Film Review: The Odyssey

  

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Mature

Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey was assailed with controversy before it opened.  There was a lot of buzz about what this would ultimately be.  And if you read reviews, they are all over the place.  I've read some that say it is an absolute masterpiece.  I've read others that say that it is a travesty and desecration of Homer's original.  As with all art, you will bring your own subjective perspective to the judgment of this film.  All I can do is give you my honest assessment and analysis.

And I think this film is excellent.

It isn't perfect.  It has some flaws that are not deal-breakers, but they are real and act as spell-breakers to the enchantment of the story.

As with most Christopher Nolan films, the movie is told in a fragmented timeline.  Odysseus (Matt Damon), the king of Ithaca has been missing for many years, having not returned from the Trojan War.  Several suitors, including the noxious Antinous (Robert Pattinson), abuse the hospitality of Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) while waiting for her to choose a husband.  They plot to supplant her young son Telemachus (Tom Holland), who eventually seeks out Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) for news of his father.  Meanwhile, Odysseus is lost in a daze on an island with Calypso (Charlize Theron) who slowly revives his memory about the fall of Troy and the many trials he has endured in order to get home.

Nolan has brought to the screen a bold and epic vision that seeks to be as spectacular as it is deep.  Nolan also wrote the screenplay and has attempted to adapt this ancient classic for a modern audience.  His attempt to do this is a mixed bag and where the movie stumbles the most.

The biggest problem is the distraction caused by the modern style.  He made the choice for the cast to do American accents and to use modern American diction.  Telemachus says things like, "My dad is coming home."  When listening to the dialogue it is like hearing Mozart through an untuned instrument.  Perhaps this is an unfair critique, but it is similar to the feeling I get when hearing Shakespeare with an American accent.  I've only heard three American actors who speak Shakespearean lines without feeling off to me (Charlton Heston, Denzel Washington, and strangely Billy Crystal).  For everyone else, it is jarring and pushes me back to the real world rather than drawing me in.  It is the same with The Odyssey.  

What helped me with this was to think of this production like live theater.  There is an artificiality to live theater that the audience accepts.  We are not under the illusions that the sets are really towns and castles.  We invest our imagination into a theatrical production in a different way than when we suspend disbelief in a movie.  But if we use the theatrical imagination and apply it to this movie, it helps not only with the language but other incongruities.  A lot of people online made hay about Lupita Nyong'o being cast as Helen of Troy.  But I found Bernthal's Menelaus more distracting as he played him very much like a weary Frank Castle from modern New York than an ancient Greek monarch.  But when I embraced the movie in the way I was able to enjoy the movie more.  However, the irony was not lost on me regarding this.  Nolan goes out of his way to make everything feel as tangibly real as possible, filming on real location and using as little CGI as possible.  But in order to allow the spell to work, you have to create an artificiality in your mind that Nolan avoids everywhere else.

Another controversy is that it takes the original story and it focuses on more modern virtues and issues than are found in Homer's story.  At the heart of the movie, Odysseus deals with the guilt of his part in the destruction of Troy and is struggling between his desire to come home and his sense of unworthiness to do so.  This has nothing to do with the original.  As far as I remember, Homer's Odysseus feels no guilt about Troy.  In fact, he speaks plainly about how on the way home he and his men raided villages, killed all the innocent men, took the women, and plundered the supplies.  This is not presented with any guilt or angst.  It was just what Odysseus did.  

I have no real problem with Nolan changing this.  I would have trouble with engaging with a story Odysseus blithely leading a marauding band of mudering rapists along the coasts without any moral quandary.  To be sure, there are scenes where Odysseus and his crew plunder innocent villages, but even though it is done in the context of necessity, Nolan lets the immorality of this play out in the characters.  However there are a few times when this adaptation to modern sensibilities goes a little out of balance and it feels like he wants to make a commentary about social-political topics of today.

Having said all of this, Nolan has created a truly epic film.  By the end of the movie, you feel like you have gone on a journey.  Not enough films today feel that way.  He takes you to dangerous and enchanting landscapes, that are all the more dangerous because of their enchantments.  But more than anything, he takes you on Odysseus' journey of inner discover.  Each horrific encounter reveals something about his character, both good and bad, that moves him forward.  We see his wrath in the scene with the Cyclops (Bill Irwin), his greed to hear the siren song, and his defiance against the gods in the face of prophecy.  But we also see his courage, his cleverness, his guilt, and eventually his faith.  By the time he gets to the end of his journey, he has suffered much inwardly and outwardly that the resolution comes to a satisfying payoff.

