The Odyssey — Review

By Dan Gardner

Nolan is a different kind of creature

I'd love to sit down with a few top-tier directors and hear them talk about story and craft. But right now what I most want to hear is what they make of Christopher Nolan. Has this man ever made an "easy" film? Just look at his filmography.

2026　The Odyssey
2023　Oppenheimer
2020　Tenet
2017　Dunkirk
2014　Interstellar
2012　The Dark Knight Rises
2010　Inception
2008　The Dark Knight
2006　The Prestige
2005　Batman Begins
2002　Insomnia
2000　Memento

For a quarter of a century Nolan has kept up roughly a film every three years, and almost every one of them is a highly complex, non-linear piece of storytelling. Material that most good directors would drop as too convoluted and too risky is, for Nolan, just the next item on the list. Maybe there are other directors attempting the same thing, but I haven't heard of them — obviously because they haven't managed, as Nolan has, to actually pull it off again and again.

Nerve

Start with Matt Damon taking on Odysseus. I think that alone deserves respect.

7:42●●● 95%

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Let's be clear: Odysseus is the most famous mortal fictional character there is. Argue for Robin Hood or Hamlet and I'll grant it; bring up Romeo and I won't laugh at you either — of the three contenders, only his name later became a common noun. But Odysseus and the story of that journey home were written down roughly two thousand eight hundred years ago, and by the time they were, the story had already been circulating for something like five hundred years. Playing a figure like that, an actor faces not only the critics but an entire generation of people who read literature.

I've always thought Matt Damon was a good actor, and he's hit plenty of roles exactly right. But none of those roles was as hard as this one. If you asked me to list the twenty best male actors, I'm not sure I'd have put him on it — at least not before seeing him play Odysseus.

So did he actually do it? He did. I won't say nobody could have done it better, but what Matt turned in is convincing.

Everyone else

Odysseus is the lead, but this story is about far more than him.

Anne Hathaway's Penelope is excellent, and the part is not an easy one. Odysseus gets all the attention, but those twenty-odd years weren't any easier on Penelope. I'll bet money: within three years there'll be a theatrical film retelling The Odyssey from Penelope's point of view. As far as I know, something is already headed that way.

I'm starting to think Tom Holland is more than Spider-Man. He's good here, and as an actor he'll eventually grow out of that suit.

The other one worth singling out is Robert Pattinson. First, credit where it's due: Antinous is basically the film's villain. He doesn't have a huge amount of screen time, but he uses every scene of it, playing a suitor who is both cowardly and contemptible without a seam showing.

Himesh Patel plays Odysseus's second-in-command. He does the job, but there's not much room to work with — the character is simply "there."

John Leguizamo gives his best performance since John Wick. The man has been underrated for far too long.

Finally, Elliot Page has about ninety seconds of screen time in total and lands every bit of it.

One reading

There's one very subtle choice that makes the whole story more believable: every mythological or supernatural scene comes from Odysseus's own recollection.

Was there really a Cyclops? Were there really Circe and the Laestrygonians? Maybe, maybe not. Those passages are all Odysseus retelling — it's how he "remembers" things happening.

The same goes for Athena, and she can be read several ways. Maybe she exists only in Odysseus's imagination; given what he saw at Troy, that's the most straightforward reading. But you can't rule out that Athena really did come, just borrowing the shape of that Trojan girl. Who's to say.

RunPee at a glance

RunPee grade: A
Runtime: 172 minutes
Anything Extra: None

Sitting through 172 minutes is a hard fight. The best Peetimes in the film, along with their Cues and Synopses, are all in the RunPee app.