Dir/co-Wri: Christopher Nolan | Historical actioner 172’
There are some epics that boldly reinvent mythology, and there are others that become entombed by it. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey lands firmly in the latter camp: a ponderous, self-important slog that mistakes solemnity for profundity and stretches Homer’s timeless adventure into a three-hour endurance test.
Things get off on the wrong sandalled foot. The opening, centred around the aftermath of the Trojan Horse on a windswept beach, is so oddly underpowered and lacking in dramatic context that it feels as though you’ve wandered into the cinema ten minutes late. Instead of sweeping us into one of literature’s greatest adventures, Nolan leaves us scrambling for bearings.
The biggest surprise is the dialogue. Rather than sounding mythic or poetic, much of it lands with a strangely slang-strewn, contemporary American cadence that jars spectacularly with the setting. Gods, kings and warriors converse as though they’ve just wandered out of a prestige television drama, draining scene after scene of grandeur.
Nor does the casting help. Despite an enviable roll-call of stars — Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena and Charlize Theron as Circe among them — the performances are unimpressive, tentative and fatally misjudged. Damon’s Odysseus is all clenched-jaw resolve and very little cunning; Holland brings a nervous, boyish energy that never quite hardens into heroism; Hathaway is regal but stranded; Zendaya is coolly watchful but curiously remote; and Theron, though the most alive of the lot, seems to be acting in a different, better film. Few convince as figures of legend, and the emotional stakes remain stubbornly earthbound.
Modern filmmaking’s obsession with tight close-ups proves especially damaging here. Rather than allowing the glowing interiors and rich setting to breathe, the camera is forever pressed into actors’ faces, creating an almost claustrophobic experience. For a story that should inspire awe at every turn, the visual language often feels oddly hemmed in.
So when the award-winning English director finally embraces spectacle it’s all the more frustrating. The vast widescreen compositions are undeniably magnificent, and several fantasy encounters briefly awaken the film from its torpor. The Cyclops sequence is genuinely haunting, while Poseidon’s wrath carries genuine mythic weight. Circe’s eerie island, complete with her unfortunate porcine victims, offers the kind of strange, unsettling fantasy the entire film desperately needed more of.
Instead, Nolan fractures the narrative into a series of disconnected episodes that never gather dramatic momentum. Each destination feels less like another chapter of an epic voyage than another item on an increasingly weary checklist. The film lurches from encounter to encounter without building cumulative emotional force.
Most surprising of all is how joyless the whole enterprise becomes. Homer’s tale may be full of monsters, vengeance and tragedy, but it is also mischievous, sensual and deeply human, with an often comedic touch that Nolan seems determined to iron out of existence, often drifting into Terrence Malick territory with the schmaltzy sentimentality of some of the speeches. Here there isn’t a glimmer of humour, scarcely a flicker of romance, and certainly none of the earthy sensuality that gives the original poem so much life. Certainly no raunchy sex. Everyone looks as though they’re attending an exceptionally expensive funeral.
By the time the credits roll, The Odyssey has become less an exhilarating voyage than an interminable exercise in cinematic penance. Nolan’s craftsmanship is never in doubt, and flashes of visual brilliance remind us of the extraordinary film that might have been. But buried beneath the fractured storytelling, glacial pacing, oddly contemporary dialogue and curiously lifeless performances lies an epic that never truly comes alive.
This is one turkey that deserves to be sacrificed on the altar of the gods. Even Zeus might politely decline the offering.
IN UK CINEMAS FROM FRIDAY