‘The Odyssey’ Review: Nolan’s Pen Isn’t as Mighty as the Sword in His Grand and Gorgeous Greek Epic [B]
“Tell me about a complicated man.”
This is the first line written in Emily Wilson’s stellar translation of The Odyssey, Homer’s ancient Greek epic that follows the long journey home for Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, after his time in the Trojan War. With using this line as a jumping off point for the view point of her entire interpretation of the source material, Wilson presented a version of Odysseus and the events of the nearly three-thousand-year-old tale as a story of a man that is less of a hero, and more of someone who is just as flawed of a human being as the rest of us; one that tests the gods and is punished for poking the spiritual bear. While seen as controversial by some, it’s a fascinating viewpoint that adds insight and nuance to a story that’s been heavily borrowed from over the course of its existence, ripe for a proper adaptation of these observations to be explored in a grand, cinematic form; enter director Christopher Nolan.
Coming off of Oppenheimer, one of the biggest commercial and critical successes of his career, resulting in multiple Academy Award wins for the visionary auteur filmmaker, he firmly established himself as the premier blockbuster, spectacle master of his generation, firmly earning the trust of audiences to take them on whatever journey he wanted to next with whatever blank check project he was going to conjure up. In reading Wilson’s version of The Odyssey and knowing the story from reading another translation many years ago, my viewpoint has been that it is the perfect source material for Nolan and his team of expert artisans to work on. But while Nolan’s version of The Odyssey is bold in its technical achievements, and fascinating in its observation about its protagonist’s journey, it does feel like he is reheating nachos on this project; recycling ideas from his past filmography that felt fresher with his creativity behind it, throwing them into the greatest story ever told, and barely being able to make it out of this adaption without any critical damage.
Right from the start, Nolan throws us into the unstable world Odysseus (Matt Damon) has left behind, as his absence from his home of Ithaca has reached its second decade. His wife, Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway), has been fending off multiple suitors in his absence, with the hope in her heart that the love her life with miraculously return home to her and rid her of the choice of having to remarry, and give their kingdom to a pack of power thirsty men; highlighted by the sniveling, slimy Antinous (Robert Pattinson, in yet another deliciously villainous turn), and his ally, fellow suitor Polybus (Corey Hawkins). The suitors drink the wine and eat the food of Ithaca, running it dry of its resources, and wearing out the hospitality of the Queen and her son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), a prince who is, as Antinous says, is “pining for a daddy you didn’t even know, like some sniveling bastard,” (an expert line delivered by Pattinson) and is not ready mentally or physically to take on the suitors by himself to take over his father’s throne. In these early scenes and throughout the film, Nolan expertly puts a heartbreaking burden on Penelope’s shoulders, relying on Hathaway to deliver an impeccable, vulnerable performance as a woman who has lost the man she loved and, with each passing day, is losing her grip on the kingdom and the world she once loved as well. In the tender moments before Odysseus leaves her for Troy, the two newly minted parents talk about leaving their world behind for the ideas of the world not yet explored, but knowing the responsibilities they have to the country, they stick to their duties, which causes them both to suffer in their own ways within their time apart. Damon and Hathaway’s effortless chemistry shines early and is brightest late, when both realize that, over the course of their separation, a new age of man has formed, and only their love has survived a time that is crumbling before their eyes. Not known for writing strong female characters throughout his filmography, Nolan and the brilliant Hathaway do the character justice.
The mother and son are not the only ones left wanting, wishing for their loved one to return home, as other loyal subjects like Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), Odysseus’s faithful servant, has grown to become an outcast in the palace in the reign of the suitors, left out of the loop and in the streets much like the ailing family dog Argos, who was nothing more than a puppy when his master left, and is now a frail version of his once younger self, mirroring the blind swineherd in many ways. In training with Eumaeus, Telemachus becomes convinced that if he were to put a plan in motion to take over the throne, he would need to know the truth once and for all about his father’s absence from home, instead of relying on old stories and songs of battle. Throughout this opening thirty minutes or so, Holland’s Telemachus has to put the film on his back, propelling the narrative forward towards its grandness, but it’s tedious at times given that the actor in the part isn’t meeting the challenge of playing this vital character. In one of the most miscast performances of the year and of Nolan’s filmography, Holland isn’t up to the task of carrying the emotional weight of a young man in desperate need of finding answers to his father’s disappearance, and isn’t able to get on the same wavelength as every other actor he shares a screen with. On paper, his performance should work, but once he’s in the costume, in the biggest film of his career, Holland becomes the latest actor of his generation lost to “smartphone face” without any of his normal charisma found within his other projects, resulting in an inconsistently flat, empty performance. It also doesn’t help that Nolan gives him the responsibility of being the one character who asks nothing but questions for the audience throughout his screentime in the first half of the film (i.e., the Inception problem). It’s an irritating feature within some of Nolan’s screenplays that can feel artificial and doesn’t fit within the rest of his version of The Odyssey.
