An Epic Movie for an Epic Poem

With the collective insistence that IMAX was the definitive format for seeing The Odyssey, it took me several weeks to finally catch up with it (at a showing with decent seats). But this past weekend, I finally got to see what all the hype was about.

I have a pretty distant relationship with the original source material. I never had to read The Odyssey for school. I was well aware of many of the plot elements, though perhaps unclear about which details were part of this classic Greek story or that one, or perhaps just part of Greek mythology generally. I assumed that I certainly wouldn't notice which details were altered by writer-director Christopher Nolan for this adaptation.

But I am someone who has seen all of Christopher Nolan's movies. (Yes, even Following.) He's only ever made one film I didn't much care for, and several I really love. Suffice it to say, I feel quite able to pick out his "signatures." Whether they were always there in The Odyssey, drawing him to that for his next movie, or they were something he imposed upon it for his version, the result is a strong vision -- a Venn diagram of "Oscar bait" and "action fantasy" we haven't seen at the movies since the original The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Like the other blockbuster I recently caught up with, my feelings were mixed. Starting with things in the "plus column": the visuals. While they might have been a touch too desaturated on average for my tastes, they were stunning throughout. The supernatural moments were clear standouts, from a monstrous and menacing Cyclops to a truly horrific and uncomfortable sequence about Circe's witchcraft. But even more mundane images looked great; the many scenes in Penelope's dining hall never became repetitive thanks to raucous staging and subtle camera positioning.

It may be that Christopher Nolan is incapable of telling a story in pure, linear fashion. But I thought the jumbling of time frames here helped the story overall. The use of flashbacks helped avoid clumping all the action at the beginning and end of the story, and also served to highlight different perspectives on the same events. All of this heightened a moralistic theme I feel fairly sure was minimal (maybe even wholly absent) from the original story: this version of The Odyssey is not a story about one man being punished by the gods so much as it is about one man punishing himself.

Clever as that inversion is, I'm not sure the source material quite supports the adjustment... and here's where I get started on more of a "minus column." The Odysseus of this story has profound regrets over his actions, most keenly that he chose violence in condemnation of Zeus' law. But after we watch him beat himself up about that for hours of screen time, the story culminates in him doing that again and apparently feeling no reservation or remorse about it. That's the ending here because Homer told us that's the ending, but it's an ending that doesn't quite fit the message that seems to have been imposed (or at least highlighted) here.

Also in this "sort of minus column," the casting. Christopher Nolan is a director who likes to work mostly with the same actors. At this point, he's built up a lengthy contact list of people -- with still more admirers who would be happy to work with him in any capacity. And so The Odyssey is an epic movie with an epic cast: an almost endless parade of A-listers, or at least recognizable faces. I don't think this is always to the movie's benefit.

Sure, you have Matt Damon ably carrying the movie, Anne Hathaway playing an unexpectedly strong-willed Penelope, Samantha Morton giving us an eerie and memorable Circe, and John Leguizamo in a surprisingly serious role as Eumaeus. You have "fine" work -- neither exceptional nor bad -- from the likes of Tom Holland, Himesh Patel, and Robert Pattinson. But then you also have a lot of squandered talent: thanklessly small and uninteresting roles for Zendaya, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong'o. And even though you could argue this telling of The Odyssey turns entirely on the character of Sinon, Elliot Page doesn't get much screen time to make an impact.

Still, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day has turned out to be a "fine" movie that's wilting in my estimation with each passing day since I've seen it, The Odyssey might be a "fine" movie that's growing in the opposite way. The more I think about it, the less I fixate on whether this movie is a "waste of Zendaya" and the more I appreciate how novel and new it made very familiar material seem. I'd give The Odyssey a B-. For now. I may be revisiting the movie one day, and my opinion of it.