Four years after winning the Oscar for Best Picture Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan continues to gain momentum Odyssey. Not without its flaws, his impressive film captures the violence inherent in Homer’s epic.
Did you know that Christopher Nolan’s new film will be released in theaters this Wednesday, July 15th? Rhetorical question, that is, how Odyssey will cause a commotion comparable to the sound of sirens. Between the countless controversies that have arisen since the project’s announcement (some anecdotal, others misguided), and the barrage of publicity fire that has unfolded in recent days, you’d have to live in Polyphemus’s Cyclops cave to miss the new blockbuster proudly displaying its $250 million on the scale.
This is expected to be a turning point, and since there is no need to prolong the suspense, let’s say that the British director ignored the storms and managed to steer his boat to safety. Not necessarily his best film, Odyssey deserves to be described as a summative work, one that brings together in one movement the quirks and motifs that dot his filmography. It must be said that in almost all of Christopher Nolan’s films there was something of Odysseyand his adaptation of Homer has something of almost all of his past features.
On Calypso Island, behind the confused and heartbreaking gaze of Ulysses (Matt Damon), who has forgotten the very existence of his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland), Leonard Shelby lies somewhere with fading memories of Souvenir. Soldiers in Agamemnon’s service, exhausted by years of siege on the shores of Troy, recall that in 2017 the director filmed English soldiers who could not wait to leave the beaches of Troy. Dunkirk. As for the journey with all the dangers that will lead him home, there is no need to look further thanOrigin or Interstellar to notice a clear connection with paternity.
The text attributed to Homer, already composed of comings and goings in time, does not even need to be corrected in all directions to respond to the dear director’s non-linear regime. Rest assured if the memory of narrative convolutions Dogma still alive in your home, built-in stories Odyssey seen by Nolan are unlikely to create the slightest problem for understanding.
Raids on Terror
However, it would be unfair to reduce Odyssey a simple summary of what Christopher Nolan has been able to do in the past. He, who has never embraced the horrific register so openly, takes great pleasure in making us shudder when Ulysses’ troops stop at the Cyclops, heightening the fear experienced by sound effects that seem to come from the mists of time.
How about a little detour to the witch Circe, literally returning people to their animal state with a big boost to the special effects that make for the most beautiful hoursHowl or Werewolf from London. The director admitted that he’d “love to make a horror movie” in the proper form, and we didn’t always assume he was contemplating that horizon. But after Odysseythe prospect seems more than tempting.
Matt Damon as Ulysses in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. © Syncopy/Universal
Christopher Nolan hasn’t yet pushed the violence cursor that far either, this mixture of sound and fury that he unleashes on screen, here to dramatize the fall of Troy, there to accompany Ulysses’ revenge on those who seek his place next to Penelope to rule Ithaca. Let’s note in passing that Robert Pattinson, as Antinoos, who occupies pole position in the contenders’ grid, clearly enjoys blending into the skin of the licensed bastard.
Emotions Behind Violence
But in Odyssey blood rarely flows without bringing with it the curse and wrath of the gods on those who shed it. Sometimes relying too heavily on Ludwig Göransson’s beautiful compositions, Christopher Nolan still manages to move people by making his Ulysses bear the burden of guilt born of having played a leading role in the capture of Troy, in defiance of divine laws and at great human cost. The fate of women is hardly more enviable, since, in addition to Penelope, full of resentment and a hostage to the desires of men, Helen of Troy (Lupita Nyong’o), “the face that launched a thousand ships,” is now disfigured, marked by bitterness.
Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey © Universal Pictures
Odyssey at the same time manages to make room for an element of wonder, for waves of beauty, perhaps enhanced in the Imax version – for the purposes of this review, the film was viewed in a classic 70mm print. Despite photos that could be considered blurry in places, the cameras clearly made this trip for a reason, and the natural settings used, from Iceland or the Peloponnese, remind us that suffering from the digital blandness of conventional Hollywood blockbusters is not inevitable.
Christopher Nolan’s copy might have been even better without those few abrupt and clunky transitions between two sequences, or that habit of cutting away at some of the most intimate moments, as if he were seeking to artificially impart a more jittery rhythm to scenes that could have done without it. Because in its current form, almost three hours of film have nothing in common with the ten-year drift of the Homeric hero. Honestly, we would almost ask for more, happy, who, like Ulysses…