At the thematic heart of the movie is something called "Zeus' Law."  It is basically the Judeo/Christian "Golden Rule" where you show hospitality to strangers.  The suitors abuse this hospitality by feasting off of Penelope's wealth for years.  Odysseus and his men abuse this when the raid villages in their journey.  But this main focus of this is Odysseus' Trojan Horse.  I will not get into all of the details, but Nolan is meditating on the social fabric/social contract of a society.  Once the foundational understanding of human relationships is lost, then nothing can hold.  As a theology teacher, one of my main focuses for the year is reminding my students that everyone is made in the image and likeness of God.  Holding to this principle sets the foundation of all human rights, our civil laws, and our interpersonal relationships.  In today's society, the further we move away from that principle the more we fall into darkness.  Nolan is making a similar point in The Odyssey.  Once we break what is sacred to the world, the world begins to fall apart.  

The movie also wrestles with big ideas like fate vs. free will, pragmatism vs. principle, control vs. faith.  One of my favorite lines in the movie is when Athena (Zendaya) asks Odysseus "When you see your men die, do see chance or consequence?"  This gets at the heart of the ancient Greek dilema of fate.  Odysseus defies the gods because they say that his men are doomed to die, so he does his best to save them.  But they don't listen and engage in the activity that incurs the wrath of the gods.  So is it the gods fault because they put them in the situation where they sinned or is it the consequence of their sinfulness.  The ancient Greeks did not have a strong understanding of free will, but we moderns do.  Part of the journey for Odysseus is coming to accept that his choices were his own and he cannot blame them on anyone else.  In accepting responsibility, he has to place himself under the gods as an act of faith.

In terms of the visuals, Nolan does such an amazing job.  As mentioned before, his desire to film at real, atmospheric locations brings a tangibility to the movie.  He takes you into the chaos of war, the grandeur of sailing, and the awe of nature.  His use of light and shadow are particularly powerful in the cave of the Cyclops.  The scene with Circe (Samantha Morton) is literally horrifying.  Most of Nolan's movies have an emotional stoicism, but here it fits harmoniously with the harsh life of Ancient Greece.  The entire sequence of the sacking of Troy is both exhilarating and devastating.  You feel the sweaty desperation of the ben hiding in the horse, the rising tide of violence in the blood, and then the horror at the devestation unleashed.

Damon is great as Odysseus.  He has to carry the weight of the film.  And his presence is felt even when he is not on screen.  He lets you feel the weight he carries without ever being too showy, but bears with appropriate restraint.  Hathaway matches this energy with her Penelope with her love mixed with resentment at his absence.  I've heard some people not like Holland's performance, but he played the roll of the callow youth who has to grow into a man.  As jarring as Berthnal's sensibility is, his performance and Nyong'o bring charisma and talent to the screen.  I loved John Leguizamo's irascible Eumaeus who struggles to hold onto hope as his world slips away from him.  Himesh Patel also does a good job as Eurylochus, the staunch sidekick who slowly loses faith in his leader.  The two performances that I did not enjoy were Pattinson and Eliot Page.  I've read a number of reviews that praised Pattinson for his smarmy, slimy performance.  But his performance has the same problem as Page's: they lack believability.  Neither disappear into their roles being intentionally mannered and artificial.

Since seeing the movie, not only have the visuals been sticking with me, but I have been thinking about it quite a bit.  It is rare that a movie is both this stunning and this provocative.  

But I would expect nothing less of an Odyssey from Christopher Nolan.

Sunday Best: Ranking Christopher Nolan Movies (Update 2026)

 It's been been 3 years since I've ranked the films of Christopher Nolan.  To my mind he is one of the best directors working in the industry today.  With The Oddyssey being another enormous hit for him, I thought it would be a good idea to look back at his filmography.

The man has not made a bad movie in his entire directorial career.  It helps that he is very selective about his films and he has incredible personal control over all of the stories he's ever filmed.

So below are all 13 of Nolan's movies ranked in order from least to greatest.

13.  Insomnia

Of all Nolan's movies, this one is the one that feels the least Nolan-y.  And as far as I know it is the only one that is a remake of another film.  But it is still very dark and moody with some excellent performances.  Pacino's guilt is so visibly felt throughout the film and Robin William's turn as a mastermind killer showed a bold choice.  And the film still deals with big ideas about truth and conscience.

