Somewhere, Christopher Nolan is smiling, so are Lupita Nyong’o and Elliot Paige. The Odyssey is a bona fide blockbuster, but it is so much more than a successful motion picture. It’s a literary masterpiece put on IMAX film.
The only thing that would have made The Odyssey better was if it were the sequel to The Iliad. I can’t imagine that story being told by Nolan; maybe the success of his most recent will force him to cave to pressure to tell the story of how they got there.
Nolan hits a home run. The epic poem of Homer is displayed perfectly in just under three hours. The film could have been split into two, maybe even three, parts.
If you don’t know the story being told, it’s o.k., you don’t need to. Simply put, Odysseus helps win the Trojan War. The Gods punish him for his actions, and it takes him 10 years to get back home, where he finds his waiting wife trying to fend off suitors who presume Odysseus is dead.
There, that’s the story, but Nolan presents it with perfect pacing, an absolutely gorgeous set, and creative arcs in the story’s presentation.
Let’s hit the elephant in the pre-release room. Paige and Nyong’o. I’ll cut to the chase. Paige was a she and is now a he. Nyong’o is Kenyon. She plays Helen of Troy, the “Face that launched a thousand ships.” But isn’t she supposed to be white or something?
I’m going to tackle the black vs. white thing here because, as I watched the film, it was clear the second she was on screen that the casting was perfect. I am not going to say that Nolan shared my thoughts on having a Kenyan woman play the role of a historically presented white “face,” but it made sense.
When I watched it play out, I realized that a dark-skinned woman would be exotic to both Menelaus and Paris. A rare beauty from a distant world, a different culture, a different skin tone. If Helen is someone who should be the rarest beauty, would it not make sense that she would be an exotic rarity?
Nyong’o made sense to me far more than I expected. Going in, I didn’t look at her casting as being “woke,” but instead because she is talented. Again, I liked the change. It made sense.
Paige, on the other hand, was being ridiculed because of being transgender. Her role was important, but also minimal. If nothing else, he looked like the character’s younger self. In the books, however, Sinon (Paige) was stronger and carried a larger importance. In that regard, Paige came across as more “mousey” and weak.
The saddest part about all this is that the movie has to deal with that “elephant” because there are those who will not see it, or tell you that it isn’t worth seeing, because of those casting choices. And here we are talking about it once again.
The movie is fantastic, but I did have one problem (minor spoiler here): I wanted to see a lot more from the Sirens. The scene focused more on Odysseus’s anguish than the song they were singing, luring him to the island.
With so much deep attention paid to the Cyclops, Cerce, and others, it just felt that the Sirens were a castoff. That’s a shame because even a couple more minutes could have truly driven that part of the film deeper.
Overall, The Odyssey will be remembered as a masterpiece. This generation’s retelling of a fantastic mythical poem.
Despite a slow start that makes the viewer feel like the movie is going to go nowhere, The Odyssey picks up steam about 35 minutes in, and it doesn’t stop once it starts.
Zendaya is a perfect Athena who both taunts and pleads to Odysseus. She captured her performance with subtle dialogue that took a backseat to her facial expressions. To me, she was a standout, but the real hero is clearly Matt Damon.
I wasn’t thrilled with Damon taking on the role of Odysseus. I like Damon, but I have seen him overact in period pieces. The Great Wall was atrocious. I just didn’t see him as the mythical hero who would be punished for his actions in battle.
There are a lot of layers to the character. We don’t meet the confident Odysseus of The Iliad. We meet the tortured soldier who has spent 10 years trying to win a war he doesn’t want to be in.
Damon captures the emotional rollercoaster of his characters’ ebb and flow flawlessly. He is believable at every point of conflict. He owns the role from start to finish. He made it his own while staying true to the core of the character that was created in the mid-7th century B.C.
The Odyssey will leave you thinking long after you leave the theater. You will realize that what happens at the start comes back later, and you will wish you had paid more attention. You will realize you missed key points, but that’s what makes it so good. The repeat viewing will be worth it as well.
The film opened with more than $240 million worldwide and an estimated $124 million domestic box office.
Passes to Passports 
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