I have always loved Homer’s Odyssey. It was one of the few things I was forced to read in seventh grade that I didn’t outright hate. I LOVED being forced to read it! It’s thrilling and full of action, with a real emotional drive. I couldn’t put my ratty textbook wrapped in a cutout paper grocery bag down.
What I DON’T like being forced to do is sit for three hours. I have a self-imposed rule that if a movie can’t keep itself shorter than two hours and thirty minutes, I’ll wait for the streaming release. When I found out that Christopher Nolan, one of the few competent directors in today’s Hollywood, was making The Odyssey his next project, I was like “I’m THERE!” Then I thought “Wait a minute….what’s the runtime?”
Almost exactly three hours? Ugh, I had to think about this. I NEEDED to see this in a theater, I needed to feel every ocean wave and cyclops chomp, but again, I hate being in the same seat for 180 minutes. “Can’t you get up and stretch?” I can hear some of you asking. Sure, if you want to completely block the view of the person behind you. This violates Zeus’s Law (more on that later).
There’s also the fact that three hours is a giant chunk out of a busy day, and has to be carefully planned out. It’s not just the length of the movie that has to be factored in, it’s the previews, the wait FOR the previews, the trip from home and back home…and you’re looking at something closer to FOUR hours. At least I could be assured there would be no post-credits sequence, so I could just leave when the names started scrolling. They didn’t have sequel bait in 1117 BC.
I found the one and only spot in my schedule Homer’s epic could be squeezed into, and…..okay, this is my fifth paragraph about getting to the movie in what’s supposed to be a review of the movie itself. I need to get to the point, which is this: Was the sacrifice of all that valuable time, the complete numbing of my butt worth it? I would say….yes.
At first I wasn’t sure. Like he did with Oppenheimer, Nolan chose to tell The Odyssey out of order. The story begins in a place where the story is traditionally three-fourths of the way done, and not with Odysseus himself. You barely see Matt Damon for the first 20 or 30 minutes of the film. Instead the initial focus is on Telemachus, his son, and Penelope, his wife. When we finally cut to Odysseus he’s at one of the LAST places on his journey, and he’s trying to remember how he got there. “You’re probably wondering how I got myself into this situation.”
At that point we get the Cyclops, and after THAT we get the Trojan Horse. The thing about Nolan is that, other than shuffling stories, he also prefers to tell very grounded ones. Look what he did to Batman. But with something like The Odyssey it’s utterly impossible to suck the fantastical elements out, right? Now he HAS to give us a fantasy, doesn’t he?
The stuff still happens. The magic is still there. But it’s as Nolan-y as it can get. The cyclops is more of a giant disfigured man (his design is great by the way, and it was a real practical puppet, no CGI). Circe, who in most interpretations is a gorgeous seductress with a palatial home, appears here as a homely woman in a shack. It’s worth noting though the piggie-fication of the soldiers still happens and it’s the most unsettling part of the film. How do you make THAT realistic-looking, you ask? Uhh, you’ll find out.
It has been pointed out by others that all the parts of the story that have to do with monsters, gods and magic are the flashback portions, so it could be interpreted as Odysseus being high on lotus and misremembering a bunch of stuff. And because it’s Nolan, that’s possible. But….that’s also NO FUN. So it’s not true!
Other than the shuffling of the cards, Nolan didn’t change much. It’s The Odyssey, straight and true, no artificial colors, no GMOs, nothing added. With the exception of ONE thing. There’s an extra flashback sequence that appears toward the end that feels out of place because it is. You will know it when you see it. It’s Nolan trying to shoehorn some kind of moral realization into Odysseus’s character arc, and it doesn’t work, because if Odysseus learned this lesson back THEN, he wouldn’t be the cocky SOB he starts his voyage home as, the kind that gets cursed by Poseidon in the first place.
But…that’s the ONE thing that doesn’t work. Over time, I grew to understand and appreciate why Nolan was telling the story in the order he was. We had to get to know Telemachus and Penelope first because once the film gets the ball rolling with Odysseus, it doesn’t have many opportunities to cut back to his family. And that familial connection and love is the core of the story — it’s important above all else.
What is the goal of Odysseus? To get back home. Why does he want to go home? Because his wife and son are there. What’s in his way? EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD. The war takes him twelve years to win and he’s lost at sea for another eight, but you can’t feel that urgency if you can’t identify with his goals. That’s why it’s smart we get to know Penelope and Telemachus first. The longer it takes, the more Odysseus is in danger of losing them. Add to this, the man’s a KING. He has no shortage of enemies both at home and abroad, and if one of them wins, it’s not just the end of his life, but the downfall of an entire country.
That’s the essence of an epic, which Homer defined. High stakes and high rewards. Every struggle needs to feel real, and every victory needs to feel earned. And most importantly, the hero needs to stand triumphant in the end, to make the audience’s entire emotional investment worth it. When Odysseus finally takes Penelope in his arms, it’s gotta feel like the biggest fist-pump moment ever. “YEAH!”
I can confirm Nolan pulls that off, though the final portion of the story runs a bit too long and that extra sequence is a big reason. The Odyssey is literally a textbook example of how to weave a compelling story. It’s been filmed before and it will be filmed again. But probably not for a while, so don’t miss out on this decade’s one chance to see this awesome story realized on the big screen. Even if it takes three freakin’ hours to tell.
