“The Odyssey”
Christopher Nolan’s $250 million retelling of Homer’s classic sword-and-sandal epic is here. And it is also epic, with a nearly three-hour running time. The film delivers, if unevenly, but when the bow is strung and taut, “The Odyssey” flies with fury and purpose. Even though we know how the millennia-old story ends, there are plenty of surprises and moments of wonder.
The central conflict in “The Odyssey” is not battle. It’s a post-war saga centered on Odysseus’s 20-year trek home after the conclusion of the 10-year Trojan War — you know, the one over Helen, the face that launched a thousand ships. Troy (in modern-day Turkey) was a strategic foothold and a gateway between the Aegean and Black seas — you could think of it as the Strait of Hormuz circa 1200 B.C.
In their shared narrative, Homer and Nolan aren’t so concerned with the blood shed over land and prized hostages. “The Odyssey” is about the turmoil within its antihero as he struggles to fulfill his obligations to the gods, while trying to stay the agent of his own destiny. Odysseus bears the burden of his choices — the fate of his men, the downstream horrors of his military tactics and so on — while meanwhile, his wife Penelope, some 400 miles away in Ithaca, fends off lecherous suitors as the fate of their son, Telemachus, hangs in the balance.
That’s a lot to deal with without GPS to guide you, but there are the gods, and they see all. Odysseus, played with phlegmatic cool by a sculpted Matt Damon, is the keen strategist who engineered the Trojan Horse that led to the sacking of Troy and ended the war. He’s also an assured reasoner who believes he can outthink the gods, or find loose strings in oracle-bound prophecies that leave room for different results. Hubris, a central theme in many Greek myths, seals many fates here.
The plot is launched when Odysseus shoots out the eye of Cyclops and boasts about it. (Cyclops had gruesomely snacked on several of Odysseus’s detachment.) But it’s not a good idea to brag and tag when the bully you put down is the son of Poseidon, and you want to cross his watery realm to get home. And so the ire of the god of the sea catalyzes Odysseus’s long and circuitous trip. We learn from an undead Agamemnon and from Sinon, the soldier Odysseus sacrifices during the Trojan Horse ruse, that only Odysseus will live to see his native land. This is when Odysseus decides to bend fate to save his men and his soul, avoiding a whirlpool prophesied to take everyone but him, and opting for a strait where it is said six of his crew will be snatched from his boat’s deck by certain death.
“The Odyssey” is strongest when Odysseus is back on the shores of Ithaca and dressed as a beggar, gaining favor with his blind, loyal swineherder Eumaeus (an unrecognizable John Leguizamo) and plotting with his son (Spider-Man portrayer Tom Holland). They assess the mounting situation with his wife (a doe-eyed Anne Hathaway, who’s having a busy year with “Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Mother Mary”) and the loutish court of suitor bro-dom led by the manipulatively imperious Antinous (Robert Pattinson owning his character’s smarminess). It’s within the palace walls that the film registers the most intrigue and suspenseful tension.
Throughout the movie, there are flashbacks to the Trojan War that are epic in composition, brutal and stunning, though sometimes confusing and garbled. The ordeal of getting packed into the giant wooden horse and awaiting the pivotal siege is told from inside the uncomfortably cramped and waterlogged confines. Details of urinating and defecating are documented to the point of TMI — but these details make Nolan’s “Odyssey” more real and affecting than other retellings of the myth.
For the production, Nolan and frequent cameraman Hoyte van Hoytema (“Oppenheimer,” “Dunkirk”) shot the film entirely on IMAX cameras — the first film to do so, an impressive feat considering a rigged IMAX camera can weigh more than 200 pounds and makes a terrible clatter that often interferes with set sound and dialogue. I unfortunately did not see “The Odyssey” on an IMAX screen, and there are scenes, such as Cyclops’s lair and the sack of Troy, that I can only imagine are exponentially more stunning in Nolan’s intended format.
Nolan was inspired by Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation, which brings a greater female gaze to the patriarchal-leaning lore. And there are women at the forefront, at least more than any man not named Odysseus. Holed up in Ithaca, a resourceful Penelope uses both her charms and intellect to stave off the thuggish suitors — though the fear of male violence is noticeably etched on her brow. A compassionate Athena (Zendaya) lends counsel to the wandering Odysseus. The fiery vengeance of Clytemnestra (Lupita Nyong’o, who also plays her sister Helen) closes any argument about female passivity in this telling.
The cast is impressive, with diverse and intriguing choices. Take Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, seen almost entirely from the back of his head or in shrouded shadows; Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother, Helen’s husband, and military collaborator of Odysseus; or Elliot Page as the ill-fated Sinon. Charlize Theron plays Calypso, Odysseus’s stranded island lover for seven drug-induced years. Zendaya and Pattinson, who paired together earlier this year for the locally shot, dark rom-com, “The Drama,” get respectively lost in the flatness and bombast of their parts.
Samantha Morton is the film’s secret sauce as Circe, the witch whose neat culinary skills and incantations turn much of Odysseus’s crew into pigs: a rendering of who they are deep down inside, or that’s how she frames it with a bit of #MeToo ire. The big surprise is Leguizamo, as the swineherd, who delivers a deep, slow simmer of a performance, imbuing passion, grit, and vulnerability into the part that’s further informed by the character’s blindness. It’s a career-capping turn that should be remembered come awards season. The film ultimately hangs on Damon’s shoulders as a war-weary warrior haunted by the ghosts of his men and driven to atone and honor their souls.
Nolan’s quest to bring home the elusive essence of Homer’s sea-swept verses, propelled by human flaw and relentless perseverance, is a passion project whose earnestness you can feel frame by frame. The film doesn’t emerge from the gate on steady legs, but when it finds them, it can really run.
In the Trojan epic cycle, Homer’s “Odyssey” and “The Iliad” (Agamemnon’s saga) are just two of 10 narratives — by a half-dozen writers — that start with Paris’s abduction of Helen and end with the death of Odysseus. Since studios love franchises, maybe this is the beginning of the Homeric Universe?
Playing at AMC Assembly Row 13 (IMAX), Apple Cinemas Cambridge, Kendall Square and the Somerville Theater (wide screen).
A stronger
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