The Odyssey film review: An awesome Grecian spectacle
Nolan takes on Homer’s expansive epic with his trademark assurance, rendering a sprawling story with panoramic detail
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A director known for his sweeping approach to cinema, Christopher Nolan finally makes his way round to a mythological staple (he was at one point down to direct 2004’s Troy, at the time feeling he was ‘in a little over his head’). Given that Nolan managed to turn the story of a real-life physicist into a billion-dollar epic with the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, the prospect of him bringing to the screen such monumental material is pretty tantalising.
Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, who we meet on his legendary journey as he attempts to get home following the Trojan War, encountering the cyclops Polyphemus, the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron), the witch goddess Circe (Samantha Morton), and more. Meanwhile, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) is batting away the increasingly impatient advances of suitors who presume her husband dead and wish to claim the throne, chief amongst them Antinous (Robert Pattinson), with her son Telemachus (Tom Holland) determined to find his father. Himesh Patel stars as Odysseus’s second in command Eurylochus, with Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra, Benny Safdie playing powerful king Agamemnon, Jon Bernthal his brother Menelaus, John Leguizamo as Odysseus’s loyal servant Eumaeus, and Zendaya as the goddess Athena – who appears to Odysseus on his quest.
Inspired by influences as varied as Akira Kurosawa’s Ran and the work of animator Ray Harryhausen, the film is, of course, epically long, but also entirely engrossing. Writer-director Nolan streamlines the plot and conveys the story clearly yet poetically, in a way that ensures wide appeal. He retains key characters and episodes, brought to memorable life by the VFX team and cast, with standouts including Hathaway, Morton, Leguizamo and Pattinson (the one cast member who actually asked to read the script before signing on, and compared his character to James Woods in Casino).
Nolan pulls his punches a bit with the violence, which impacts on the horror and emotion, and although Damon makes a suitably grizzled, stubborn and ultimately sympathetic adventurer, another actor might have brought more depth and anguish to Odysseus’s plight. However, the execution is, for the most part, astonishing, combining sumptuous, immersive cinematography (it was shot entirely on IMAX cameras), gritty authenticity and awesome spectacle, flanked by a suitably ominous and thunderous Ludwig Göransson score. The story may be more than two-thousand-years-old but this evergreen tale of male pride, folly and soul-searching remains as relevant as ever.
The Odyssey is in cinemas from Friday 17 July.