Rob Reviews: The Odyssey ￼

Last night, Sierra and I went to see The Odyssey. Incidentally, I’ve been awaiting all week to say those 10 words, but I digress. For now, on with the review:

The Setup: Three Hours in the Dark

Standing in the theater for three straight hours watching Christopher Nolan tackle the ultimate epic poem does something weird to your internal clock. You’re watching a weary king spend years wandering oceans, fighting monsters, and trying desperately to navigate his way back to Ithaca.

Of course, unless you’re lucky enough to live near one of the vanishingly few true, traditional 70mm film IMAX theaters left—and Michigan only has one that still runs that kind of legacy equipment—most of us are experiencing these blockbusters on digital screens (or what the movie hipsters like to call “LiMAX”). Not that digital projection isn’t here to stay, but if you’re going to sit through a sprawling epic, the venue matters. While I was so grateful Sierra drove out my way to see me last night, the theater we were in was built back in the early 2000s and still has those old-school, non-reclining chairs. Trying to survive a two-hour-and-fifty-seven-minute runtime without a recliner when you’ve already got a sore back is its own kind of Odyssey.

And then you walk out into the Michigan night, your lower back screaming from a theater seat, and realize something a little dizzying: Odysseus isn’t the only one trying to figure out how to get home. Only, sometimes the realization hits that you aren’t just trying to find a place on a map—you’re recognizing that after a long, exhausting stretch of outrunning the wreckage and rebuilding from the ground up, you’re actually already here.

The Epic Scale (And Practical Effects)

You have to hand it to Christopher Nolan. We all know his pathological hatred of computer-generated effects by now. Sitting in the dark, watching the sprawling scale of the thing—from the monstrous reach of Charybdis to Circe turning unfortunate sailors into literal swine—you almost start wondering if he didn’t just bypass the green screens entirely and track down an actual, breathing Cyclops somewhere off the coast of Greece. Talk about an unusual suspension of disbelief.

Of course, you also have to accept Nolan’s trademark indulgence: if he wants to spend thirty seconds on a character walking slowly across a beach, picking up a handful of sand, and letting it drift through their fingers just because he thinks it’s a powerful image to get on film, he’s going to do it. Some casual moviegoers might struggle a bit with the nearly three-hour runtime (at two hours and fifty-seven minutes, twenty minutes shorter would have been tighter, though twenty minutes is an eternity in movie-time). But Nolan is always going to take the time to tell the story his way. And he does a commendable job using flashbacks to structure it all—especially considering Homer’s original epic is essentially one massive narrative poem with very little traditional dialogue to pull from. Framing it the way he did gives it that necessary psychological weight, turning it less into a linear action flick and more into a man sitting with the ghosts of his own choices.

The Cast

Matt Damon as Odysseus: Completely sells the weary, battle-scarred exhaustion of a man who has seen too much and just wants the war to stop.

Tom Holland as Telemachus: Solid, grounded work. Though, if we’re being entirely honest, watching him next to Anne Hathaway as Penelope definitely triggers a bit of a mathematical puzzle regarding the age gap. That said, Hathaway is officially locked in as a charter member of the Nolan regular rotation now, and she commands the screen.

John Leguizamo: Fantastic work bringing texture and grit to the supporting ensemble.

Elliot Page: Easily one of the standout performances of the film. Total, seamless immersion into the role. You aren’t watching an actor play dress-up as a Greek soldier; you’re just watching the character. That’s about the highest praise you can hand down.

Zendaya: Tom Holland’s girlfriend impressed me as the Greek goddess Athena in this movie. Upon first viewing, and maybe not having a deep immediate handle on the source material casting, it took a minute to pick up on the fact that she was playing Athena. In a way, the character reminded me a little bit of her portrayal as Chani in the Dune movies. Athena appears to Odysseus at several points throughout his… Odyssey. But even from the very costume she wore, I was reminded of Chani in Dune—where the protagonist has fleeting visions of her before seeing her as a real person. There was just something mystic and almost ethereal about her in both roles, clearly amplified here by playing a goddess.

The Teacher’s Lens

As an English teacher, my favorite unit to teach—whether in middle school or high school—is the hero’s journey. And let’s face it, The Odyssey is the blueprint for all other hero’s journey stories. Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, the MCU—it’s all a variation on The Odyssey.

Watching the movie, I was thinking a lot about the definition I’ve given my students for a hero: somebody who is the embodiment of all the virtues and attributes considered good and important in a particular society at a particular moment in time. Matt Damon as Odysseus fit the bill on all of those counts.

Christopher Nolan has made, among other things, my all-time favorite Batman movie trilogy. Given his aversion to CGI and his penchant for making banger after banger, I knew the story was in great hands. I noticed a couple of elements of his filmmaking that definitely showed up in The Odyssey beyond his regular players. I recall the moment in Oppenheimer just before they tested the first atomic bomb when the music got frantic and almost chaotic. Sitting in that theater two-and-a-half hours into this movie, you were absolutely riveted at that moment because of the sheer high stakes. I felt the exact same way during the final climactic fight between Odysseus and Penelope’s suitors. I should’ve been tired at that point—we were north of the two-and-a-half-hour mark—but I was riveted to my seat, and this was the first time I heard people in the audience cheering, something I haven’t even heard in a movie theater since Avengers: Endgame.

Final Take

If you want to feel a little bit cultured, go watch The Odyssey. It may be a crash course in Greek mythology for you, or it might harken back to reading Percy Jackson or watching Clash of the Titans. But if you’re a fan of Christopher Nolan in general, you’re going to love this movie. It is broad, it is massive in scope, it is epic—it is everything Christopher Nolan makes a movie to be, and it is everything The Odyssey deserves to be when put to film. I see this movie winning several Oscars this coming winter. I’m gonna say it now: it will almost certainly be nominated for Best Picture, and it may very well win Best Picture when all is said and done.

Highly recommended.

Rebuilding a life takes grit, consistency, and a lot of ‘Option C’ thinking. Having crossed the 1,000-day milestone, I’m now charting the territory beyond. The mission remains the same: No glitz. Just the work. New to the blog? Start your journey here to see the blueprint and the ‘Tricorder’ perspective behind the rebuild.

Today’s post is inspired by the WordPress Daily Prompt. While I’ve taken the topic in my own direction for the Road beyond 1,000 Days, you can find more responses to today’s prompt HERE

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