The story of Odysseus is a tough nut to crack.
Despite being one of the world’s oldest and most enduring adventure sagas, it’s a difficult story to translate to screen. Part of that is due to its sheer volume, composed as two epics attributed to Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey, collectively comprised of 48 books or chapters. That structure offers a clue to the other major challenge: it’s highly episodic, a series of consecutive trials and escapades.
Prior films have tackled those challenges in different ways, including quite a few in quick succession in the late 90s and early 2000s. In 1997, The Odyssey was adapted as a 3-hour miniseries. The Coen Brothers took inspiration from The Odyssey’s general framework to craft O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000), an interpretive adaptation set in the Depression-era American South.
Other films have honed in on specific chapters or perspectives of the saga in greater depth, like the Trojan War. 2003’s Helen of Troy television miniseries offered a different perspective of a familiar tale, and just a year later, the blockbuster hit Troy recounted the Trojan War as an action adventure.
In recent times, 2024’s The Return picks up after Odysseus’s 20-year journey, seemingly shrugging off the tale’s fantastical elements, and focused instead on my favorite part of his story: his cold homecoming when he finally makes it back to the shores of Ithaca.
All this is to say, Christopher Nolan has tackled a very difficult adaptation, and opted to do it in the most challenging way possible: a comprehensive telling (the entirety of The Odyssey, with flashbacks to events from The Iliad), in the original context: ancient Mediterranea as a world teeming with monsters and magic.
And it’s a substantially epic and mesmerizing work, recounting the perils encountered by Odysseus (Matt Damon), the king of Ithaca, and his men, returning home from their triumph at Troy only to encounter a decade of setbacks including a man-eating cyclops, a land of giants, lust-inducing sirens, and vengeful gods. Nolan’s telling plays out like an oral history, setting the film as the tale winds its way to its end, but using flashbacks to fill in the backstory that led to this point.
While The Odyssey is often held in the zeitgeist as a series of adventures, Nolan presents it as what it truly is: a cavalcade of horrors. Odysseus sets out with an army, but they are whittled down by each new terror until he alone washes upon the shore of his homeland. Odysseus is haunted not only by his present trials, but past horrors as well: traumatic remembrances of the atrocities of war, seared into his memory, and visions of the goddess Athena (Zendaya) whose countenance carries pain and dismay at the misery wrought by his hands.
Back at home, his queen-wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland), who was an infant when he left, face their own trials. The king’s long absence has cast a lull over the kingdom, and emboldened a conniving mob of challengers (including Robert Pattinson and Corey Hawkins) who stalk the queen like a pack of wolves, each ready to pounce at an opportune moment.
With its stunning filmography, epic storytelling, harrowing tension, and tremendous cast, The Odyssey is an incredible treatment for one of the world’s most celebrated fictional works.
Like most of Nolan’s films, The Odyssey will screen in a number of prestige formats including both digital and film presentations. I was fortunate to catch a screening in one of the best possible options, a 70mm projection which was richly beautiful. It’s worth watching in any format, but I’d encourage you to make the effort to watch it on film if you are able.
A/V Out.