12.  Following

I caught this one on Netflix and it is a fascinating noir film about a man who becomes obsessed with following random people that he sees in public.  This could have easily devolved into some kind of psycho-sexual nonsense.  But early on he makes it clear that it is about a man who cannot connect to people who is drawn into a strange world by pulling the curtain back on people's lives.  It also is the first film that shows Nolan's funky use of chronology.

11.  Tenet

There is a line in this movie where someone tells the protagonist something along the lines of "feel it, don't think it."  This is the way you are supposed to watch the film.  However, Nolan's movies tend to lack the strong emotional core that would allow for this.  Tenet is technically a brilliant film.  The use of reverse time is fascinating.  But the story is so convoluted that it sounds smarter than it actually is.  

10.  Dunkirk

Again, I don't think anyone can criticize Nolan's technical mastery of cinema.  All of his powers behind the camera are on full display in this movie.  The film draws you into the harrowing life of the men who went through that horrible battle.  But there is an emotional distance that keeps this movie from forming a permanent bond in your memory the way something like Saving Private Ryan does.

9.  Oppenheimer

 The main problem with Oppenheimer is that Nolan's wants to do too much in one movie so that the movie feels too long and too short at the same time.  Having said that, it highlights some of his best cinematic work.  Many will point to the Trinity test, but I would look at Oppenheimer's post Trinity speech, where Nolan shows you visually what the main character is feeling in a unique way.

8.  The Odyssey

I will have the full review for this one up soon.  This movie works in so many ways because it is truly epic.  And I mean that in terms of both its scope and its themes.  Nolan takes you on journey around through the wide world but through the depths of humanity.  He wrestles with big questions while putting on big spectacle.  It has some issues that prevent it from being higher on the list regarding stylistic choices and pacing.  But watching this movie makes you feel like you have also gone on a journey, and not enough movies do that.

7.  The Prestige

This is a movie that will mess with your head.  Even when you figure out one twist (which I did a bit too early), when the film finishes and you understand the implications of what the last 5 minutes reveals about obsession… it sticks with you long after the movie is over.  This is a movie that gets better with every subsequent re-watch.

6.  Batman Begins

Nolan modeled this film after Richard Donner's Superman and it shows.  He tells a story that is epic in its scope and takes us on Bruce Wayne's journey in a way that no other cinematic Batman has.  In many ways this is very different than most Nolan films.  You can almost feel him trying to adapt his style to the comic book genre.  But even within those constraints, he gave us a great Batman movie.

5.  Interstellar

This is easily Nolan's most emotional movie.  It is not that his other movies are cold or are not moving.  But this was the first time I ever saw him reach deep and pull at the heartstrings while once again wrestling with the big ideas of life.  While the ending does stumble a bit, the emotional themes carry through all the way to the end.  On top of this you have some real edge-of-your-seat moments that hold your attention all the way through to the end.

4.  The Dark Knight Rises

Unlike many of its detractors, I think the final chapter of Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy is fantastic.  He does an excellent job of drawing elements from the previous movies and weaving them into a film that feels like a definitive goodbye to his story.  To this day I get chills when Selina Kyle tries to get Bruce to leave with her saying that he doesn't owe anything to people of Gotham and that he already gave them everything, to which he responds: "Not everything.  Not yet."

3.  Inception

I have seen this movie over and over and I find it fascinating every time.  The layers that stack upon layers never suffocate the action through line of the story that holds you up until the very last second.  I love the way the movie keeps you enthralled and fascinated.  It lays out the plan so meticulously and then throws the plan out right away.  Someone pointed out how the movie is partially an allegory for film-making itself.  Usually I find these kind of analyses reductive.  But in this case, it makes the movie all the more enjoyable for me, since it gives me a glance into Nolan's artistic process.

2.  The Dark Knight

Arguably the greatest super hero film ever made, Nolan understood that he could make a film that transcends traditional genre walls and talk about something deep about human nature.   People often play up the violent and dark nature of the Joker, but it shouldn't overlook Nolan's ultimate message which is that people are naturally decent.  That is a radical message in today's cinema.  You can see the evolution of his style between this and Batman Begins.  If I didn't know better, I would have said two different directors were used for each film because of how different they look.  But Nolan's insistence of grounding The Dark Knight in the real world makes it all the more terrifying and engaging all the way until the final line.

