Review: The Odyssey (Patreon)

It was always going to start with the Trojan Horse. Christopher Nolan, process nerd extraordinaire and specialist in Western civilization’s favorite images (the atomic bomb, the superhero), could not tackle Homer’s Odyssey without depicting the most famous piece of tradecraft in the history of storytelling. He almost certainly made the movie so he could depict the Trojan Horse. Nolan executes the Trojan Horse plan brilliantly — we see the Greeks hiding inside the horse for days in squalor, as the men in the bottom half of the horse drown and everybody else languishes in piss and shit. We see the Trojans recovering the horse from the beach and setting it upright to haul it into Troy. And we come to understand how the Greeks escape the horse and massacre the city. It is the kind of action setpiece which Nolan has excelled at directing since at least The Dark Knight. We go to Christopher Nolan movies to see competitive protagonists try to master their craft on a historic scale with dizzying results. And by that metric, The Odyssey works quite well.

Nolan’s realism — which is ultimately a realism informed by James Bond movies — is grounded in his fascination with process. His love of IMAX 70mm film unifies his obsessions with realism and process. What is the titular odyssey if not a process story, and what better way into Homer for a process nerd than figuring out how the Trojan Horse works? Christopher Nolan is invested in the kind of world where James Bond gadgets attain a level of believability — something demonstrated clearly in The Dark Knight.

Nolan’s obsession with believability leads him to make some puzzling decisions. The existence of the gods is ambiguous in The Odyssey. While the gods are clearly very real to the characters, they’re portrayed in a way where they could easily be representations of the characters’ tormented psyche. Zendaya’s Athena takes the shape of one of Odysseus’ many Trojan victims. Perhaps what baffles me here is why gods are where Nolan draws the line. Could it be his own secular predilections that leads him to proxy gods, or is he afraid of Harryhausen-style onscreen gods? Laurence Olivier’s casting as Zeus was far from the silliest part of Clash of the Titans. The Odyssey is set in a world of cyclops and tentacular beasts and witches who turn men into pigs — suddenly gaining skepticism when faced with the prospect of gods is somewhat baffling. But perhaps Nolan’s insouciance about the existence of the Olympians is his idea of revolting against the gods. In that respect, you can see how he would identify with Odysseus.

Maybe I’m missing the point. Hollywood movies are going to appeal to the sensibilities of a mass audience. Maybe Odysseus wrestling with anachronistically Iraq War-ish guilt over Troy works for other people. Perhaps Odysseus struggling with his guilty conscience only to righteously slay the Suitors moments later is just Nolan making a Hollywood movie. Maybe other people were less bothered than I was by Odysseus’ dominant instinct being his hubris while characters talk about his mercurial cleverness. Hell, perhaps somebody was genuinely moved by “our Age of Bronze is collapsing”, or by the bizarre interpretation of Zeus’ rule as the Golden Rule. Nolan has made dumb movies before, but we haven’t seen much of his tendency to direct excellent horror like the Polyphemos or Circe scenes. Maybe my tolerance for Hollywood blockbusters has declined in recent years. Perhaps next time I’ll fully enjoy The Odyssey. Hard to say — for me, this is on the lesser end of Nolan’s filmography, which means it’s one of the only watchable blockbusters of my adult life. It is daft, often interesting, and sometimes very, very fun. The nightmare fuel of the Polyphemos sequence alone would make this worth watching, as does the body horror of Samantha Morton’s Circe slowly and mechanically turning the sailors into pigs. The Sirens scene is a peak Headstrong Nolan Protagonist moment. As Hollywood spectacle, The Odyssey is a success, and maybe that’s what matters here.