Christopher Nolan’s big budget, big screen adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey was so exciting to me that it brought me out of a nearly one-year absence from cinema-going. I have been a lifelong mythology nerd. I even read Stephen Fry’s Odyssey retelling a month ago to remind myself of this classical epic tale. This film was worth the effort, and did not disappoint. The visuals were as impressive as I thought they would be. I really felt like I was there, experiencing all the magnificent islands and tormented seas of this legendary world. Also, the characters (played by a star-studded cast) seemed very real and authentic while also being larger than life. Like most people, I was already very familiar with the major beats of this story (I didn’t need any tutoring from Stephen Fry after all). Much of the fun was just to see how Nolan would be bringing these mythic elements to life and how he would be interpreting and designing them on-screen. Before watching, I had already heard a lot of the controversies that have been fluttering around this production like harpies. Amazingly, I was not bothered by any of them. I didn’t mind the American accents (and colloquial language such as words like “Dad”) used by all actors (even the ones who were from the UK and other countries). I didn’t mind filling the cast with non-Greek ethnicities, but if they were going to go full-colour, why not throw some more Asians in the mix — Yes, I saw you, Himesh Patel, and you were pretty good as Eurylochus. But how about a Chinese or Korean in the cast as well? (Yes, I guess you’re there, Will Yun Lee, but still…). I’m not sure I would have made these same choices myself, but they seem well-paired with Nolan’s other creative decisions, such as the inventive way the cyclops Polyphemus, or Circe’s transmogrifying of Odysseus’s crew, were depicted.

The many action scenes and sequences were great. They were all filmed to feel wide, but also like you were really there on the ground. They felt realistic, but not too gritty, like you were standing in the dirt yourself. Nolan was able to express an earth-bound kind of epicness (if that makes any sense) that I really appreciated. This kind of flavour also made sense with the many dialogue scenes in between the action. The whole movie was an alternation between stagey dialogue scenes (where pairs and groups of characters would converse with mostly realistic noises and sounds in the background, rather than emotional soundtrack music that tells us how to feel) and adventure set pieces — from shipwrecks to battles to hellscapes to encounters with all kinds of creatures and perils.

I’m not typically an actor’s viewer, as I don’t pay too much attention to performances or to character portrayals, but overall there were some good ones in this film. Matt Damon was great as the regretful yet super-skilled hero. His Odysseus came across as a well-aged warrior who holds his strength in reserve. As I watched him kill with relative ease, I kept thinking back to Damon’s Jason Bourne beating up enemies with a rolled up magazine. Tom Holland as the son, Telemachus, was fine. I didn’t think he had as much to do as he should have, and he seemed a bit old to still be so nascent and uncertain as a man. Anne Hathaway was also not bad, though I found her large, melancholic eyes made Penelope more doleful than I had originally imagined.

The one thing about this production that I missed from Homer’s epic poem was the very mythical quality of so much of it. Compared to the Iliad, which was mostly a human war (though the Olympian gods intervened), the Odyssey had always felt more like a magical adventure. Nolan’s adaptation took away a lot of that magic, both literally and psychologically. Even when we see Zendaya’s goddess Athena appear and disappear, there is never any fading away (not that I really wanted cheesy CGI effects), but rather the camera cuts and she’s here, then cuts again and she’s gone. Without a lot of fantastical effects or a heroic soundtrack, things feel a lot more mundane (even when your ship is caught between a giant whirlpool and a multi-headed monster). And while this film was still well-done, an excellent adaptation, I missed some of that magic that comes with a story like the Odyssey.

However, this film is still pretty epic. I loved most of Christopher Nolan’s movies because they show an intelligent and interesting approach to stories. I have not been as much a fan of his recent historical movies (including the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer) perhaps because they were so mundane, but I hope this one means that he’s getting back to the extraordinary stories, and I cannot wait to see what’s next from him.

4 stars