The Odyssey review – a magnificent feat of storytelling

Just as Hollywood at large desperately scrambles to give any YouTuber with a million subscribers and a vague idea for a horror movie a blank cheque, the closest thing this industry has to a consensus filmmaker returns from two years at sea. Three years might be a lifetime in our fickle cultural landscape, but it’s worth remembering that Christopher Nolan did pull off quite a feat with Oppenheimer: he made a three-hour biopic about the birth of the atomic bomb into a critical and commercial juggernaut. It swept the Oscars and made nearly a billion dollars at the box office alone. With 2.5x the budget of his last film and a cast so star-filled it might qualify as its own galaxy, Nolan seems on track to do the same for Homer’s historical epic about the ill-fated Greek warrior Odysseus and his 20-year voyage home after the Trojan War. Initial presales for some screenings began a year in an advance. The film’s Wikipedia page, as of June 14^th, is already 6349 words with a lengthy section on historical inaccuracies, backlash and responses before The Odyssey has even hit cinemas. It is the first film to be shot entirely with 70MM IMAX cameras (by Nolan’s four-time DoP Hoyte van Hoytema, whose work on Oppenheimer earned him an Academy Award). A Christopher Nolan film is no longer a film; it is an event. A Christopher Nolan film is theatre. 

There’s plenty of Oppenheimer​’s DNA in The Odyssey. A brilliant man, ravaged by the horrors of war, struggles to come to terms with the damage he’s done on a macro and micro level. (This time he has a beard.) A weepy stay-at-home wife mourns an undead husband. (This time she’s not an alcoholic.) Zoom out and you can see the longer threads: a child reckons with their father’s absence (Interstellar), an amnesiac puts their life back together (Memento); a wizened mentor keeps the home fires burning (The Dark Knight trilogy); dreams hold crucial real-world significance (Inception); magic is made manifest (The Prestige). Perhaps there are no new stories left in the world, just new ways to tell them. 

Nolan begins his story with rapper/​Harmony Korine muse Travis Scott, who wrote and performed the theme song for Tenet with Ludwig Göransson (good news, they’ve written another song for The Odyssey​’s end credits!). It’s the sort of flourish that smacks of Hip English Teacher – hey kids, what if I told you Shakespeare was the original Eminem?! – but if it gets the kids interested in Ancient Greek oral tradition, maybe that’s okay. Scott’s anonymous bard begins to orate the grand tale of Odysseus’ (Matt Damon) great victory at Troy to a jeering hall that has grown bored of such tall tales. The King of Ithaca’s absence looms large; suitors, led by the serpentine Antinous (Robert Pattinson), vie for the hand of his abandoned wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and scheme against his son Telemachus (Tom Holland). Knowing the court is against them, Telemachus sets out for Sparta, hoping King Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), who has already returned from Troy with his wife Helen (Lupita Nyong’o), might be able to shed light on his father’s whereabouts before a hostile takeover.

Meanwhile, on the Isle of Ogygia, the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron) has been nursing a shipwrecked and amnesic Odysseus back to health. Through their conversations and those Telemachus has with his father’s old comrade, a portrait of a man emerges in impressive set pieces: a devoted yet absent husband; dutiful servant to the vengeful King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) and master strategist (your mileage may vary on that claim given how well the journey home goes). Nolan’s script draws on the most memorable elements of Homer’s epic, from the cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin) to the goddess-cum-sorceress Circe (Samantha Morton), though can’t resist a dip into ​‘The Iliad‘ to depict the famous Trojan Horse and subsequent sacking of Troy. (Achilles, Hector and Paris don’t get a Nolan makeover, doomed to their depictions in Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film.) The tapestry here is entirely Nolan’s; his lengthy experience with hardcore Batman fans has imbued him with the wisdom to know you can’t please everyone. Least of all classics scholars – they’ve been arguing about this stuff for centuries.

With regards to the dialogue and American/​British accents used in place of more accurate speech – Emily Wilson, whose translation of ​‘The Odyssey‘ was Nolan and Damon’s north star, has succinctly hit that nail on the head. Similarly, it’s hard to get too worked up about the historical realism of the costumes in a film where a 60ft cyclops puppet chomps on Odysseus’ shipmates like they’re fun-size Mars bars. Nolan and van Hoytema work in the familiar moody colours which have come to define their collaboration; blues, greys and browns with the occasional flourish of red and orange. Those seeking the impressive colours that Ancient Greece was known for may be put out by this muted palette, but it’s hard to think of a contemporary filmmaker who mounts a spectacle with as much finesse as Nolan. Perhaps only Jordan Peele is his equal in that area. 

The mighty ensemble is mostly excellent. Damon is stern but not unfeeling; stubborn and reckless but ultimately sympathetic as a man who can’t help but defy the Gods out of desperation. Holland’s boyish innocence, shorn of the trying quippiness of Spider-Man, is nicely balanced against Pattinson, who has developed such a knack for villainy one hopes he might play Iago in Othello eventually. As in Oppenheimer there are no small parts – Elliot Page, Samantha Morton and Lupita Nyong’o are particularly compelling, and even Benny Safdie is masterfully utilised as the near-silent doomed King Agamemnon. 

On a craft level Nolan has been setting the bar for years; the chinks in his armour are usually found in his storytelling. Even a hair under three hours there’s no dead air; Odysseus and his crew seem to zip along at quite a pace thanks to Jennifer Lame’s smart editing and the way timelines brush up against each other. Events become stories; stories become legends. Similarly, without his memories to rely on, Odysseus dreams of his wife and son and the man he once was, and in his waking hours tries to separate fact from fiction. The richness of The Odyssey is found in its metatextuality, both as a translation of Homer’s text and as a translation from word to image. Increasingly the value of words is decimated; a film like this seems to emphasise their importance more than ever. Words, and by extension the stories they make up, give us our identity. They tell us about where we came from, what we survived, and who we are. The Odyssey is a story about a lot of things – family, true love, war, faith, folly, revenge – but mostly it’s about enduring. This is what human beings do best: we endure, and we tell ourselves stories, as Joan Didion once wrote, in order to live.

To this end: when Oppenheimer and Barbie released in cinemas on the same day in 2023, much prognostication occurred regarding whether those blockbusters might save cinema. Three years on no one has much of an answer. Box office admissions are stable-ish, although the highest grossing films list makes for depressing reading and anyone who works in the industry will tell you it’s almost impossible to get a film made if you’re not somewhere near Nolan-level. Film journalism, which has always filled a Charon-esque role ferrying lost souls to the cinematic afterlife, is rapidly being replaced by AI summaries, TikToks of audience members gurning at their phone’s selfie camera mid-film and influencers at junkets asking jetlagged filmmakers if they have any thoughts on Love Island. One has to wonder what the point of telling ourselves stories is if we have no respect for them; if we treat them as disposable and entrust their entire survival to one or two lauded filmmakers. Cinema cannot be saved by one (or two) auteurs, talented as they may be. It’s a collective medium and requires collective preservation. 

All of Christopher Nolan exists within The Odyssey. All of humanity exists within filmmaking. Yet cinema always finds new ways to tell old stories; this is the great magic of the medium. Within the cathedral of the multiplex, or the church of the independent arthouse, or the temple of your own living room, we put our faith in the hands of a higher power. What a terrible shame it would be to lose that form of communion.