Tripwire Reviews Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey

Hit Or Myth?

Tripwire’s senior editor Andrew Colman takes a look at Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, a little later than planned …
The Odyssey
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway

Loads of spoilers (how can you spoil a film whose plot is 2800 years old??), but it’s been out for a while so you should’ve seen it by now. ” src=”cid:image001.gif@01DD26BF.E5C49E60″ alt=”:p” class=”Apple-web-attachment Singleton” style=”opacity: 1;”>

Christopher Nolan occupies a unique space in modern cinema – an auteur director who has the gravitas of Kubrick coupled with automatic mainstream appeal. Once upon a time, such directors (Coppola, Scorsese, De Palma, Malick, the rest of the movie brats) were relatively common and such artistic, ambitious movie-makers were often garlanded with gongs, plaudits and box office. It was a consensual thing – The Godfather movies were  the gold standard, and still are. Nolan however, and this includes the movies that are his best (Memento, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Dunkirk – just my opinion of course) has always had one eye on his audience, modern mores and maximising returns, and that is certainly the case here.

The Odyssey is not a great film, but it is a good one, and once again I have to point out that it’s as good as commercial cinema gets these days, as there’s just no competition. It’s certainly hard to reheat a tale that may well be the most inspirational and influential of all and make it different to an action film whose themes are revenge, transcendence, etc. But Nolan pulls it off – his Odyssey doesn’t trouble itself with historical accuracy, either with the casting, costumes or military hardware, but it’s a minor quibble. Plus his addition of themes such as memory, persona, guilt, civilizational regression, mercenary behaviour, redemption and sacrifice are very much the bedrock of his canon rather than the source material (although I’m no expert on this). The point is getting his message across, providing sufficient depth to satisfy older and more demanding viewers and to be fair, himself. The film scores heavily in its delineation of the journey taken by Odysseus and his continually decimated crew – surmounting endless superior foes and indeed the fallen who populate Hades. It all looks great, and the dialogue is solid and naturalistic enough to prevent each episode receding into cliché. It still does feel a bit detached at times, as this is primarily a director’s movie, but there is a satisfying human element to it that keeps you interested, even if the first hour or so does drag a wee bit.

The cast list didn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence as there weren’t many heavyweights involved, but credit to Matt Damon* who once again landed the plum role but did pretty well with it, and is nuanced and uncharacteristically mature enough to carry the film). As for Zendaya, Elliot Page, Charlize Theron etc. – they’re either adequate or not given that much to do, but like all epics, everything is about the logistics. Even the always reliable Anne Hathaway, whose key role requires all the emoting she can muster, can only do so much with a role that just lacks range. Pattinson and Morton were very good however, but even then they were not that massively more than plot devices. Tom Holland was surprisingly impressive, though.

My key issue with it is that (as I said before) this is an overfamiliar story that although dramatic at times is not brimming with that much drama. In the long-awaited finale Odysseus dispatches all of Penelope’s suitors like he was Jason Bourne, and with that the movie ends and doesn’t particularly stay with you. And the film’s subplot (when Holland’s Telemachus visits Menelaus (Jon Bernthal chewing the scenery as usual) and Helen of Troy is certainly of interest but doesn’t add all that much, (and then is quickly dispensed with) even if it does provide considerable context.

A movie not for the ages, but this age. But then with such a huge budget it could never be much more than the vessel for allegorical commentary that Nolan wanted it to be.

*Damon obviously doesn’t get all the plum parts, but for an actor who doesn’t look like a leading man and isn’t all that great (even if he is certainly decent) he does punch above his weight when it comes to landing roles. His schtick since Good Will Hunting is generally neurotic boy outsider coupled with fearless machismo, which is probably why he got picked by Nolan. Yes some of his roles are neither macho nor neurotic. That was a bit of a generalisation, I admit. 

The Odyssey is out in cinemas now