Film Review of the Week

Action

The Odyssey (15)

Review: Bigger had always meant better to Oscar-winning writer-director Christopher Nolan, a passionate advocate of the large screen IMAX format since he began shooting with high-resolution cameras almost 20 years ago on The Dark Knight. That steadfast devotion to the most immersive cinematic experience crescendos with a visually stunning adaptation of Homer’s epic poem dating back more than 2,500 years. The Odyssey is the first film shot entirely on IMAX cameras and Nolan’s sprawling adventure takes numerous creative liberties with the source material to visualise the siege of Troy and its bloodthirsty aftermath from multiple pulse-quickening perspectives.

Odysseus (Matt Damon), king of Ithaca, heads into battle at the behest of Agamemnon (Benny Safdie). He leaves behind his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and young son Telemachus (Tom Holland), unaware of the tumult that will engulf his land when he fails to return from the conflict. Brother-in-law Eurylochus (Himesh Patel) acts as his second-in-command on land and at sea. After years without news of the king’s fate, the people of Ithaca lose hope and Odysseus is presumed dead. Before Telemachus can come of age and ascend the throne, rivals including Antinous (Robert Pattinson) vie forcefully for Penelope’s affections and the power-hungry brutes threaten violence unless the queen chooses a new husband.

Meanwhile, Odysseus is lost in a fog of blissful, quiet surrender on the island of Ogygia. Nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron) feeds him lotus flowers to dull memories of Penelope and when she finally allows the fallen king to recall the past, he remembers ill-fated encounters with a cave-dwelling cyclops and armour-clad giants. Athena (Zendaya), goddess of wisdom and warfare, protects Odysseus as he secretly returns to Ithaca and recuperates with blind swineherd Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), one of the few men who has always been loyal to the crown.

Running a few minutes shy of three hours, The Odyssey is a triumph of muscular, practical filmmaking on a jaw-dropping scale that few can match. The extended sequence of the Trojan army hauling a giant wooden horse out of the surf and dragging the offering inside the city’s walls, unaware that Odysseus and his men are concealed inside the hulking steed, is a triumph of production design and sweat-drenched might. A close encounter with duplicitous witch Circe (Samantha Morton) could be excised entirely but that would deny audiences a terrific, self-contained supporting performance and a bravura demonstration of make-up effects and prosthetics to prove men are selfish beasts at the mercy of their primal urges.

Damon’s robust embodiment of a battle-scarred leader anchors the film’s more fantastical flourishes. His screen chemistry with Hathaway never achieves the kind of furious boil that justifies the snarling barbarism of the final act but one touching scene with Holland cuts through the swaggering machismo with precision and underlines the fragility of our war-mongering and self-destructive species. Don’t look for gods in men or women, you’ll just be disappointed.