Christopher Nolan tells Odysseus’s heart-wrenching tale
I sat in the parking lot of my local theater for nearly 15 minutes, assessing, vibrating, breathing. I can count on my hand the times when I have had the kind of experience that leaves me vibrating, happy for going to cinema, happy that it exists, happy that a tale I’m intimate with is told again.
Homer’s Odyssey isn’t new; it’s one of the oldest pieces of narrative that we have, one that’s affected more than just school lessons and book reports and movies and games and other books and paintings and art and statues. Hell, it partly led to Alexander the Great conquering half of the known world (with The Iliad being the other part). With the Odyssey Homer intended for the story to be shared orally. It is in essence the first D&D campaign, as that original story may have been lost but different bards each added their own spin on the details of that journey home, being both the player and the DM. And while the spins are worthwhile and interesting, it’s what the actual meaning of the tale is that’s so important: one man’s repentance for his incredible crimes, and how his return home is completely and willingly self-inflicted.
Christopher Nolan’s take on the story emphasizes this point, driving in from the original moments on the screen that Odysseus is flawed. He’s a man. He’s not a God. The Gods have rules, and man breaks those rules, and Odysseus seems to do so over and over again. Within the last month I re-read the Iliad and the Odyssey to get a baseline for what to expect from the film. The majority of the latter (though the film does speak to the former as well) relies on Odysseus telling a king and his court about his failures as a leader, about how he had been lost, continually pushing himself to stay lost, and even seemingly being captured by and then falling in love with Calypso on Ogygia just to avoid going home. With The Odyssey Nolan pushes this mythical hero to reckon with his actions, to show this shame. “I want to go home, lads” he would tell his crew, but he doesn’t, not yet anyways. How can he go home to his kingdom of splendor if he has just murdered thousands, if not wiping out a people completely?
Nolan does a phenomenal job of mixing themes and elements, of ancient myth with modern reality, of gods and of men. The Odyssey here isn’t so much a tale of lotus-eaters and sirens and cyclops as it is about war crimes, of superficial sacrifice, of reckoning with our selves, and our inability to follow thr rules of the Gods. As the film unfolds we think, “where is this going? why is he doing this? why does this person matter?” It often feels disjointed, it feels unnecessary, it even feels like we’re wasting time — when we could be on our journey home. That’s a testament to Nolan’s approach because THIS IS WHAT ODYSSEUS WENT THROUGH! HIS STORY IS MEANT TO BE MEANDERING! HE’S MEANT TO NOT DO WHAT WE EXPECT OF A HERO TO DO! We are on that odyssey alongside the hero!
Matt Damon plays his part as Odysseus extremely well, in fact it may be one of his best performances to date. Homer’s tale repeats, over and over, that Zeus’s law requires us to be hospitable to strangers. For a 2800 year old tale it’s actually a firmly progressive (by today’s means) idea; be kind to everyone, rich and beggar alike, because they are all created in the image of the Gods (and may be Gods in disguise). We’re meant to treat those we don’t know, and treat our hosts equally well. Time and again in this film, much like the poem, that hospitality is broken and the Gods rain their fury on man in retort. Odysseus plans his escape from Polyphemus, the Cycloptic son of Poseidon, but instead of just leaving he enrages him (and his father) further, leading to an even longer and more treacherous path. Damon’s ability to show this side of the highly regarded hero, as a kind of asshole that befuddles his own crew, is terrific. He treats it as if he’s curious himself, as if he knows what to do but won’t do it, often with a fake know-it-all demeanor. His crew, with stellar performances by the likes of Himesh Patel and Elliott Page, is mystified by both his prowess in war and his inabilities to lead post one.
Nolan mostly uses practical visuals to showcase the hero’s trials. The cyclops is frightening, the Laestrygonians are enormous, and the Oceanus is painted in a beautifully terror-induced black and white. In a large format screen it’s even more awe-inspiring to see it all unfold, overwhelming us with so much to look at on the screen much like the soldiers may have felt seeing it 3000+ years prior. Ohhh, and the audio — mystifying. There are moments in the film where sailors chant that raises goose bumps, and when Polyphemus screams that shatters our internal glass. He does take a few liberties with the plot, cutting some sections out, merging others, but it provides a more purposeful tale from start to finish.
The journeys of Damon’s Odysseus and Tom Holland as Telemachus, his son, are wonderfully stark in contrast. Telemachus, refusing to believe his father dead, learns more and more of his great accomplishments, both growing fond of and resentful towards him as the suitors invade his home. Where Odysseus starts strong and fades weak, Telemachus starts weak and grows strong. Those suitors, led by Robert Pattinson perfectly portraying the conniving, scheming Antinous, have come into Odysseus’s home and under Zeus’s law have been feasting and pillaging it for years while waiting for his wife Penelope to make her marriage decision. God I hated him. Brilliant.
All of this comes together in the final scenes of the film where Odysseus returns home. This saga that we were on, this journey, wondering where this plot was going, really does get to its destination in a way that left me essentially weeping. It’s not the infamous suitor hall moment that I was hoping to see unfold; no, I wanted to know how Odysseus gets to that point. How Telemachus gets to that point. How Anne Hathaway’s Penelope gets to that point. It’s that lead-up that becomes the true emotional north star for Odysseus’s story, not his brutal revenge on Antinous and the boorish bros eating and drinking in his hall. And oh wow, did Christopher Nolan deliver the goods. It made the suitor destruction seem like an action-filled epilogue. By the time we get INTO the arrow-slinging moments we’re already streaming tears in our eyes at the cause and effect behind Odysseus’s journey, of the hero coming to terms.
We’re both gutted and cheering.
When those lights came up in the theater, there was clapping. But it wasn’t the kind of clapping where we loved a movie and our popcorn, but the kind of clapping where we experienced a biography happen in real time in front of us, where we saw someone go through therapy and come out stronger, where we were in the audience in Ithaca in a great hall listening to a bard sing about a legendary hero, his death, and his rebirth. And maybe ours too.
The Odyssey is now in theaters. Go see it in IMAX if you can, but go see it regardless.
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