!Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Review!
Hello everyone! Haven’t posted here in a while but I saw the odyssey recently (yesterday) and wanted to share my thoughts! Just real quick a couple of disclaimers:
1. Forgive me if I sound defensive in my opinions, I have seen the way people have been engaging with criticism of this movie so I may come off as constantly defending myself, but I feel as though it is still important to share my opinions because (like all films) The Odyssey can and should have a discussion surrounding it that isn’t just glazing.
2. I did not watch this on an iMax screen, my theatre doesn’t have that. I understand this is not how the director intended for it to be viewed and therefore I did not get the true impact of what Nolan was going for. That being said I’m not driving an hour plus to see a movie that I didn’t even think I’d enjoy and I should still be able to engage with the film nonetheless.
Spoilers below for The Odyssey but y’all had years to read the book so uh maybe that’s on you.
I’ll begin with my praises of the movie so that I don’t come off as just hating to hate. The odyssey is a beautiful movie that truly captures the grandeur of the novel. Every shot is clearly made with intent and care and every actor is truly giving it their all. In my Letterboxd review I stated “this movie has a lot of heart and that is what makes it so great” and I stand behind that— everyone in this movie cares about it and that is lovely to see in a world for a films made just for money. I personally enjoyed the casting (except for one person I’ll talk about momentarily) and I adored the inclusion of Travis Scott as a way of honoring the tradition of oral story telling. This is where my pure glazing of the film ends.
The odyssey oozes with self righteous importance and, to quote Peter Griffin, it insist upon itself. It is a film made by a man for men and you can tell. This is where the biggest issues appears for me: every single woman is dulled down from their in text counterpart. The women in the Odyssey (story) are complex, but in the film they get dulled down to give more room for Odysseus. I feel like this is especially apparent with Athena, originally a driving force in the novel (story?) reduced to a manifestation of Odysseus’ guilt, and as compelling as that is for Odysseus it’s not who Athena is. Penelope is not viewed as intelligent, Calypso is just a narrative tool and not an actual character, and Circe isn’t provided with her full depth.
Here is where my second biggest issue with the film begins: what is cut from the original story and what is done in the film leaves me unsatisfied. I understand that the film is already 3 hours long and you can only include so much without it being rushed and falling flat. I understand no adaptation of a novel can ever truly include everything in the novel. That being said, the scenes that are kept feel dull and repetitive. We did not need to cut back to Troy as many times as we did. I understand that it is important to the story, but you know what else is important to the story? Things actually happening. The scenes of Troy were often the same scenes literally just played again and often did not add any new context to the narrative. And those aren’t the only scenes that drag either, multiple scenes with the suitors dragged, with Odysseus’ crew dragged, half the Calypso scenes only felt like they were there to remind us Odysseus was telling a story. For a movie that was three hours long, quite a large portion felt redundant.
The casting: I don’t actually mind the casting. Now, I would’ve loved to see lesser known actors but that’s not how Nolan makes films and the cast we’re given does a phenomenal job. They embody their characters to the fullest extent and really, really do a lot of legwork for the script. I honestly didn’t feel like any actor took me out of it…except for Mia Goth. I mean this as no disrespect to Mia Goth, she is a fantastic actor (I mean her performance as Pearl alone is enough to solidify that for me) but she looks so out of place. I see her and I see Mia Goth, not a character. Something could also be said about there being like no (as far as I know actually zero) Greek actors in a Greek story, but I do not feel like that is my place to talk on that. Also, just tacking this onto the end here because it doesn’t need its own section; I don’t care that the word “dad” is used. I mean, I think it’s weird to use “dad” and “mother” but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, but that’s personal preference.
Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is objectively a good film, but I find it profoundly lacking in certain areas. Despite my issues with the film I still give 4/5 stars (really more like 3.75/5 stars but that’s not a nice clean number), but probably won’t be revisiting any time soon. With time this rating will likely shift and get lower, but as of now I’m comfortable with a 4/5. I am just a person sharing my unimportant opinions on the internet, so if you disagree that’s cool, feel free to share your own thoughts as well!
Apologies for any mistakes made, I wrote this in my notes app at work :)
