The Odyssey – Were The Haters Right?
No. No they weren’t. Almost completely. Almost.
The Odyssey may be the greatest rendition of the ancient epic we may get in our lifetime because next time we take a crack at it, cinemas will be gone and it’ll be fighting for attention with Candy Crush on Netflix.
What follows is a lot of nitpicking and responses to peoples online concerns regarding the film. So my opinion isn’t lost in the sauce My TLDR review is: Holy shit that was awesome.
Christopher Nolan’s new film has been getting farmed online for months now for everything from its casting decisions to its dialogue, to its costume choices. In the case of the giants it looked like they were wearing goofy foam rubber or something. But when it comes to the full holistic experience none of this holds up even a little. The movie sucks you in and holds you by the throat until it’s done with you.
You can normally judge a film by the seated position it puts you in. This one makes you sit bolt upright for the entire 2 hours and 52 minutes. There was maybe in total 20 seconds of footage I think could be cut to improve the film. Getting this much story in and giving each beat time to breath is no easy task, and occasionally it feels like we’re watching an Inception level of flashbacks within flashbacks to make it all work. Nolan proved with Dunkirk he was the master of making timelines. In The Odyssey he pulled off a film that jumps around every corner of Matt Damon’s Odysseus’ life while maintaining coherency. At the same time it juggles the present predicament of his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) as an urgent ticking time bomb to be dealt with.
People were worried that Nolan is too much of a naturalist to tell a story that has this many gods and demigods jangling around inside it. He likes his natural explanations, and in this regard peoples fears were absolutely well founded. We don’t need to be an atheist about adapting epic myths. You can feel him straining in this regard from the very first frame of the movie which says “In a time of apparent magic”. That stuck in my craw the entire film, and was perhaps my least favourite thesis Nolan added to the film. Fortunately he can’t entirely shy away from it since otherwise it’s just some Greek dude having a very unfortunate voyage for no reason at all.
A transformation sequence is genuinely disturbing. The cyclops is the best rendition we might ever see in cinema, the VFX surprisingly unnerving and tactile. In terms of VFX the weakest element is the brief appearance of Scylla, the tentacles in the cliff gobbling up the crew.
Anne Hathaway knocks it out of the park. I’m a particular fan of this one slap she does. One person who isn’t going to get enough attention is John Leguizamo though. He’s a blind servant knocking around the edges with Telemachus, and he’s going to become a fan favourite once people see this film.
Robert Pattinson reprises his role from The King as Most Stabbable Prince and he does a great job, again.
Elliot Paige’s casting was of particular grievance to grifters online. Rather than being Achilles, the greatest warrior that’s ever been seen, Elliot plays Sinon, a boy who should never have seen a battlefield, and in short order finds out. I guess the only other person that could have filled that role was Tom Holland and he was already booked.
Travis Scott makes an appearance as the bard at the feasts. Nolan said his inclusion was a hat tip. “I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.”
Don’t worry, the movie never breaks out into rap until well into the credits. But I think Nolan may have missed the mark here. I don’t see Eminem dedicating an entire show to rapping Beowulf any time soon. If anyone was going to play the bard it should have been Nolan himself.
The characters in the movie are aware their story will be one that is sung, “It’ll be the only way they’ll be able to remember people who wrote.” Odysseus says mournfully, knowing full well their bronze age is coming to an end. Beyond the usual riveting story of a family and their individual loyalties the film concerns itself with the loss of the norms that hold us together. The traditions that allow us to build a comfortable civilization. We throw it away for short term gain piece by piece. We are the rot we fear. We sing our stories till we can write again.
The theatre is mostly full of people who have never read the books and know the stories as a sort of diffuse bit of lore that has leaked in from every corner of our culture. We just sat through 3 hours of Nolan the bard telling us a story. We are quickly returning to an oral tradition, and that’s his warning.