1.  Memento

I have never seen a movie like this.  The level of complexity, artistry, execution, and transcendence continues to blow me away more than a decade later.  When I used to teach film, I would show this movie to my students to walk them through how a great director plans his shots and what they mean.  The movie has Nolan's trademark sense of intelligence, but it also has at its heart the primal desire for retribution, which marries the logical with the emotional.  When people see this movie they rethink what movies can be.  And that is why this is his best film.

Thoughts?

Film Flash: The Odyssey

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Excellent epic with big themes, sweeping scale, great performances, with minor (but real) flaws.

Trailer Time: I Play Rocky

 Here is the link to the trailer on YouTube.

I have always loved the story of how Sylvester Stallone made Rocky.  What always resonatted was how much the story of making the movie paralleled the movie itself.  It is really the same story, except one is about sports and the other about the movies.

It is a fundamentally American story.  There are a lot of people who fail at their dreams who believed in themselves.  But the only way to make your dreams come true is to have that unshakeable belief.  And in America, you can risk it all and win.

Anthony Ippolito's portrayal of Stallone seems spot-on.   He has his cadence, voice, and body language down.  Now an impression is not the same thing as a great performance, but he drew me in.  

And of course, this could all be a gigantic nostalgia-bait film.  So many of the shots in the trailer are either direct recreations of Rocky or are homages to it.  But that worked out really well for Michael, so I am excited.

Thoughts?

Sunday Best: 50 Most Beautiful Moments in Cinema - #40-#31

  

This is a continuation of this series started here.  

You can go there to see numbers 50-41.  You can also check it out to remember the ground rules and criteria for choosing.  A brief recap:

1. A moment can be only about 2 minutes.  

2. Only one moment per movie.

3. All the context matters.

4. The subjective element of beauty is real.

5. Beauty only.

So, with those in mind, I will now share #40-31 of the most beautiful moments in cinema.

I will provide Youtube links to the videos rather than embed them here.  I would imagine that because this is critical commentary it qualifies for fair use, but I'd rather not take that chance.

You can click any of the links below to see the clips (most of them should be timestamped to begin at the moment referred.

SPOILERS FOR ALL THE MOVIES BELOW

40. Jaws "Quint Sunset"

There are so many amazing moments and amazing shots in this movie, which is part of the reason it is in my top 10 movies of all time.  But in terms of beauty, there is something special about this shot.  It is maybe the last time that Quint carries with him an aura of some kind of omniscience.  Throughout the the movie he has been the one who really knows things.  Everyone else is wrong but him.  We see this especially in the scene where the shark first bites the line.  And now after Hooper has screwed up, He stands there at the end of the bow and just stares at him with a knowing smile.  The light behind him gives him an ethereal glow like Zeus in Clash of the Titans.  But as the sun sets, he is backlit and shrouded in darkness.  The sun is setting on him.  This is his last sunset.  From this point on, he will not be the one in control.  Even when he gives his amazing USS Indianapolis speech, he does so in a drunken stupor.  He must decrease so that Brody can increase.

39. Die Hard "Jump from the roof"

This might be the only shot from a purely "action movie" that is on my list.  But it really is a beautiful shot.  The action has been violent and frantic up until this point.  The music carries with it a frenzy of activity.  Emotionally, John (who is terrified of heights) is yelling at himself in incredulity of what he is about to do, but he has no choice.  Willis' performance is undervalued here.  Listen to his prayer when he says "Please, God, don't let me die!"  The scene cuts between him, the FBI helicopter, and the terrorists.

And then comes the jump.  Everything gets whisper quiet and moves in slow motion.  The first flare goes up as John jumps almost like a strange angel as the explosion billows up behind him.  This is one of the most iconic shots in movies for a reason.  It is pure cinema.

38.  Quo Vadis - "The Crucifixion of Peter"

One of the things that grabs me about this is how much it looks like a Renaissance painting.  The use of the colors and the framing are gorgeous.  The slow tilt up from the misty waters to the horrible sight of the crucifixion is oddly beautiful.  Captured in that is all the holiness of St. Peter, dying in humility, the same and different as our Lord.  The cross there is not just a place of death.  It takes place at Vatican Hill.  The cross is Peter putting a permanent stake in the world for Mother Church.  All of this is communicated in just a few small seconds.

