Homer’s Odyssey has been one of my favourite stories for many years. It has everything: a compelling quest, a huge cast of flawed characters, and enough monsters to put Marvel to shame. So when Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation was announced I immediately scribbled the release date in my diary, ready to go an watch it as soon as it came out.

I have now seen it and my feelings are a bit mixed. I feel awkward saying anything even remotely negative about Sir Christopher Nolan’s latest film, especially when I loved Oppenheimer so much. I loved The Odyssey too and I would absolutely recommend it. It deserves all the prizes it will almost certainly win.

But I’m with Mark Kermode. He loves the film too but feels it takes too long to get going. I understand that the film needs to set he scene for those who may not familiar with the story. The Odyssey follows the Iliad, a similarly epic narrative about a ten-year war. At the start of the story a lot has already happened. Without at least some context what follows wouldn’t make sense.

At the same time, I found these scenes hard going. The film is star-studded but I felt I was watching Zendaya, Charlize Theron, or Robert Pattinson, not the characters they are supposed to portray. I found it oddly difficult to suspend my disbelief and immerse myself into the story. Some scenes almost felt as if they’d been lifted and shifted from old-style Hollywood costume dramas, awkward and a bit stiff.

Matt Damon as Odysseus is amazing though. And unlike some reviewers I didn’t have an issue with the use of modern words like “dad” or “f*ck off”. After all, Telemachos wouldn’t have called Odysseus “father” either. He didn’t speak English, after all. He probably never even existed as a real person, even if the story is loosely based on real events. Nolan doesn’t try to be historically accurate and I think it’s a sensible choice. There’s so much we still don’t know about life in ancient Greece. You could argue that the Odyssey is larger than life, a myth, and doesn’t need to strive for historical accuracy. I for me think some of Nolan’s creative liberties work very well. Agamemnon’s costume turns him into a Darth Vader-esque menace, the embodiment of masculine greed and bloodlust. For me this works. For others it might not.

As always with Nolan cinematography, music, set design and costumes are incredible. The man sure knows how to gather a good crew around him. I didn’t get to see the film in IMAX format but I’d love to have the opportunity. The harsh landscapes Odysseus travels through surely deserve to be seen on the biggest screen available.

The mythological scenes are where the film really gets going. I’ll try not to give too much away (though you’ll know if you’re familiar with the story) but the Polyphemus scene is genuinely terrifying. Also some great nods to Goya’s painting of Saturn eating his children. Gruesome, awful, I felt like I was inside the cave with Odysseus and his men. It’s strange that, while I found it hard to suspend my disbelief during the dialogue scenes, being trapped in a cave with a man-eating giant felt like a very real threat.

The Circe scene, which I won’t spoil for those who don’t know the story, is equally gnarly. Ancient Greece was a male-dominated society but here Nolan makes a credible case for the power of women. You could even draw some interesting parallels to the present day if you wanted to, although the film doesn’t labour the point.

Pondering the film over a cup of coffee now, I think it really comes into its own when it moves away from the petty disputes between people and shows the world as a hostile place ruled by gods. “Do you talk to ants?” Odysseus asks one of his men in Polyphemus’s cave. In the film’s world humans are just playthings for the gods, ants who think they have agency and control over their lives. It’s once once Odysseus accepts that he doesn’t control his won destiny, however, that he has a slim chance of getting home.

What I really like about the film is how it doesn’t glorify war and violence. Sure, there’s a lot of violence in it, but it’s portrayed as horrific and wrong. Odysseus seems to feel ambivalent about his role in a war he never wanted to be part of in the first place. It’s refreshing to not see a major film portray war as a good and noble thing. Odysseus is not a hero returning home to be glorified. The personal cost of war has been huge: he never saw his son grow up, didn’t see his wife for twenty years, lost many friends, and finds his palace in disarray. It makes you wonder whether it’s even possible to truly win a war.

All in all, I enjoyed the film and I’d like to see it again. Maybe I’m too close to the original story meaning any adaptation is always bound to be a bit disappointing. But it’s great to see a film that’s not a superhero movie do so well. The Odyssey offers real moral complexity, plenty of food for thought, and even if that’s not your thing, a cracking night out. Don’t wait for it to hit streaming platforms, go and see it now on a big screen, and let yourself be swept away into a world where gods walk the earth.

Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash