‘The power of the sacrifice is in the cost of the person making it…’
It’s rare to go to a cinema and feel awe. The chest-bursting scene in Alien. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. The ship sinking in Titanic. These are iconic, indelible moments that have echoed throughout cinematic history and have become engraved on the public consciousness. In recent years, for various reasons that I won’t bore you with now, dear reader, these moments have become few and far between. Particularly if you are a jaded, cynical asshat like me. Well, The Odyssey reminded me how it feels to look up at a screen and feel like a kid staring wide-eyed at dinosaurs again. That’s how good this thing is…
The plot, based on Homer’s epic poem (obviously), is both surprisingly straightforward and deceptively complex. Odysseus (Matt Damon), the king of Ithaca, goes off to lead the siege of Troy, leaving behind his loyal wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and infant son, Telemachus (Tom Holland). With Eurylochus (Hamish Patel), his loyal second-in-command, by his side, Odysseus embarks on an epic journey to return home to his family. Meanwhile, in Ithaca, Penelope has allowed their home to become overrun with suitors, all vying for her hand in marriage to become the new king. This dastardly bunch are led by Robert Pattinson’s sneering Antinous. To relay the rest of the cast of characters would take up the rest of the review and be very dull, but rest assured, this is possibly one of the most talented casts ever assembled.
By the nature of the source material, The Odyssey is episodic, moving from one set piece to the next, and this gives the film a breathless, kinetic feel that ensures that even at three hours, the pace never drops. Damon, looking every inch the ancient warrior, delivers a career-best performance, no mean feat for one of the best actors of his generation, but really, this is a team effort. I can’t remember being this invested in any film for a long time and this is down to the performances, yes, but also Ludwig Göransson’s jaw-dropping score and Nolan’s masterly control of visual effects. As is tradition, he mostly relies on practical effects here, and this film goes some way to proving once and for all that CGI will never replicate the impact of having something real up there on the big screen. Something that the actors (and by extension, the audience) could reach out and touch. There are sequences here that, as previously mentioned, capture the childlike wonder of seeing something special on the big screen for the first time. The audacity of it. The ‘how the hell did he do that?’ of it all. I won’t list those moments here, but I would urge everyone, not just cinephiles, not just fans of Nolan, but everyone, to go and see this thing in a cinema. This is what cinema was invented for. This is what makes it different to theatre, or music, or any other art form you can mention. Alfred Hitchcock used to talk about ‘Pure Cinema’, the concept of telling a story through minimal dialogue and instead allowing the pictures to move the audience. You won’t see a finer example of this in the modern era than The Odyssey.
Vitally, however, this is not just a visual feast; it is an intellectual one, too. I went into Nolan’s latest expecting to be dazzled. I didn’t expect to be so moved. Here, Nolan is grappling with much of the same stuff that he confronted on Oppenheimer. The consequences of our actions. Not just individually but as a species. I won’t spoil it here, but when we finally find out the real reason why Odysseus didn’t go home for so long, it is one of cinema’s most effective reveals.
Obviously, when a film of this magnitude arrives, there is bound to be a bunch of hyperbolic overstatement flying around. And I know I’m prone to it myself. But this time you can believe the hype. This is Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece. It’s one of the best films of the 21st century. It might be one of the best films ever made. This will stand the test of time in the same way as The Lord of the Rings saga, and The Godfather movies and all those Spielberg blockbusters have. We are witnessing cinematic history here, folks. Don’t let it pass you by.