37. The Way - "The incense" 

(I could only find this shot in a montage on Youtube)

I love this movie.  It makes me want to one day walk the Camino.  But this conclusion always gets me.  Director Emelio Estevez captures how a cathedral draws us up to heaven.  He makes our Catholic rituals feel the way they should: richly symbolic of the world to come.  Watching the giant thurible fill the church with incense as the main character's dead son aids in the blessing is beautiful.  It feels like a foretaste of what we will do in heaven.

 

36.  Batman (1989) - "Final Shot"

You can call me a fool if you like for choosing this shot from a comic book film over so many others, but I maintain that this is an absolutely fantastic shot.  There is a principle in film making that says you want to end with an exclamation point.  You want to give your audience a powerful moment to take with them right before the credits roll.  And this moment is that.

There is a sadness a the separation between Bruce and Vicki because he literally has a higher calling.  Director Tim Burton pulls us up higher and higher above the heights as the music swells.  And notice that it is not an unbroken shot.  He cross disolves to the final moment so that you get the feeling that Batman is higher above us than you can imagine.  He stands staring at the Bat-Signal.  He stands like a statue to show his constant vigil from this point forward.  It is a moment of triumph but one that implies not finality but perpetuity.  And notice that the signal is above him.  The call is bigger than the man.  That shows his real heroism.  He is not above looking down on us.  He is looking up at our call because he is serving us.

 

35.  Spirited Away - "Through the flowers"

(I could only find this shot in a montage on Youtube)

There are so many amazing moments in Miyazaki's movie.  But this moment, which is only a few seconds, always takes my breath away.  I think partly its because it is unlike almost any other shot in the movie.  I have not done any research on it, but it feels like it uses elements of computer graphics while at the same time never breaking out of its hand-drawn style.  And the colors are so vivid and beautiful.  It fits into this world that our main character is entering, full of beauty and wonder and danger.

34.  Up - "Final Shot"

This is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen.  There are so many moments that we could unpack.  But the final shot of the house on the falls is the one that really takes the cake.  It symbolizes Carl's hopes and dreams.  There is something so thematically beautiful about it.  Pope John Paul II said that the human person is the one who finds himself when he gives himself away.  That is summed up in this shot.  Carl was obsessed with getting the house to the falls.  But he ends up sacrificing this dream in order to save Russel.  But in giving up that dream, he achieves it.  In the end, love fulfills us in every way.  The shot is so beautiful, capturing the color and grandeur of Ellie's dream.  And it is also tinged with sadness that Carl will never know that he did it.

33. Life is Beautiful- "Final Shot" 

The entire movie hinges on Guido trying to shield his son from the horrors of the holocaust.  Guido wasn't just trying to save his life, but preserve his innocence for as long as possible.  And he did everything he could in the end ot save his wife.  This final shot shows his ultimate triumph.  Joshua's final words, "We won!" resonate that his father has the victory because he achieved what he set out to do.  As his mother raises him in her arms under that tree, there is something almost Edenic in that shot: a return to the original innocence lost in the horrors of war.  And as the music swells, the tears flow.

32.  Field of Dreams - "Final Scene"

Very few movies capture the complex relationship between fathers and sons like Field of Dreams.  And it is a mystical and mysterious movie that never explains the magic.  But the movie is so good that we never want to know how it all works.  We just want to believe that it does.  So the final shot has a return of father and son, a restoring of that relationship.  While it is a return to childhood simplicity, it is not a regression.  They finally see each other as men, as equals.  And as this happens, the cars come pouring in.  I remember seeing this final moment in the theater and it taking my breath away.  The scope pulls out from the intimate to the universal.  That is a such a good metaphor for the power of stories.

31. West Side Story (1961) - "Tony and Maria meet"

We saw something slightly similar and more subtle with Lars and the Real Girl.  But here it is bigger and bolder.  And for this scene I am only referring to the moments before the dialogue begins.  Everything is communicated visually and with the music. It is definitely more artificial than in most movies.  The lighting and music change, the dream like dance sequence occurs like something that you would see on stage rather than in a movie.  But this film doesn't try to hide from its theater roots, but embraces them.  It creates a haze of fantasy that captures what that love-at-first-sight feeling is.  When Tony and Maria later sings "I saw you and the world went away," you feel it more intensely because you saw it with your own eyes.  The visuals help you enter into their hearts.   

Film Flash: Minions and Monsters

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

The best Minions movie.  A love letter to the pioneers of film-making and old Hollywood.

Film Flash: Young Washinton

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

A weak first act gives way to an engaging war drama, full of patriotism.