced to a sniveling child come resolution, a fate unfitting for the film’s major antagonist.
Some other characters, like Nyong’o’s Helen of Troy, get so little screen time that they serve no purpose other than to make a point or advance the plot. The ending, which I will not spoil, also marks a sharp tonal shift relative to the rest of the film, a fact some may not take to kindly.
I’m sure Nolan’s detractors will find more to complain about, but I, for the most part, remain pleased by the clarity of his vision and the overall execution. In the words of Talking Movies‘ Tom Brook, whom I sat next to at the screening, “I hope that I will enjoy it” is the best way to approach any film, The Odyssey especially. The rest will follow the feeling, as I suspect Nolan intended when he envisioned this journey of self-discovery as a never-ending nightmare.
Of course, there is infinitely more to be said about The Odyssey, its historicity within the film industry, its relationship to the literary source, and its meaning within the broader cultural and political canon. For one, the discussion about gods, protagonists, and the construction of (shared) meaning through time is bound to become heated across disciplines. Like most other Nolan films, it demands repeat viewings and a laser-sharp focus. One could say that’s a triumph in itself.