The Odyssey – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 2 hours 53 minutes, Director – Christopher Nolan

With the Trojan War complete, Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his troops head home to Ithaca, an unexpectedly ten-year journey beset by the gods with monsters and disasters.

Borrowing from his Oppenheimer flashback-style of time meddling, Christopher Nolan follows a weary Odysseus (Matt Damon) trying to remember the events between winning the Trojan War and washing up on a beach, rescued by Calypso (Charlize Theron), years later. Yet, Oppenheimer had an aspect of heated interrogation fuelling the flashbacks, not present in the case of The Odyssey as we see Odysseus and his troops battling the forces of the gods through nature and monsters. Setting them off course and creating a ten-year journey home, where suitors are starting to demand that his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway, standing out in a large ensemble cast) move on and remarry so that someone new can finally take control.

While these figures, led by Robert Pattinson’s enjoyably disdainful Antinous, start to scheme we see Odysseus facing a succession of obstacles to flee, and occasionally attack. There’s a spectacle to them, designed for the big screen as Nolan clearly has classic epics in mind when making this, alongside feelings of beloved sword-and-sandals flicks. The tone, in this case, is intensified into a very mature and adult fantasy actioner. One that gets much impact from the sound department, capturing the chaos and yells as giants come round the corner and surround the men of Ithaca, or an army of the dead rises up. The sound erupting from the speakers with clatters and thuds creates a number of successful jumps and, at times, a darker tone for the film.

As for the sequences themselves, they do have a tendency to feel like a set of sequences in need of a tad more solid connection to feel less like stages. The Ithacan army trying to escape a towering cyclops in a cave is followed quickly by the meeting with giant soldiers, and I couldn’t help but feel a similarity in tone and style to the moments, as if a bit too similar in their basis. There’s still an impact in some of the suddenness, although not quite a punch. Much like the suspense, it’s scattered.

When the narrative is most direct, largely in the third act which while long is well tracked and has plenty to keep it moving, while the journey to it can sometimes simply feel long in the near three-hour run-time. There’s a sharp propulsion to the third act and just how Nolan escalates it. Capturing the tiredness and retained fury of Odysseus, a defiance that doesn’t quite seem to be as present or burning in the stages before. Perhaps it’s a final fight, personal and physical, stretching out, involving multiple faces we’ve seen scattered throughout the main journey – Tom Holland appears more consistently as the lead figure’s son, Telemachus, after having gone in search of his father with the film at one point feeling as if it’s forgotten him.

There’s a great many characters here, and, as has become the case for a Nolan film now, a very starry cast portraying them. Things don’t feel overly busy because of them, and no one feels like they’re fighting for space, with solid performances all round. But, you can sometimes feel divisions amongst the strands and who’s telling a flashback when it comes to the individual sequences. It’s easy to see and feel where one starts and ends without a full flow from one to the next.

Yes, there’s spectacle and likable elements in each instance. An intensity that comes through, but I couldn’t help but feel the run-time during the journey with the decision to draw a number of these sequences out to really get across the scale and struggle of the odyssey faced itself. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but with the effect that they have (I realise I’m in a minority here) I found myself not always in awe or immersed in what I was seeing – despite the detailed production and costume design.

Again, when letting ideas breathe together in the heat of direct battle, as a true sense of weariness and personal stakes is felt and Nolan looks more at Odysseus’ reflection on the past and learnings of himself, and what the gods may have thrown at him for his actions, I found a more intriguing emotional aspect for the characters, largely confined to Hathaway and brief side-characters until the burst of the extended confined battle which leads towards the film’s ending. One dealing with more than the deadly fight at hand and with an overall better flow. Perhaps a re-watch will bring more appreciation for what’s been pulled off here by Nolan, it’s certainly an ambitious film; arguably his biggest to date. But sometimes that grandness means that bigger emotional stakes and effect are left until much later.

While there’s scale and effect in the technical aspects, bringing in some stakes and suspense, much of the tension and emotional connection with The Odyssey is found in its third act, once the various sequences of the main, somewhat lengthy, journey itself is almost over.