“When Hollywood makes a mistake, it always makes the same mistake, which is to forget how much people want something new.”
In a recent interview with the BBC, director Christopher Nolan talked about Hollywood’s risk-averse behaviour. His answer to the ever creeping tide of unasked for remakes and retreads is to reimagine a 3,000 year old epic poem by Homer, The Odyssey.
But like Odysseus’ men caught between a deadly whirlpool and monstrous sea creatures, Nolan is torn between his own quixotic quest to make the most realistic, immersive, Imax-ified version, while also somehow bringing this supernatural world of witches and warriors to life.
A king forced from home attempts to return
With a Nolan-esque story structure that folds in on itself with a litany of flashbacks, our anchor at the centre is grey and grizzled Matt Damon as Odysseus, a king forced to leave his queen, Penelope (Anne Hathaway,) and son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), to wage war for Agamemnon.
As told in the opening song performed by court bard Travis Scott, it has been many years since Odysseus left. In his absence, the kingdom is now filled with suitors, in particular Robert Pattinson as Antinous who schemes to replace the absent king.
While Penelope stalls and Telemachus searches for his father, Odysseus and his men begin their epic journey home, battling the elements, mythic creatures and even the Gods themselves.
From Saving Private Ryan, to The Martian, Matt Damon is an actor we love to watch suffer and it is on his furrowed brow that the entire movie rests.
If Tom Hanks is Hollywood’s favourite everyman, Damon is the endurance man. Like Harrison Ford, he is at his best when he endures, and The Odyssey serves up a feast of troubles to survive.
Waiting perhaps a little too stoically at home, Hathaway presents us a queen all too aware of her perilous perch. Penelope masks her vulnerability with a fearsome focus as she tries to protect her son.
As the young man waiting for a father he never knew, Spider-Man actor Tom Holland gives a more meaty, mature performance with flashes of fury and frustration.
There is so much more: Zendaya as the personification of goddess Athena, the tragic fate of the warrior Sinon, a small but devastatingly effective performance by Elliot Page, and Himesh Patel as Odysseus’ all-too-human second in command.
In addition to the impressive talent pool, Nolan’s other way of grounding the ancient poem is perhaps his favourite collaborator: Imax.
A blimped-out camera
This is the first Nolan film shot entirely on Imax.
While these cameras are traditionally used for spectacular action sequences (think of the chase scene from The Dark Knight), Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema used the behemoths to film everything from the quiet mother-son moments, to the spectacular siege of Troy.
Besides their size, the problem with Imax cameras in the past has been the sound.
The noise of 65mm film rattling through the camera has been compared to a lawnmower, which makes recording natural dialogue scenes impossible. For The Odyssey, Imax built a “blimp” — a sound muffling enclosure that encased the camera.
Weighing close to 300 pounds, the new system meant new challenges, but the results are like a portal into another time. Such as the scene shot on the beaches of Morocco, with hundreds of extras pulling a massive Trojan Horse, groaning with the weight of its hidden cargo.
This is the earmark of Nolan’s approach, challenging his army of collaborators, asking “What if this was real?”
Even in the dialogue, Nolan’s script strains to pull the Greek poem out of the museum and into the present. There are no vaguely European accents, Tom Holland’s character talks about his dad in plain English.
WATCH | Promotional video on how Christopher Nolan brought The Odyssey to life:
Straining to the supernatural
But there’s another aspect of the original Odyssey that resists modernization. This is a story steeped in a time of magic and myth. Like the sirens luring men to their doom, it’s here where Nolan’s more modern tone and approach clashes with the otherworldly challenges Odysseus encounters.
There are moments when The Odyssey becomes almost a different kind of film, such as the confrontation with a cyclops in a cave, where Odysseus’ men scramble as the massive creature lazily munches soldiers.
Nolan has talked about the influence of special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, and working with actor and clown Bill Irwin, and you can see him finding human solutions for these larger-than-life moments.
Another standout is when the soldiers meet Circe, a lonely woman offering good food to weary travellers. With elastic visuals and Samantha Morton’s masterful malevolence, the result is an unhinged nightmare of the most delicious kind.
While Nolan is part of a small group of filmmakers who could even attempt such a film, after enjoying some of its weirder and wilder moments, I couldn’t help but wonder how The Odyssey would have fared in the hands of a director with less of a reality-based approach, such as a Guillermo del Toro, or Bong Joon Ho.
The problem is, once you start playing the “what if” game, it’s difficult to stop. For example, what if Robert Pattinson and Matt Damon had reversed roles? If Odysseus is truly as ruthless as experts suggest, Pattinson may have given us a more convincing version of that duplicity, while Damon’s inherent earnestness would serve up a suitor with more virtues.
Still, there is plenty to savour in what Nolan is serving.
Behind the tonal shifts (such as Damon’s Boston accent creeping in as he yells about “getting off this f–king beach”) there are stunning set pieces: Odysseus plucking his bow like an ancient power chord, the ochre red of a sail bobbing in a restless ocean. Or the exquisite framing as Antinous confronts Penelope, Hathaway’s face hidden behind the strings of her loom, a gauzy shield against Pattinson’s pressing questions.
From atomic war to ancient battles
If there’s another Nolanesque signature to savour, it’s found in Odysseus wrestling with his legacy.
In interviews, the director has talked about bringing Oppenheimer into his next film. As Odysseus comes to terms with his role in waging war, once again Nolan is confronting humanity’s capacity for destruction and the consequences we create.
I will end with what has become my Christopher Nolan caveat: The first time I saw Oppenheimer and Interstellar and Inception, I was entertained, astounded and, yes, maybe a little confused. With a rich text and his non-linear approach to storytelling, getting your head around a Nolan film in one viewing is its own Herculean task. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing it again. Maybe soon.
