The two phrases that always come to mind when considering The Odyssey are “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” and “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” The latter would have negated the former. If those hapless Trojan gatekeepers had only peered into that horse’s mouth, they could have saved the day.
But we are here to discuss the merits of Christopher Nolan’s epic bit of cinema, The Odyssey. I am not a huge fan of Nolan’s. I’ve always felt that his movies are overly complicated, overly bleak, and lacking any real humanity. Each film feels like a plea for the world to acknowledge how cerebral Nolan is. There’s always some trick or climactic reveal that is intended to pull the rug out from under the audience to leave them off balance.
Some of those Nolan directorial tics can be found in The Odyssey, but here, for the most part, they work—Nolan’s bag of tricks serves the greater story. The film suffers from a bleakness, but the bleakness is exactly what the soldier sailors’ journey must be. The plot is complicated, but so was Odysseus’ path from Troy. Nolan’s tendency to tease out the cerebral aspects at the expense of the human emotions prevents the film from becoming maudlin.
The result is the best film of Christopher Nolan’s career.
The Odyssey is a familiar tale, mostly because so many stories have built their plots on its back. The classic literary arc of The Hero’e’s Journey is literally based on this tale. It is to Nolan’s credit as a screenwriter that he keeps the telling of that tale fresh and surprising. As I watched, I was reminded of how many B-movie classics—enhanced with the stop-motion artistry of Ray Harryhausen—I grew up on were remixes of this original. The magnificent scenes of those films are all here: a man-eating Cyclops, an army of giants, a witch that turns men into swine, a side-quest into hell to encounter a legion of the dead.
It’s all here.
Nolan’s commitment to practical effects wherever possible makes some of these scenes doubly impressive. There is a realism here that Harryhausen himself could never achieve. For the fans of those popular creature features, Nolan delivers and seems to have a blast with it. He does all this without straying from the deeper story of a group of soldiers who have seen the horrors of war and are struggling with that trauma.
The human aspects of this film are aided by Nolan’s cast. Matt Damon is a perfect Odysseus. His working-class genius feels appropriate for the man who conceives of the trick that topples Troy. But he’s best when he behaves stupidly and thoughtlessly and, to the story’s benefit, humanly. He screws up and dooms his men. Then he has to face that. Damon is believable as the mortal Odysseus.
Others in the cast are equally well-cast. Tom Holland carries more weight than his role calls for. Anne Hathaway is heart-breaking. Robert Pattinson is vile and slippery, and perfect.
In the end, the film’s Nolanesque climactic twist provides the viewer with that familiar loss of balance. The rug is pulled out from under them, and they see Odysseus’s real trauma close up. The clear-eyed understanding of his pain and the reason for it makes all of his actions fall into a new and familiar pattern of PTSD. And again, Nolan’s bag of tricks serves the story well.
I’m giving this film 5 out of 5 stars
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