The Odyssey film review — Christopher Nolan’s $250mn epic is both crazy and conventional

{"text":[[{"start":9.35,"text":"We live in an age starved of awe. It leaves quite a gap in the market for Christopher Nolan — long held to be the last giant in movies and uniquely able to spark that missing wonder. Now he has made The Odyssey. Maybe it was fate. Nolan’s Oppenheimer gazed into the abyss of Hiroshima, took just shy of a billion dollars at the box office and swept the Oscars. How else to follow that, but with the source of half the tales humankind has ever told — a story older than most of the Bible. "}],[{"start":39.2,"text":"Nothing on screen suggests self-doubt. With Matt Damon heading a bumper cast as trickster Greek king Odysseus, one early scene of a vast Trojan Horse, half-buried on a beach and wrestled by extras, is defiantly, definitively Nolan. A striking image; impeccable craft; many knackered actors. "}],[{"start":58.25,"text":"In fairness, that spirit extends to the crew, shooting on hulking Imax cameras that another star, Robert Pattinson, compared to SUVs. The aim, it seems, is to make an Odyssey no previous generation could but at old-school levels of physical discomfort."}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":74.95,"text":"The same confidence fills the script. Nolan sends writing partner Homer for coffee, then wrangles his superabundance of plot into Hollywood narrative. Different points on a 20-year timeline are coolly set in motion. "}],[{"start":89,"text":"In the movie’s present, a grizzled, amnesiac Damon wanders another beach, in thrall to the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron). One flashback concerns that Trojan Horse. A second rewinds to the start of the war that first took Odysseus to Troy. Back in the now, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) live besieged by predatory “suitors” for his kingdom of Ithaca. (Pattinson’s Antinous is the most skullduggerous.)"}],[{"start":117.8,"text":"“My dad’s coming back!” Holland scowls, like a furious puppy. Nolan has called using contemporary language “a no-brainer”. Respectfully, in this case, I would argue it was a brainer. Every “dad” of several jarred me out of the past."}],[{"start":133.65,"text":"Maybe it only clangs because the rest of the dialogue doesn’t, and even a harsh judge is soon distracted. As Odysseus sets sail for Homer’s adventures, Nolan’s spectacle slips into gear. Lightning storms lash open boats. Swordfights brim with slice and smite. Nolan is a very talented action director."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":155.05,"text":"But he can also be more — and more here than ever. Days and nights spent in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus are rendered ultra-realistic. Nolan’s dislike of CGI gives us a 60ft puppet, shut-in pale with skin like chamois leather. The effect is brilliantly surreal. More unnerving yet is an encounter with the sorceress Circe (Samantha Morton, superb); a ravening feast gives way to full-blown body horror. "}],[{"start":184.3,"text":"These are fantastic sequences in every sense — shivery in the moment, haunting thereafter. They also mark new ground. Nolan’s brand of greatness has always been tied up with excellence of assembly and high-end finish — qualities associated more with a Poggenpohl kitchen than cinema. What has been lacking is the precious dash of madness of, say, a Stanley Kubrick. "}],[{"start":205.3,"text":"The Odyssey is not un-crazy. Inside the Trojan Horse, for example, is a meat wall of faces and limbs. You can only applaud Nolan for smuggling such strange, rich images into a summer blockbuster. "}],[{"start":219.10000000000002,"text":"A masterpiece, then? Well. This master still has major blind spots. Comedy and sexual desire remain beyond him, which means a mismatch with source material filled with both. And, with Nolan, some actors do better than others. Holland, still playing boys at 30, is comic-book basic. To accentuate the positive, though, Pattinson makes a fun villain; Lupita Nyong’o is vivid and bristling as both Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. She deserves more screen time, but the film can hurry through scenes outside Nolan’s central story. Near three-hour-odyssey or not, he has limited scope for sidebars. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":256.8,"text":"Cleverly structured, the film still always homes in on the ass-kicking return to Ithaca — and narrows down who Odysseus really is. More than just mischievous, Homer’s version is an egotist prone to ruinous decisions. It would be wrong to say the movie ignores that. (“You lied to everyone!” he is told in an inky Hades.) "}],[{"start":276.7,"text":"Yet the film also wills him to be a more conventional hero. Damon plays things sturdy; Nolan typically shoots the actor gazing, brooding. This Odysseus does screw up, but he is living with pressures of leadership that no one understands while his family pine for his return. Out of foundational human myths, Nolan tells the story of, yes, a dad."}],[{"start":300,"text":"There is still time for a compelling turn. Odysseus finds shame waiting: a gnaw of guilt over the barbarism of war. It feels like a continued thought from Oppenheimer. But here, finally, it is also just another monster to be overcome."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":315.6,"text":"Perhaps even the most thoughtful blockbuster is not built for morally tainted good guys. Nolan might tell you that creating one this fluent is already harder than he makes it look. In fact, as Odysseus explains his big ideas to his men, while they grumble at being kept waiting around, you hear the voice of another kind of lonely authority figure — the film director. "}],[{"start":338,"text":"Such is the life-changing journey, the movie says. In the end, it leads to a mirror. And whatever else, this dazzling, imperfect film is Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey to the core."}],[{"start":349.9,"text":"★★★★☆"}],[{"start":352.75,"text":"In cinemas from July 17"}],[{"start":366.04999999999995,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1784331860_6578.mp3"}