The Odyssey

Sing to me, o muse, of Odysseus. Amnesiac adrift, far far away and long longed for, flotsam found and freed of fracas by family. Tell me, technician of tales, of this Odyssey. Of authorship, of audiences, of dreams and deities, of memory and myth. Show me.

Christopher Nolan does. This is his Odyssey, one that opens with a staff whose force is focused to call attention. A weighty "Hwaet!" to borrow from another ancient epic. Kings and monsters there too, the two reflections of one another here as well. The Trojan War is won but the ones that won it are lost.

Christopher Nolan finds them. This is his Odyssey, though his staff whose force is focused to call attention are many. Before the camera, that improbable blimp of muffled-mechanical marvel, IMAX swaddled to make this as much Nolan's child as any basket-borne bairn. Caught by that single massive eye, Matt Damon, eponymous, his Penelope Anne Hathaway, his Telemachus Tom Holland, his servants and his crew from Elliot Page's variously betrayed Sinon to John Leguizamo's ever loyal Eumaeus.

In his home in Ithaca, or something like it, Robert Pattinson's Antinous' crows at the feast, Corey Hawkins Polybus' would feast with the crows. King thereof, or something like it, Odysseus has his kings too. Agamemnon a head and shoulder above the rest, his helmet crested, vertebrate, followed ever by a reminder of death. Benny Safdie, like his character a brother, a teller of desperate tales himself. They are not alone.

Athena (Zendaya), Calypso (Charlize Theron), Circe (Samantha Morton), wielding bits of wisdom, of weariness, wounds. Psyche had her trials to reunite within another marriage but Odysseus' psyche clearly bears the marks of his own. That clarity from performances multiple but also from practises manifold. Hoyte van Hoytema's fifth collaboration with Nolan, a director and his director of photography wresting fresh fruit from film's foibles. Ludwig Goransson's third collaboration with Nolan, he of his signature playfulness with time and he with his playful time signatures. Instrumentation includes choirs, the Albanian highland shepherd's flute-like fyell, things perhaps digital and synthesised, things diegetic and simple. There are moments of silence that recall the same temptations as one of Interstellar's dramatic grasps.

Moments that in their telling are almost immediately retold. That Nolan habit, here made word from tales. Penelope protests, at the start, that she has heard the song of Odysseus. Perhaps we all have. We will be going to have done so again. The Telemachy with its dropped out telemetry, a handful of where and when but no why or what. The siege of Troy and all its beats - the breaking of that wall from inside, the breaking of that wall from the inside, the breaking of that wall inside.

So much more is broken. Bread, and the guest customer that goes with it. Walls, floors, towers. The boundaries between the living and the dead. Lies sharp as any spear, careful truths that thread as nimbly as an arrow. Violence, social, moral, physical. The stormtroopers of Troy, the special forces arrayed against them. The monsters of the Mediterranean, the fury of the gods. Drowning in wind and wave even in the audience, a totality in IMAX of sound and vision.

Near to three hours, there is so much left behind that any number of heroes and gods would call it an Achilles heel of the work, that swift-footed Hermes would struggle to leave all the dropped detail in a place safer than the bin. This is an Odyssey reframed, and though it was a different vessel you can replace any number of parts and for some it will be the same. The ship of thesis has needs beyond speed, but fate is freight enough to cloud any voyage.

That Nolan habit, here palpable as prophecy, delivered by dreams, packaged as promise, repeated in recollection and returned to, revisited, retold. The embroidery of truth another thread in the weave. Dense enough to catch the wind, light enough to soar.

I adored it. Elephantine detail on the cyclops felt rightly shaped to my skull, the Laestrygonians or giants like them are girded by metals and guarded by woods. There are simplifications, elisions. A story already episodic, if not archipelagic, can hop a few islands and still have the same shape. Twelve becomes three becomes one, but in sinkings there is still synchronicity. There are few things left hanging; as with other looping works, Nolan's tenet is to tie things off. Not easily, knot easily. The clue to the labyrinth is its own unravelling.

An oft-rebuilt thesis at the heart of it is perhaps too easily misunderstood. To witness the horrors of war without glorifying is hard enough to behold but where there's talk of the collapse of civilisation some may hear without listening. Complaints about casting are a consequence of colonial projection. Stories are bound in their geography, in their authors, in their repetition, but the reaction to calling that Marxist theory will stop another's ears as surely as minding one's own beewax. In rebuilding this has become stronger, but rebuilding can do that. A common translation of The Odyssey is by TE Lawrence (better known for other work) but is his version any more or less pseudonymous or aggregate than that of Nolan, of Homer?

Tales are told and retold in parallel, new flesh imagined on old bones. The first words on the screen are 'A Time Of Apparent Magic...' and in various senses this will be, is, true. I do not seek to further retell this tale, only to tell you that this retelling is the one you seek. Do not let your ears be stopped to its call; heed mine. See it.

Reviewed on: 17 Jul 2026