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HOLLYWOOD (AP) – Getting home, and turning back the clock, has long been at the root of Christopher Nolan\u2019s films. The astronauts of \u201cInterstellar\u201d painstakingly lose 23 years in space travel, almost the same length of time Odysseus is away from home in \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d: a decade fighting the Trojan War, a decade trying to return to Ithaca.<\/p>\n
So, to a remarkable degree, Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d \u2014 faithful as it is to Homer\u2019s epic poem \u2014 feels, down to its nonlinear DNA, like a Nolan movie. The authorship of the epic poem, dated to the 7th or 8th century BC, is complex. But no one could question the maker of this \u201cOdyssey,\u201d an earthy, existential epic that ravishingly melds the storytelling of antiquity with contemporary IMAX-sized bravado.<\/p>\n
As a story about a man whose cunning offends the gods, \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d feels very much like a companion piece, if not a downright sequel, to \u201cOppenheimer.\u201d Odysseus (Matt Damon, in the role of his life) is increasingly racked with guilt for the violence and death he\u2019s wrought after his ingenuity led to the sacking of Troy.<\/p>\n
The arrival of any new Nolan spectacle inevitably leads to its own kind of assault, and avalanches of \u201cmasterpiece\u201d proclamations. (I\u2019m notinnocent.) But while \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d Nolan\u2019s first film shot entirely with IMAX cameras, doesn\u2019t skimp on grandiosity, it works surprisingly well as a simpler, human-sized tale.<\/p>\n
The journey \u2014 you may have heard, it\u2019s about the journey \u2014 is sometimes a little clunky, and the sheer Nolan-ness of the production, not to mention the historic nature of the tale, inevitably saps it of some freshness. You could make a credible case that Nolan has already made a movie about a guy trying to reach his family through strata of mind-warping illusion, and it\u2019s called \u201cInception.\u201d Such is the trouble with urtexts.<\/p>\n
But \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is rarely not transfixing, and it\u2019s a ripping adventure story, besides. At the least, it\u2019s the definitive big-screen adaptation of one of literature\u2019s oldest tales \u2014 a not-too-shabby accomplishment for a filmmaker of restless ambition.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not until Book 5 that Odysseus enters Homer\u2019s poem, and Nolan, who also wrote the screenplay, likewise begins in Ithaca. There, Odysseus\u2019 home is overrun by feasting suitors in pursuit of his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway). Foremost among them is Antinous, who\u2019s played with sleazy perfection by Robert Pattinson. For an actor often (pleasingly) at odds with the movies around him, Pattinson has never slid more seamlessly into a part.<\/p>\n
Telemachus (Tom Holland, also well-cast), the youthful son of Penelope and Odysseus, resolves to go in search of his father. Meanwhile, we catch up with Odysseus, weathered and white-bearded, following the fall of Troy. His forced conscription, by Agamemnon, is shown in flashbacks. Agamemnon is depicted with an imposing Darth Vader-like presence and played by Benny Safdie, but the real star is his hulking, mohawked helmet.<\/p>\n
Such vivid details abound in Nolan\u2019s richly textured film. The simple rocking of Odysseus\u2019 longship, off the Mediterranean coast, is glorious. Some of Nolan\u2019s and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema\u2019s most impressive work has come when they\u2019re faced with the elements (as in \u201cDunkirk\u201d ). And \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is flooded with stormy seas and enchanted isles. If anything, the movie could have gone further; I was promised rosy-fingered dawns.<\/p>\n
The first line of Homer\u2019s poem, as translated by Emily Wilson (the version Nolan leaned on), refers to Odysseus as \u201ca complicated man.\u201d James Joyce, whose \u201cUlysses\u201d was based on \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d once noted that while Hamlet is merely a son, Ulysses, or Odysseus, is a father, a husband, a lover and a warrior. In short, he\u2019s an Everyman, albeit an especially smart one. And Damon, the most amiable of Everymen, proves especially attuned to the multifaceted nature of the archetypal hero.<\/p>\n
We meet him first as a soldier, leading a small group of ships away from Agamemnon\u2019s fleet, setting a southerly course with his second-in-command Eurylochus (an excellent Himesh Patel). Their route takes them on a series of episodic quests: a cave encounter with Polyphemus, the Cyclops; a pine forest attack by the man-eating giants, the Laestrygonians; a meal with the witch Circe (Samantha Morton); and Odysseus\u2019 seven-year interlude with the sea nymph Calypso (a beguilingly sincere Charlize Theron).<\/p>\n
You could argue that the movie can feel like a series of sketched-together set pieces, but what set pieces! That includes the tale of the Trojan horse, a fleeting mention in the poem but here a centerpiece. You can tell that Nolan, who nearly made \u201cTroy\u201d more than two decades ago, has had the sequence \u2014 beginning with the Trojan horse sunk in the sand and leading to the burning of Troy \u2014 on his mind for years.<\/p>\n
Each stop on Odysseus\u2019 journey gives Nolan a mythic playground to explore imagery that verges on the stuff of horror. I was most intoxicated by \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d in its most surreal moments: the sight of a giant hand emerging out of the shadows, the meeting with the \u201cshades\u201d of Odysseus\u2019 dead army, risen from the black soil of Hades.<\/p>\n
\u201cA time of apparent magic\u201d is how the movie is introduced. Nolan has wisely opted to keep the gods sidelined. Their powers are real, but with the exception of Zendaya\u2019s Athena, who appears like a confidant to Odysseus, the gods, themselves, remain off-screen.<\/p>\n
That choice draws Nolan\u2019s \u201cOdyssey,\u201d and its themes of sacrifice, fidelity and honor, closer to reality. And it makes Nolan\u2019s decision to cast his film widely all the more essential. This is a story, passed down for centuries by singers and storytellers, that belongs to all of humankind. Casting the movie with a wide spectrum of actors, including Lupita Nyong\u2019o as Helen of Troy, is not only fair game for a purely mythic tale but it gives the movie a present-day vitality. Seeing actors like Elliot Page (indelible as a fallen soldier), John Leguizamo (as the loyal servant Eumaeus) and Damon in this ancient context is a very big reason to see \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d and why Homer\u2019s told and retold tale is worth revisiting, at all. If today has no role, what\u2019s the point? They didn\u2019t have cameras in 700 B.C., either.<\/p>\n
Nolan\u2019s \u201cOdyssey\u201d is nearly three hours long but never slow going. And it\u2019s the friction between past and present that propels the movie as much as Odysseus\u2019 wayward path. Gender roles are examined even while traditional masculinity is upheld. The ending of the poem, a tricky thing since it features mass murder, is given a more palatable action-movie melee. But the essence of \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is here, and Odysseus\u2019 quest to live down his mistakes and uphold his convictions feels vibrant again. Nolan, you might say, is at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d a Universal Pictures release in theaters Thursday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for violence and some language. Running time: 172 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOLLYWOOD (AP) – Getting home, and turning back the clock, has long been at the root of Christopher Nolan\u2019s films. The astronauts of \u201cInterstellar\u201d painstakingly lose 23 years in space travel, almost the same length of time Odysseus is away from home in \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d: a decade fighting the Trojan War, a decade trying to … Continue reading Movie Review: In Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u2018The Odyssey,\u2019 an ancient epic is reborn<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":1524518,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1451],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1524517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-entertainment-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-17 13:03:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1524517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1524519,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1524517\/revisions\/1524519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1524518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1524517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1524517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1524517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}