The bearded, older Odysseus is stuck on an island with the nymph Calypso and has disappeared from his homeland for two decades. This great King of Ithaca has lost memory of his past due to consuming a copious amount of white lotus flowers. Is he forgotten after decades away from Ithaca? Will anyone find him? Will his son Telemachus find his father when he goes off on a secret journey unbeknownst to his mother?
At the heart of Christopher Nolan's very exciting, tempestuously paced and grandly told epic is Odysseus struggling to come home to Ithaca and wondering whether he will be a historical footnote in the sacking of Troy or having punctured Cyclops' one eye - after all, he is at the far end of the world with this beautiful nymph and so does he need to come back? And who will tell his story? Homer, of course. In Ithaca, Odysseus' authoritative wife, Penelope (a majestic and nuanced Anne Hathaway), is eager for his return since the suitors wish to have her hand in marriage with access to the throne (the suitors do not believe Odysseus is coming back). Her ambitious son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), is destined for the throne yet Antinous (Robert Pattinson) is firm on doing anything he can to claim it - murder is on his mind. Watching Pattinson is a sneaky treat because you can almost smell the deviousness of his plans, including those of the suitors who think nothing of kicking Odysseus' pet dog.
"The Odyssey" is not like the grand Greek myth films we have had in the past. With the exception of the giant Cyclops (Polyphemus, Poseidon's son), the gods are alluded to in this version - we never see the angry Poseidon or Zeus though their rage is felt during towering sea storms. The singing maidens, which requires Odysseus' crew to have wax in their ears, are seen from afar in misty rock formations. We do get to see the nasty witch Circe (Samantha Morton, in a sneakily scary performance) who turns men into pigs - the whole sequence itself is beyond bizarre as there are apparent wild animals on the island such as tigers and lions who were once human. Other than the gods, the scarred Helen of Troy (Lupita Nyong'o) and the goddess Athena (Zendaya) have glorified cameos and I wished to see more of them.
Sticking to Homer's own structure (translated from Greek in untold number of translations), it is partly Odysseus's story and partly Telemachus' own journey of learning about his father's journey and his battles. I felt more of a kinship with Matt Damon's Odysseus than I did with Tom Holland's Telemachus - Holland is the weakest of the actors on display here though he does give it 100 percent effort. Damon seems too modern at first to play such an iconic Greek hero but he goes the distance and manages to find his footing. Odysseus is shown as a man of complexity - a hero who knows he made mistakes and violated Zeus' law yet hopes that returning home to his beloved wife (as a beggar) will help cure and redeem everything. Killing the man-eating Polyphemus inside his cave was justified technically since Odysseus had to protect his own crew, a thought not likely shared by Poseidon. Same with hiding his soldiers inside the Trojan Horse - a sequence that is as magnificent to behold as you might imagine. The wooden Trojan Horse is protected by the incapable Sinon (Elliot Page) who is used as bait and is thus killed by the Trojans. During the volcanic Hades sequence, Sinon's "shade" (ghost) appears and shares his being betrayed, unaware of the soldiers inside the Trojan Horse and its ultimate purpose. And let's not forget Athena, who has the appearance of the slaughtered Trojan girl during the war and serves as a constant reminder to Odysseus. These are intimate moments where the hero has to grapple with some measure of guilt that gives "The Odyssey" a sizable thrust of humanity and despair.
Serious-minded and coupled with the flair and scope of a classic cinematic epic, "The Odyssey" is often superlative, thunderously riveting and uniquely intimate. Though some of the fighting scenes could've been handled without the obligatory cliche of a hand-held camera, I was still awestruck by this film and never felt it was too long. Despite some minor faults in its opening scenes (I just had to get used to Damon who looks more modern than Hathaway), "The Odyssey" will stand tall with its own dark spin on the giant mythological large-scale epics of our past.
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