Bob Garver

Few film adaptations require more ambition than Homer’s “The Odyssey,” the quintessential epic. And perhaps no filmmaker has been more ambitious this millennium than Christopher Nolan, the man who told an entire story backward with “Memento,” conquered the superhero genre with his “Dark Knight” trilogy, and dominated the Oscars three years ago with “Oppenheimer.” If anyone can handle a challenge as vast as “The Odyssey,” it’s Nolan. I can report that he indeed succeeds in the challenge… to a degree.

Image

This being a Nolan movie, it should come as no surprise that the movie plays around a lot with chronology and time progression (see also: the competing one-hour/one-day/one-week/one-month storylines in “Dunkirk”). Basically, the movie splits its time between King Odysseus (Matt Damon) of Ithica taking 20 years to fight and then return from the Trojan War, and his family toward the end of that 20 years needing to do something about vacant throne and the glut of scheming suitors squatting in the castle hoping to wed the possibly-widowed Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) so they can become king as the expense of rightful heir Prince Telemachus (Tom Holland), Odysseus’s son.

Odysseus wins the war with the help of some underhanded tactics that displease the gods. His trip home is then cursed with a series of winds and storms that blow his ships off course, plus deadly detours involving a Cyclops, giant Laestrygonian warriors, soul-piercing Siren songs, a witch (Samantha Morton) that turns his crew into pigs, and other nasty surprises. Less nasty is the several amnesia-ridden years he spends marooned on an island with the nymph Calisto (Charlize Theron), but a delay is a delay.

Back on Ithica, suitors are overrunning the palace, and Penelope and Telemachus are at their wits’ end. They can’t just order them to leave, because their royal duties require them to be accommodating to strangers, but those rules were designed to help humble paupers, not these well-off freeloaders. Telemachus could assume the throne, but he’d become a target for assassination, and Holland doesn’t exactly have spider powers in this movie. Penelope could remarry, and suitor Antinous (Robert Pattinson) is at the front of the line if she makes that choice, but she really wants Odysseus to return and set things right. But how long can she be expected to wait?

Technically, Nolan is at the top of his game here. The threats are scary, the soundtrack is pulse-pounding (from what I’ve gleamed, this is many viewers’ favorite aspect of the movie), and the scenes on boats do a really good job of putting the viewer right in the middle of the action, which is a nice way of saying they made me seasick. He even provides some insight into Odysseus’s internal struggle that I’ve been told most versions of the story do not. So I’m recommending the movie, there are no worries there.

But while I am recommending “The Odyssey,” I can’t help but also relay some disappointment. Granted, there was an enormous amount of pressure on this film given the prominence of both the director and the source material, and any product assembled by a mere mortal – even Christopher Nolan – was bound to be disappointing on some level, but it’s not just that. Namely, did the movie have to be so long and meandering? Some will be quick to jump in and say yes, those qualities are synonymous with “The Odyssey” and it would be weird if Nolan’s version wasn’t like that. But I felt there were stretches – mostly toward the end when a plan by Odysseus needs to be put into action – that could have used some tightening. It’s as if Nolan couldn’t stand to have his film labeled as “efficient.” The result is a film that I can’t label as anything but inefficient. I knew going into “The Odyssey” that a certain inefficiency was to be expected, but I thought Nolan would be able to make me feel that the inefficiency was necessary.

Grade: B-

“The Odyssey” is rated R for violence and some language. Its running time is 172 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.