Nolan and Damon Take the Long Way Home in The Odyssey

To use a Greek word, there may be a certain, you know, hubris in deciding you’re just the person to adapt a literary masterpiece to the screen. When said masterpiece is The Odyssey, that’s hubris on steroids. So after taking on the birth of the atomic age with Oppenheimer, filmmaker Christopher Nolan took a breather with his follow-up, merely taking the prototype for the Western narrative tradition. 

 Is the resulting movie Homer? Of course not, no more than John Huston’s The Bible (1966) is The Bible. But Nolan’s The Odyssey is a strong, sinewy, absorbing picture that more than justifies its three hours. And it’s truly an adaptation; the filmmaker didn’t just loot the poem for episodes and images, but truly interpreted the work. Nolan, who draws not only on Homer but on Virgil and other sources, brings modern psychology and social standards to the post-Trojan War era. 

 Despite a touch of lyrical language here and there, overall the script, which Nolan wrote, is bluntly colloquial. Telemachus (Tom Holland) refers to Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and Odysseus (Matt Damon) as “Mom” and “Dad.” Of his war service, Odysseus bitterly remarks “Ten years on this f***ing beach.” Words like “yeah” and “stuff” are nonchalantly used. I quickly came to like this approach. Any loss of loftiness in the language is made up for by a directness and immediacy. 

 There is a sense in which Nolan’s celebrated filmmaking style can be considered Homeric. Homer is the O.G. master of non-linear narrative, and The Odyssey traditionally begins near the end of our hero’s 10-year return trip. The story unfolds through flashbacks, deployed as strategically as Nolan could want, or as Quentin Tarantino or Orson Welles could want, for that matter. 

 Nolan’s film retains some of this structure and – as they did in Oppenheimer and Dunkirk – the various story strands gradually converge and reveal their full meaning, imbuing the story with emotional power. Most of the iconic scenes are played out for us. We get the Cyclops (in a curiously sad, sympathetic turn by Bill Irwin); the Sirens; the Laestrygonians; Scylla and Charybdis; the Sun-God’s herd; the clash with the rotten suitors; and, of course, the heart-tugging faithfulness of Argos the dog. Nolan even ends the story before the beginning, with the Trojan Horse. 

 Damon is sometimes treated as a celebrity joke – often with his own eager self-deprecating participation – but his straightforward performance here shows the gravitas of which he’s capable as a leading man. Odysseus is the original wily, ingenious, resourceful action hero in western storytelling, echoed in figures from Captain Kirk to Bugs Bunny. And while Nolan seems to have toned down his hero’s sneakiness and guile a bit, he and Damon make the man’s impulsive recklessness, his arrogance and his vanity very much part of his character, and a reason for his and his crew’s suffering. 

 The huge, high-ticket cast also includes, among many others, Samantha Morton as a deceptively earth-mother-ish Circe; Robert Pattinson as Antinous, the rottenest of the suitors; Charlize Theron as Calypso; Zendaya as Athena; John Bernthal as Menelaus; Elliot Page as Sinon; Benny Safdie as Agamemnon; James Remar as Tiresias; and Lupita Nyong’o in a smallish but memorable dual role as Helen and Clytemnestra. A particular standout is John Leguizamo as blind, loyal Eumaeus. 

 The percussive music by Ludwig Goransson has a rumbly, scary intensity. Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography has a sea-weathered beauty. The special effects are so seamless that I forgot they were special effects. 

 Exciting as this Odyssey is, however, there’s a sadness to it as well, a sense that we’re seeing the end of a Golden Age and the beginning of an era of disillusionment brought about through the brutality of war and the flouting of social and civic norms. These are, of course, themes that can speak to us at least as much now as in Homer’s time, and the hope suggested by the film is clear – the Age may be corrupted, but we can still try to be noble.