The Odyssey
directed by Christopher Nolan
It’s good!
Yesterday morning I refrained from fluids, because I am 70 years old, and with age comes wisdom (this is not true) and decreased bladder control (this is), and Nolan’s Odyssey is 173 min long.
The first thing I’ll say is that it’s a great film. You will be entertained. I am not one of those sad critics who think it somehow lowers a work of art to be entertaining. When I say Nolan’s Odyssey is entertaining, I mean it as praise.
The screenplay does an excellent job of portraying Odysseus as intelligent, not just by saying he is. but by showing him being smarter than the people around him. Early on in the film he is smarter in small ways, but late in the film his understanding is shown as deeper than mere craft.
The action sequences are well done. I was particularly struck by a scene early on in which, after being brought inside the walls of Troy inside the wooden horse, the Achaeans sneak out and fight their way to the gate to open it to Agamemnon’s army. (This, by the way, is barely mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey—the story of the Trojan horse as everyone knows it comes to us mostly from Virgil’s Aeneid.) That was an exciting scene.
You will see a lot of familiar faces. Aside from his own talent, Nolan has a special advantage over other directors: great actors are eager to sign on to a project of his. I won’t mention all the most famous actors and actresses in the leading roles—you can easily find them listed elsewhere, but I will mention two less well-known actors who surprised me. Jon Bernthal portrays Menelaus with a gravitas that took me by surprise, as in the original Odyssey Menelaus is the lightweight kid brother of the Big Man Agamemnon. I couldn’t at first place Bernthal—I knew his was a familiar face, but it wasn’t until I got home and looked him up that I figured out Menelaus was Frank Castle, the Punisher, from Marvel TV. The other actor who impressed me was Robert Pattinson as Antinous, the chief of Penelope’s suitors, and thus the chief Bad Guy. He had that “lean and hungry look”—yes, I am aware that I am scrambling my classical references—of a covetous and unprincipled man.
Much has been made of the racial diversity of the characters. This, I thought, was a good thing. It leant the film verisimilitude. My (strictly unprofessional) understanding of the history of the ancient Greeks at war is that their armies were often eclectic, composed of men from not only Greece, but also Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, and even occasionally northern Europe.
So, in summary, it’s good. If not entirely faithful to the moods and philosophy of the original, it is a worthy translation to new times and a new medium.
See it.
really liked your review i loved robert’s role aswell and the way it was portrayed!