The Odyssey (2026)
Christopher Nolan · Universal · Digital IMAX showing★★★★⯪
Note: This review contains spoilers
"Christopher Nolan is too ambitious. He's tried his hand at psychological thrillers, superhero epics, heist movies, and war tales. And now he wants to work on a historical epic? He's way too ambitious. No way will it work."-Me, when I heard that Chris Nolan was going to direct The Odyssey.
Based on Nolan's previous work, I went in expecting the grounded version of The Odyssey. More accurately, a boring movie. Something along the lines of the theatrical cut of Kingdom of Heaven. That's sort of the Nolan style: take the myth, drain the magic, explain the mechanism. The Prestige did it to stage illusion, The Dark Knight did it for the superhero genre, and Inception did it with dreams. I figured Odysseus would just be a Bronze Age man that would have to contend with natural disasters/dangers. No talk of a cyclops, witches, or any of the supernatural things that he was up against in the original text. And I was somewhat right. The movie doesn't go all the way into the mythology, but it also does not go fully into grounded realism. I'm glad to say that my expectations were totally wrong.
The movie does not shy away from the fantastical elements in the original story. The trick is that Nolan shoots the fantastical in a physically visceral way. When Samantha Morton's Circe turns the crew into pigs, she doesn't wave her hand or shoot magic powder from her palms. She physically reshapes them. She grabs their bodies and their faces and you see body horror changes worthy of a David Cronenberg movie. According an interview I saw online, little to no CGI was used during those transformation scenes.
The Laestrygonian giants aren't digital either. Nolan shot those scenes in forced perspective, seven-foot stunt performers against doubles under five feet, framed low enough to stretch a two-foot gap into what reads as four times the height. Also, the Cyclops is a puppet with the digital work buried inside it rather than standing in for it. It's old school filmmaking that enhances the experience. This very easily could have been a CGI fest under any other director. Every scene has much more weight as a result.
The lighting was also very well done. Low, naturalistic, and motivated. The main light sources were firelight, moonlight, and whatever else was in the room. It never goes muddy and it never flattens out into that even digital wash where every frame looks lit by the same lamp. I don't know how much of that is the stock (this is the first feature length movie shot entirely on IMAX 70mm) and how much is pure choice, but the picture is beautiful in a specific, unfashionable way. It feels much more immersive.
My favorite scene was the storm that late in the film that destroyed Odysseus' ship (and killed his crewmates). It was lit almost entirely by lightning, adding to the feeling of thalassophobia I was already feeling. It's loud, strobing, and it's borderline unpleasant. But it works for this scene and it's quite memorable. Note: there's an official photosensitivity advisory for this scene.
I was also pleasantly surprised with the combat scenes. Nolan does big action sequences well, but hand-to-hand has been a persistent weakness of his. Batman Begins has too many cuts in the action scenes and the camera is way too close to the action. In the sequels, the camera was now placed so far back that you could see the seams of the choreography. In the pursuit of realism, the fight scenes in The Dark Knight trilogy just looked too fake. Batman is supposed to be a master of martial arts but he fights like some guy off the street. Here, the sword work is also stiff, plain, and old-fashioned but it's exactly how it should be. Choreographed martial-arts, slow motion (like in 300), or wirework would have been absurd in a sword-and-sandal picture. For once, Nolan's fighting style works to the movie's benefit. I know many people complained about period inaccurate costumes, but that honestly didn't bother me, Agamemnon's armor looks anachronistically high-tech, with his helmet looking like Batman's cowl, but I thought it looked badass. This was never going to be a history lesson anyway, so I thought the flair was pretty cool.
The cast is close to exemplary. Damon carries it and Hathaway is very good with a part that doesn't give her much to work with. Penelope waits, and that's mostly the job. Writing women has never been Nolan's strength, but in fairness the source doesn't give her a lot of room either, and Hathaway finds the corners that are there. Her best moment is refusing Telemachus when he pushes her to take a suitor and telling him that she wants her husband back. She pours everything into it. Jon Bernthal plays a Spartan king in his usual New York register ("let me tell you something!"), and Holland's British accent slips more than once. Neither is disqualifying, but both took me out of the movie for a second. Overall, all the performances were solid.
Structurally, the movie could have been a jumbled mess. The film jumps around back and forth in the timeline. It starts off as a slow burn as well. About 30 minutes in, I thought I was going to lose the thread. Then, the movie kicks into the next gear and 172 minutes evaporate. If anything, it could have been a bit longer. Some scenes felt compressed, like Odysseus' time on Calypso's island. Nolan always uses time as a storytelling tool in his films. Insomnia is about the only thing he's ever told straight through. All of his other movies like to jump back and forth in time to some degree. He doesn't always stick the landing though. Tenet took me 2-3 viewings to parse and it really affected my enjoyment of the film. That's what I was worried would happen with this movie. I don't need to understand everything on a first watch, but I shouldn't be fighting the movie the whole time to find out what it's about.
The Odyssey is followable, with a caveat. I'd watched Troy two weeks before and knew the story and mythology going in. Troy is sort of a spiritual prequel to this movie. Additionally, Nolan's usual tropes are all there. The movie has dense, flowery, faintly literary dialogue delivered fast, often fighting the sound mix. The film explains its broad strokes, but if you walk in cold and aren't paying close attention, you can drift. I'm not sure how the movie plays for someone who's never read or heard of these stories. But for me, it played out just fine.
What holds all of it together is what the film is actually about. The Odyssey is a story about a man who leaves to become a great warrior, becomes one, and comes home unrecognizable to himself. He survives physically. Emotionally and spiritually, he doesn't. I gravitate towards these types stories. Ambition can be man's downfall. Also, there's the element of PTSD in the story. It's not a glorification of war or battle, but rather a lament of how people have lost all sense of respect for each other and commit atrocious acts to each other.
It's worth knowing how recently that became the way to interpret this poem. For most of recorded history, the Iliad was the preferred story. Teachers held that a poem about glory in battle made the better model for young men than one about wandering and misbehavior. The Odyssey only pulled decisively ahead in the early twentieth century, likely due to the World Wars. Overall, there is now a preference for the anti-war message rather than the glory of war. Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay assembled this interpretation out of fifteen years treating Vietnam veterans, arguing that Odysseus's lying, his mistrust, his inability to stop moving are the recognizable symptoms of a man who cannot come home, physically and mentally. At its core, that is the story that Nolan is telling in The Odyssey. He's clearly been circling it for years. Oppenheimer told a similar story, just in a different flavor. A man ruined by the pursuit of the thing he was best at. But where Oppenheimer argued it in rooms and hearings, this one argues it in bad weather and sword fighting. It's the same idea pushed further. Both movies are also very rewatchable.
Having read The Odyssey back in the day, I already knew how the story would end, but I was still blown away when I heard Odysseus pluck his bow at the end. The execution was flawless. I want to see it in a theater again before it leaves if possible. Either way, the 4K is going in the Vault once it's out (and at a reasonable price).
-TG
Eurylochus: What was the song of the sirens like?
Odysseus: All the things you want it to be. Then, all the things you wished you never wished for. It was the delicious itch you go to scratch but find it's under the skin. You can't reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. Told you what you most want, is what you most can't have. And what you most can't have, is what you already had, and lost. It was the song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don't really want to go home.