On his travels to Sparta, Telemachus arrives and shares a meal with Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), the Greek king of Sparta, where he tells the young prince about his father’s trick of the Trojans, in building the giant wooden horse that is disguised as a gift to the gods, but is a vessel to get the warriors in the walls of Troy and sack the city from the inside, thus ending the war for good. In an expanded sequence that was shown in theaters last year to build anticipation for the film, Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema use their IMAX cameras with brilliant precision here, slowly expanding the invasion of Troy from the intimate spaces of the Trojan Horse to the vast, unpredictable city they are invading. This set piece, alongside several others including Odysseus and his men’s encounters with the cyclops Polyphemus (played by the brilliant Bill Irwin), their battle with the Laestrygonian giants (armored, and used in a completely new location in Nolan’s version than in the poem), and every struggle the crew faces with the sea, are breathtaking in terms of the creativity Nolan and his team are using to not use any CGI to create these mythical sequences, using the camera’s depth perception to make the cyclops and the giants seems larger than they actually were in real life. It’s techniques like this, alongside the impeccable sound work and impressive editing by Jennifer Lame, that trick the audience into believing what they are seeing the real thing, like Bill Irwin’s otherworldly work or in what might be the scene of the year involving the witch Circe (Samantha Morton), where Odysseus’s men are transformed into pigs using these techniques alongside genius prosthetics and make-up work. In both scenes, Nolan amps up the tension, creating some of the most horrific, terrifying moments of the epic poem come to life in a spectacular, haunting fashion. While these scenes with Irwin and Morton are short, they leave a lasting impact long after their brief inclusion and tie expertly into the guilt and difficult choices Odysseus has to make as a leader of men, facing the consequences of his actions from his extensive journey.
Nolan’s epic sings the best when it is focused on its main character Odysseus, and firmly in the hands of Damon. From the first time we see him on screen, under the spell of Calypso (Charlize Theron), slowly trying to regain his memory of the life he had before he was stuck with her, to his moments in battle at Troy, to the entire journey home, to his return and revenge tour in Ithaca, Damon is sensational as the Greek king, embodying the command necessary to gain the trust of those who follow him into battle, who come to believe that he is one of the smartest, luckiest men of their time. Damon, an actor known for making a film or two about trying to get back home, is called up to the major leagues here after working twice before with Nolan on Interstellar and Oppenheimer and showcases why he is one of our best movie stars, as he delivers a poignant, emotionally introspective portrayal of Odysseus. As he and Nolan take Wilson’s approach of a complicated man to heart, they also explore how for all of his brilliance, the actions of Ithaca’s King resulted in countless lives lost, leaving him in a similar boat to Nolan’s last protagonist J. Robert Oppenheimer, where the mortality and justification of violence does not outweigh the impact of what it can mean for the overall greater good. These messages beautifully mirror each other, as war is built on lies, and it’s only a tool for the powerful to become stronger, with many people left as collateral damage along the way.
Again, there are consequences to Odysseus’s actions in thinking he can defy the gods, and that includes the death of his men, including Eurylochus (Himesh Patel), Odysseus’s second-in-command, or coming to face with the dead like Sinon (Elliot Page), a Greek soldier who died under his command by the hands of the Trojans in making the delivery of the Trojan Horse come off as authentic, or replaying the siege of Troy in his head over and over again when encountering Athena (Zendaya), the daughter of Zeus who has been his protector on his journey back to Ithaca. In facing these challenges and more, Nolan and Damon’s version of Odysseus slowly transforms into a remorseful, tragic figure, one who knows that the damage he has caused will ripple across time, and his punishment was not enough when you see what happened in Troy, a sequence that turns from thrills to horror when Nolan changes the perspective of the invasion by the end of the film. It’s a bold take on the actions of the character that doesn’t let him off the hook, and Damon superbly succeeds in carrying his director’s vision of Odysseus to the finish line, even though it does feel in the end like we’ve seen the director talk about this before in his previous work.
