Christopher Nolan turning his hand to Homer’s Odyssey was always going to be an event. Here is one of the founding texts of the Western canon in the hands of arguably the most ambitious filmmaker working today, and I went in with high expectations — tempered by a degree of trepidation as to whether a three-hour epic, drawn from a poem nearly three millennia old, could hold together on screen. What follows are my reflections on the score, the acting, the adaptation, the production, and — inevitably, given Nolan’s one persistent weakness — the writing.
The score is remarkable – you feel the film through it. It is one of those pieces of music that is hauntingly mesmerising, to the extent that it defines the film and stays with you long after the credits roll up the screen. It is beautifully done, although in parts its use is thunderously loud — so much so that I could feel the seats in front of me vibrating. I suppose that is part of the impact being made; perhaps in a larger theatre this would not have been the case.
The acting is excellent for the most part — but the dialogue is far more developed for the male leads, less so for the female. Matt Damon’s face is that of a man coming to terms with trauma: the wars, and the long journey home.
There is a liberty taken with the actual book (the poem), but this is to make a film. As with all films, it comes in three acts, and it is well framed and well pieced together, with the last segment enthralling in every way — one does not quite know how it will pan out exactly, though it is clear that a conclusion will be had; it is a question of the painstaking, minute-by-minute challenges that Odysseus has to go through to reach the end. Here, too, the end of the film differs from the end of the book — but again, this is Hollywood, and Nolan is making a film for an audience that is, overall, younger than the most likely readership of the book itself.
The film’s production, cinematography, set design and directing are astonishing, as one would expect from a highly skilled and experienced team, and from Nolan himself. There is nothing wasted — not a single frame — and everything works beautifully. Remarkably, there is (little or) no CGI in this film, which is a feat in itself: every location is real, one scene uses old-school animatronics rather than CGI, and there is never a green screen anywhere to be had.
My only bugbear is that I did not get the chance to see the film in true 70mm IMAX, which would have meant getting to one of only three cinemas in the whole of the UK that offer it. Instead, I watched it in ordinary IMAX, realising that I was probably losing up to 26 per cent of the actual screen content. I would encourage any fan to make the effort to book ahead at the one in Manchester or the two in London, in order to see it in the format it was designed for.
Now, the worst part — the most aggravating part, and the most difficult to fully comprehend. Nolan is an extraordinary talent in relation to film production and direction. But he cannot write. The writing in parts of this is quite awful — although, when I say parts, there are a few memorable lines that stick in the mind simply because of their formulation and their impact within the film, even if they are a little unwieldy and overwritten. But there are aspects of the film that are wasted because the dialogue is poor and underdeveloped, and it feels such a wasted opportunity. Some critics have argued that it might simply have been easier for Nolan to hire expert scriptwriters for this part, but I suspect that the success of Oppenheimer, and the one Oscar that still eludes him — the writing Oscar — explains the persistence. I do not think he is going to get it. This film will win Oscars — probably for production design, the score, and directing, possibly even Best Film — but not for the writing.
One of the things I thought I would find difficult was sitting through this for three hours without feeling the need to get up or do something else. In the event, it gripped my attention, and I was glued to the screen from a visual point of view — even though I did wince a little here and there at some of the lines delivered, even by some of the best actors in Hollywood. As the film was drawing to its conclusion, I was fully immersed, and I could feel my own emotions running — as, evidently, could everybody else in the room, who reacted to one major scene with a huge cheer. This was ironic, because it is a moment of extreme violence, but it is the scene in which Odysseus is finally able to truly enact his vengeance, and it drew a loud cheer from a significant cohort of the audience.
Should you see it? Absolutely. Should you see it if you know nothing about Homer’s Odyssey, which is at the heart of the project? Yes — because it is a film that essentially explains itself as it proceeds, and so, from that point of view, you do not have to know anything about the original book. Should you see it simply for your interest in production, directing and cinematography? Yes — because it is stunning, as is the score, which is potentially Oscar-winning. If you want an accurate depiction of the book itself, you will not find it here — but then you are unlikely to find it anywhere, unless it were spread over three films, with quite a lot of CGI thrown in (largely for the Gods, which are missing in this film version bar one).
In the end, The Odyssey is exactly what one hopes for, and half-expects, from Nolan: a work of staggering craft and ambition, elevated by an extraordinary score, anchored by Damon at his very best, and let down only at the level of the line, by a script that cannot quite match the images it serves. It is a film to be experienced rather than merely watched — ideally in the format it was built for — and one that will be talked about long after this awards season has passed. Whether or not it finally delivers Nolan the writing Oscar (it will not), it confirms his standing as the great cinematic event-maker of his generation.
Overall: four and a half out of five — simply because it is an extraordinary Nolan film experience.