🎬 The Odyssey
Hello, film, show lovers! Hopefully everyone is doing good. I've waited for a long long time for this one and when the opportunity did come to watch Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and, did I walk out after watching some Black Flag comedy. I did not know Nolan could top himself after he swept the Oscars after Oppenheimer, but with atomic bombs as his topic, then it should be no surprise that he'll go with Greek mythology. Now then, here's my opinion about The Odyssey.
The movie is about the epic and brutal Odyssean journey of the Ithacan King Odysseus back to his kingdom. It is a story that we all have read in school, but Nolan brings it to life for you and makes you feel every year of life spent during that ten year journey. Making its way to the screen is a battle that Odysseus fights against the gods, the monsters, and his own inflated sense of self as his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) fends off suitors back home, the most vicious of whom being Antinous (Robert Pattinson), while his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) is reared without a father that he can even recall.
That was where the horror came in for me with Nolan, treating the supernatural creatures with authentic respect. Frankly, the Cyclops Polyphemus is as eerie as a mainstream blockbuster can be in the scenes I would expect it to be - truly, there's some fear right there. This is an eerie, seductive mood which gets altered by the Sirens and Circe (Samantha Morton) and it's magnetic the second Charlize Theron is in the frame as Calypso. I also liked the surprise of Zendaya starring as Athena—a presence, kind of like the man presence, she has in her scenes that is great to the movie's sense of destiny and God intervening.
Very unsuspecting I say, I don't think I'd have ever seen Matt Damon carry this movie. You sense Odysseus' fatigue in every decision he makes and sees him as more of a weary soldier and sufferer of remorse than a noble explorer. If Ithaca wasn't as much a character as Penelope, I don't think I would have cared as much as I did for Anne Hathaway's Penelope. Penelope is so quiet and strong and not to mention full of grief, that I felt like I cared just as much as I did for the journey itself. Tom Holland as Telemachus was also a nice surprise; seeing him go from boy to one taking on responsibility added an emotional backbone I hadn't expected to the film.
This movie was completely filmed on 'IMAX film' is experience. The scale is big – the sea is terrible, the ruins are old, the creatures are tactile and not so much “CGI”d. Also contributing to a lot of the score's lifting is Ludwig Göransson, who sets up tension in the more quiet moments, but goes into full epic on the action moments.
The pacing is a bit slow in places and detracting from the drama in the middle of the film at nearly three hours - if I may add, I'd say there are some spots I would definitely cut. But most of the time, it didn't suck me in completely, there was always something that had me come back to it, whether it was the mythology or the performances or simply the visual scope of it.
It's one that is extremely ambitious and I believe justly deserves the hype that's surfing it. Emotional and at times, so scary and in moments such as this, so pictorially journey-inspiring. The Odyssey is a highly recommended film for all lovers of epic story tellin' or Mythology, as well as any others who are simply looking for a bit of something out of the ordinary on the big screen.
Rating: 85/100