As original and thematically thrilling as it might be to see Nolan come to this conclusion for his protagonist, his omission of the mythological approach to the film is a massive letdown for anyone who is a fan of the original source text or even just a fan of Wilson’s rendition. Gone are the conversations and interactions with the “gods,” and they are instead replaced with a more modern understanding of the gods, where they are out of mind, out of sight, and work more behind the scenes and within the logic of “karma” in this cinematic world than anything else. It’s disappointing to see changes made to vital characters in the poem, like Athena, who in the film is only briefly guiding Odysseus on his journey, but in the original story, is guiding both the father and son to an epic reunion in the third act. This is also a concern for a rich character like Calypso, who has imprisoned Ithaca’s King as her lover and refuses to let him go until Zeus forces her to release Odysseus because the gods feel that the man has served enough punishment for being so dismissive and disrespectful to those who control their world. Instead of adding this drama amongst the gods, and holding Odysseus’s fate in their hands, Nolan turns Calypso into one of his “twists,” where the lesson at the end of the day is “I needed you to remember what you did, and who you really love,” a rather silly conclusion to the character that undermines the danger Odysseus is in, resulting in confusion as to why it was included in the film in the first place if this was going to be how Nolan was going to adapt it. In limiting these characters on screen, and wasting their inclusion in the broader world, Nolan’s critics about how he writes his female characters will be well within their rights to be upset.
With the glaring exclusions of a Zeus, Poseidon, Nausicaä, and the limitations of the narrative to expand the narrative for Helen of Troy or her sister Clytemnestra (in a dual, brief role by Lupita Nyong’o), leads one to wonder if Nolan left them on the cutting room floor (possibly a longer cut in the future?), or chose not to include them at all, going for a more naturalistic approach that seems easier for him to adapt, but leaves a lot to be desired when you are trying to make this grand story into the definitive version within an epic scale like this. For a director as prestigious as Nolan, there should be no excuse for a film this large and with unlimited resources to feel like it’s pulling its punches in the creativity department when it comes to going all the way with the mythology, especially given his past films and how the lore of those is packed with over information and explanation. But Nolan has always tried to ground his films, taking out the less silly aspects of the comic book world with his Dark Knight trilogy to invoke something more raw, real, modern; and it hurts him with The Odyssey because, for the first time in a while, it felt like the master director was scared at going for broke, and instead of going full on into the myths, gods, and legends that make this story so special, he barely did the bare minimum, leaving the audience wanting more, and not in a good way.
Outside of these omissions that feel vital to the storytelling, the editing, minus the grand action set pieces, is, for the first time in a long while within one of his projects, jumbled, with the pace of the film feeling sluggish at the start and too tidy when we reach the film’s grand finale. Its ending is inconsistent (Nolan’s worst since The Dark Knight Rises), with the story elements being a high mark, but the close-up, hand-to-hand combat sequences being shot so quickly within the dark lighting of the cinematography, it’s hard to tell what is going on. This is to say, while all of this is going on, the great, the good, the bad, and the curious decisions made by Nolan and his team, they are all being accompanied by an exquisite, thrilling score from Ludwig Göransson, who continues to make the case that he is one of the best film composers we have today. But a good score can’t save an ending that is supposed to emotionally hit you in the gut, and you are left instead scratching your head going, “oh, so that’s it, huh?”
The Odyssey might be Christopher Nolan’s most challenging project to date, and as a result, he has delivered some of his most stunning visual artistry of his career alongside his most imperfect work on the page. While there is no denying the impressive technical achievement on display and shooting the entire film on IMAX cameras can leave the audience speechless, the incomplete adaptation from Nolan’s shortcomings as a writer, mixed with the poor casting decision of Holland as Telemachus, as well as rehashing broader themes about the modern world changing due to the violence that is going on around it, make for the puzzling experience upon first viewing. The Odyssey leaves little to be desired in its execution, even though it theoretically should’ve been a home run on the page given the subject matter and the person making the film. But as Nolan and his audience know, theory will only get you so far.
Grade: B
Universal Pictures will release The Odyssey in IMAX, premium formats and theaters on July 17.
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