Vassilis Kroustallis reviews Nolan's 'Odyssey'.
Christopher Nolan is a well-versed moralist. His tales of going beyond one's limits and then returning to Mother Earth make him well-suited to direct, in scope, the most celebrated story of Return (apart from the Bible, that is).
Homer's Odyssey, this seminal text in Western Literature, was first absorbed into all kinds of literature (including the celebrated 1949 'hero's journey' narrative script trope by Joseph Campbell), before actually being adapted into film and series. Nolan's multi-racial, multi-ethnic 'Odyssey' (2026) makes the whole cast a hero on its own (so yes, it's more of an ensemble film that usually been considered for); still, and for all the alt-right 'woke agenda' complaints the cast works less to diversify but more as an ecumenical UN court members with one mission; to save the ancient world from catastrophe.
Like its source material, the film starts in medias res (but not the original's). In a Trojan horse short, semi-dived into the seashore (in a manner that brings to mind Kubrick's monolith in '2001: A Space Odyssey' and other films), 'Odyssey' is set out to define Odysseus (Matt Damon) original hybris. By betraying Sinon (a magnificently anguished performance by Elliot Page) with his cunning -and not just the Trojans, who take the horse onto the shore, Odysseus is relegated to a simple PTSD hero for the rest of the film. Nolan (as also a scriptwriter) decides to turn the tables; and, in the absence of ruling Gods, who decide who to punish and who to praise, Odysseus's quality here brings his doom. This intentional characterization of the 'many ways' or 'complicated' man with a negative (instead of a positive) vibe is the reason the hero becomes as bewildered as Matt Damon was in the Jason Bourne series (but without the attitude).
This radical appropriation of cunningness as evil gives Nolan the way to celebrate his honorable but rather simplistic) appeal to an old-fashioned course of morals and hospitality, in which strangers and pilgrims are not only tolerated -but actually celebrated. (The fact that 'Odyssey' shows none of the sumptuous feasts the Homeric text includes - some of which in the now-omitted Phaeacia land, tells something of how palpably intellectual and never lived this worldview is in the Odyssey. That said, the whole film brims with a yearning for toleration and acceptance that is continuously threatened. Every little scene and episode is a testament.
By also making Odysseus a PTSD character (and borrowing the Trojan Horse and spectacular catastrophe scene outside of the Homeric epics), Nolan has the brilliant opportunity to revisit his old time-machine gimmicks, here helped abundantly by the text itself (which has its own flashbacks within flashbacks and parallel editing stories ready for view). The stories of Telemachus (Tom Holland) and Odysseus perfectly merge here, and the film's pace is assured -but not frantic, even if compact in details (like Odysseus has a memory overload to narrate). Being unable to remember, on the other hand, feels perfectly validated -even though the conjunction of the lotus scene with Calypso's own story doesn't do justice to the latter character, who becomes a sexless being in this Odyssey (and an underused Charlize Theron).
But again, pleasures of the flesh have little interest for Nolan, even though one of the most well-structured scenes is the Circe story, in which the plain-looking witch manually (that's the exact expression) deforms Odysseus' companions. Here, Samantha Morton in the role goes from the helpless to the wicked to the sober in just a few shots. What the 'Odyssey' wants is the total memory absence of morals; that's why the washed-out color palette here works for almost all characters (the usual collaborator of Nolan, Hoyte van Hoytema in place) -leaving it to Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) to be invisible behind the Gotham armor. The film was watched in a fitting 70mm film format, which brings the feeling of a 'Jason and the Argonauts' world going terribly wrong here. Nothing is visually perfect or uniformly dystopian, even though, surprisingly (taking the scope of the film), there are a few epic shots that are really memorable (David Lean can still rest in peace).
The naturalistic dialogue (a hush-hushed rather than a cry) perfectly fits the film's naturalistic mode; it would have been a huge mistake to do otherwise. Ludwig Göransson's metal scraps and gongs help the film along (better than the overwhelming impression of 'Oppenheimer'). For a Nolan film, some women have more things to do here than previously; Penelope (Anne Hathaway in a matter-of-course regal trope), Circe, and even Helen & Clytemnestra (Lupita Nyong'o in a double role) question men's ruthless decisions and excuses -but the Athena addition (Zendaya) becomes more like Odysseus' memory than a full-fledged presence. Matt Damon cleverly understands his character is best when he does nothing; Rob Pattinson's sly Antinous matches with Tom Holland's coming-of-age, immature prince. But John Leguizamo's Eumaeus provides the deep human question that the whole film investigates and sometimes gets, sometimes misses.
Far from being either an active philosophical investigation or a bunch of action scenes glued together, Nolan's 'Odyssey', like its central hero, craves moral certitudes and narrative life closures. Its adherence to the archaic world of honor and shame is commendable and passes through each episode, as water under a bridge; its simultaneous need for a (moral, existential) closure at the same time limits the film's impact. Yet its combined force of cast and crew to serve this vision shows marvelously on screen, and gets the ball of Odyssey and his adventure forward -to the next discreet or direct adaptation.
Vassilis Kroustallis
