michael-dean-k/

For someone who has never read—and knows nothing about—Homer's epic, Nolan's Odyssey is a success. My wife, who cared little about the Odyssey as I read and raved about it in the preceding weeks, said it was 10/10, one of the best movies she's ever seen. It's easy to imagine Nolan fumbling this. I thought his last two films were structural failures; but he stuck with a pretty conservative retelling of the arc, rendered mythic scenes in a remarkable way, and, along with the cast of stars, it all culminated in the summer blockbuster that we now all feel compelled to write about.

Importantly, though, it works for fans and readers of the Odyssey too. Prior to this, I watched the 8-part mini-series from 1968 in Italian. At eight hours, it is far closer to matching the book literally, but the cinematography is so primitive that it often feels like you're watching an amateur play. Still, you get over it quickly, and can appreciate the power of the original translated into a visual form. I also watched the cyclops scene from the 1997 two-part series, and it was so tonally off, so non-terrifying, that I decided I wouldn't sit through the whole thing. Nolan's film loses some key details in compression, and it's far from a perfect rendition, but negative reviews miss that this is the first-ever rendition of a strange, ancient story that hits the proper cinematic register, and that alone feels historic.

When the movie started, I couldn't help but feel that my recent obsession with the Odyssey might hamper my experience of it. By knowing the classic so well, I was able to see the seams and exclusions; yet also, I could appreciate details that the casual viewer would miss. Early on, I decided to try to suspend disbelief, to take it in as a purely sensory, non-cerebral experience. The low-frequency bass of the IMAX theatre was so often so loud that my head would tingle—it is an audiovisual spectacle, and with the mind off, you get totally enveloped in it.

Most negative reviews of the film cover dialect, costumes, and casting. The lamest of post-watch YouTube reviews I saw was from someone refusing to even see it because Elliot Page was in it (and that buying a ticket equates to supporting trans-ideology, and thus, the fall of western civilization, etc.). I did not think about Page or Damon or Hatheway, or any of the actors during my watch. If you are not suspending belief, and instead getting hung up on irreversible decisions like casting, then you're absolutely in no position to feel the movie. Instead of immersing yourself in the epic, you are sitting outside of it, as a critic, and ironically, depriving yourself of experiencing one of the core stories of western civilization, the Ur narrative.

My general stance is that I extremely enjoyed an imperfect translation of one of our most foundational stories. A good scene to dissect is the cyclops. At a structural level, it was off on a few important beats: (1) it seems they're unaware that they're on the island of cyclops, which takes away from Odysseus's reckless curiosity—in the book, he explicitly wants to meet one; (2) Polyphemus doesn't talk, which makes him more on an animal than a humanoid beast, meaning Odysseus can't use his cleverness to outsmart him; and (3) when leaving the cave, he doesn't declare his name in an act of hubris, which launches the curse, and is really the inciting act of the whole odyssey. So in one sense, the structural importance of the cyclops is botched, and it feels like one monster in a chain of monster. But, tonally, the cyclops is far better than any depiction in film. Unlike the '68 version, the cave is pitch black. The first minute or two in the cave is epic, and so much is gained by not showing the cyclops, and just his hands (Jaws-like). Then, when we see him, the actual prosthetics and decisions on his face, with his twisted nose and asymmetrical eye, we truly get the grotesque horror of a mutilated monster. I do think, for this rendering, they showed too much of it after the main reveal. And also, the animatronic cyclops sometimes led to awkward leg movements that broke immersion. So it wasn't tonally perfect either, but still, there are seconds of that sequence that are so far beyond any visual depiction of the cyclops that it felt historic to watch.

It deviated from the original in some ways that improved the story. I thought Antonius was far more developed as a villain than in the book. The ending was also better too. (SPOILER:) Instead of Athena enforcing a peace treaty after the Ithaca mob vows to avenge the bloodbath of their sons, Odysseus realizes that he can't stay home, and has to flee into oblivion with Penelope, leaving his son the throne. Still imperfect, but better than the book. It doesn't make sense to try to retell the Odyssey exactly, the original itself is hobbled and contentious. Similar to how the Trojan Horse is in one of the 6 lost books on the Trojan Wars, so is Odysseus's fate: In Telegonny, we learn that Odysseus had a son with Circe, who comes to Ithaca and unknowingly kills his father with a mantid spear (fulfilling the "death by sea" prophecy).

I thought the omissions of the Phaeacians made sense, given his time constraints, but a lot if also lost. That's how Odysseus gets home, and the consequence of them delivering him is having their magic ship turned stone. I thought the '68 series made some good variations to the Phaeacian sequence that shows Odysseus trying to deceive them. Each retelling of the story, whether in text or film, is an attempt to resolve all the relationships between the characters, events, and places. Each retelling is a way for me to understand new potentials within the discrete elements, which will guide my own imagination when I eventually decide to recombine them all into a version of my own. I took no notes during or after watching Nolan's film. I'll probably see it a second time with a moral critical eye, specifically looking at what his version gains and loses.