At The Movies: The Odyssey
FILM REVIEW: THE ODYSSEY
Christopher Nolan has been thinking about this film for a very long time. Over two decades ago, he circled the Brad Pitt project ‘Troy’ as a potential director before helming duties fell to Wolfgang Petersen.
Nolan must believe that things happily happen for a reason because it’s doubtful back then that he would have had the clout to truly imprint his vision and voice on the material. Now he arrives off the critical and commercial heat of ‘Oppenheimer’ to deliver an uncompromising film that has gestated in his heart and head for twice the time it took Odysseus to sail home after the siege of Troy.
I half expected all that thinking time to result in a ruminative and reflective film with lots of staring out windows or gazing at the horizon, but in storytelling terms and despite the epic running time, this film is a rocket. Once it commits to Odysseus’ ill-fated and endlessly eventful voyage home, the action is incessant. Deemed by his crew to be cursed by the gods, Odysseus (Matt Damon) is compelled to explore islands they pass for provisions, but every step ashore leads to encounters with mythical opponents ranging from shape shifting witches to one-eyed giants.
In his bid for authenticity, Nolan apparently pushed for everything in the film to be as practical and physical as possible. What this creates is an unforgiving world where everything is earned in sweat and tenacity. This is epitomised by Nolan’s individualistic take on the Trojan Horse. Undoubtedly aware that we have seen numerous depictions of this infamous act of deceit over the decades, Nolan offers up strikingly fresh imagery. His dark sculptured horse is embedded in the beach at an artfully askew angle. And it does not roll inside the city walls on wheels with ease. Instead, it is dragged inside with the back-breaking strain of thousands.
Meanwhile inside the horse, the secret cargo of hidden invaders endures everything from perilous high tides to the prospect of being burnt alive. And if you ever wondered what the bathroom situation was like inside the Trojan Horse this is the film to answer a question you probably never considered!
I will flag my favourite small moment of the entire film with a spoiler alert. With the horse pulled inside the city walls, a sceptical soldier stands atop it ramming his sword randomly into the wooden horse, testing it for intruders. Inside, one incision draws blood from a concealed warrior who must stay silent even as he is stabbed. As the sword is being pulled back out of the horse, Odysseus wipes the blood stained blade clean with a cloth in a blink. The swiftness of thought is matched by the swiftness of the cut as a sharp edit doesn’t linger on the ingenuity that crucially maintains the ruse.
As Odysseus gets way-laid on the way home thereafter, a good proportion of the film is given over to his waiting wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) who must suffer through a suffocating siege of her own as suitors for her hand descend on her house. With Odysseus deemed dead by most, these venial vultures are emboldened to pressure her towards marriage. Only Penelope and her faithful son hold out hope for Odysseus’ return but they are forced by the law of the land to feed the freeloading guests that have swarmed their residence in a nightly nightmarish ritual. Mother and son are witnesses to an endless feast that they are hosting and funding but want no part of. Locked into a grotesque groundhog day of insatiable greed and mounting competitive lust, this is truly a sanity-threatening scenario.
Meanwhile, on an idyllic isle, Odysseus is haunted not by his traumas but by his lack of memories as he strives to remember what is most important to him. This sequence is the biggest flaw of the entire film because it somehow tries to depict being stranded alone on a bountiful island with Charlize Theron as being even vaguely problematic.
In a similar vein, the film does have welcome levity at points, although even Nolan’s mastery can’t fully kill the shadow of Monty Python encroaching on certain scenes. Twice Damon implores his men to retreat and inadvertent giggles are unavoidable. Similarly, a stoic speech about settling down for the night after being locked in a cave with a human-chomping Cyclops momentarily pushes too much stiff upper lip Englishness into this Greek tragedy.
I’m at pains not to resort to the overused term ‘muscular’ in relation to this film. Instead, I’m going to use the word lean because despite the vast canvas and the breadth and brutal beauty of the visuals, this is a film of immense focus and stirring sequences. Everyone involved seems to have suffered to make this art, so why is it so much fun for us?? In truth, Nolan has hit a home-run!!
