'The Odyssey' Is a Grand Cinematic Experience That Consistently Feels Jaw-Dropping

(SPOT.ph) Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey casts Matt Damon as Odysseus, king of Ithaca and veteran of the Trojan War. It has been twenty years since his departure from his kingdom, leaving his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) to deal with a gang of suitors who abuse their hospitality and seek to gain the throne. Telemachus sets off to learn of his father’s fate, while on an island far away, the man himself recalls his journey, trying to remember who he is, and the home he needs to come back to.

This adaptation walks an interesting tightrope, the story not quite confirming the existence of the gods of Olympus in the daily lives of the Greeks, while still having its hero traverse a world of apparent magic. Odysseus encounters giants, monsters, and witches, and will speak with the dead. But the movie stops short of making the gods out to be palpable beings that literally meddle with the affairs of humans. All the characters will speak of the gods like they are a daily presence, and it is easy enough to argue that much of the tortures that Odysseus encounters must imply the existence of these deities. But the movie leaves enough room for ambiguity, for a little bit of doubt.

This plays into the themes of the film, which are drawn from the very core of Homer’s epic tale. The film depicts a time of change; a dark time borne of the Trojan War and the horrors committed within. This is a big movie with a lot of spectacle, but a lot of it comes down to talk of Zeus’ Law: the concept of hospitality that must be offered by hosts and not abused by guests. It is the social order that the characters cling to, and that which rings hollow in the years after the war. How can that matter now, after what was done to Troy? The movie finds resonance in this idea: of humanity crossing certain lines from which there is no return. 

This is to say that while the movie makes changes to the narrative, it displays an impressive understanding of the original text, and has a real take on it. The changes expedite the story and make it cleaner – making Odysseus more likable in general, taking away redundant story beats, and creating a cleaner arc for some of the characters. But the meat of it is the same, and Nolan uses all that to craft a grand cinematic experience that consistently feels jaw dropping. Even just seeing the wooden horse half buried in a beach is awe-inspiring, and the movie goes and shows us this structure being dragged across the sand into the city. Every bit of this film feels like an achievement.

This is the first ever narrative film to be shot entirely on IMAX film, and the film really takes advantage of that sense of scale. This is a giant story, and at all points the production is directed towards evoking a sense of largeness. The main hall in Ithaca, even with its dark corners, feels massive in the banquet scenes. Large ships are made to look small amid the vast ocean, or on the shores of some island. The dead rise up and swarm a beach, and it is a wave of darkness that covers up the sand. Odysseus is a larger than life figure, but the movie makes it clear that in the end, he is just one man in a world that he does not really control.

The Odyssey benefits from a strong cast of veterans. Damon is no stranger to playing characters trying to get home, and he does it well here as well. He plays Odysseus with a knowing weariness, even in the few scenes set before he goes off to Troy. It is as though the character’s outward defiance of the gods comes with this bitter acceptance that he cannot really escape his fate. Hathaway shines as Penelope, conveying strength and defiance even as she plays into the character’s growing desperation. Some might quibble with the use of modern language, and while in some cases it might distract, it does not hurt the movie overall.

The Odyssey is remarkable. It is a tremendous cinematic flex from one of the few filmmakers still afforded the chances to make something like this. It is a humongous blockbuster that feels palpable – a movie of grand scale that doesn’t feel like it was mostly assembled in VFX studios. It is a fitting adaptation of a tale that has survived centuries of telling, finding the very human center of a story of gods and monsters and of forces greater than man can imagine.

Rating: 5 stars