Odysseus’s ten-year journey to try to make it back home after the siege and sacking of Troy.
The vainglorious Odysseus and his men turn tail and flee so often that as they legged it down the hill from the Cyclops’s cave I was half expecting him to shout “run away! run away!” while pursued by Monty Python’s Rabbit of Caerbannog.
During their odyssey they are held captive in a cave by that Cyclops, escaping to their ships in the bay; chased by the Laestrygonians, a tribe of silver-armoured giants; and pursued from Hades by Odysseus’s own aggrieved fallen soldiers. In between his men are turned into pigs (an extraordinary scene) by the witch Circe.
There is little light relief in Christopher Nolan’s rather po-faced retelling, which perhaps explains my wish for some Python-esque absurdity. His Odyssey is about separating the guilt-ridden man from the blazing myth, and eventually the man separating himself from that myth.
Holy Grail was itself mocking the idea of kingly quests and mythmaking, so that killer rabbit could have done Odysseus a service – as his strategic brilliance keeps rubbing up against his too-human hubris, particularly in the face of the gods. After creeping past the Cyclops Polyphemus, Odysseus can’t resist revelling in their escape, which rouses the creature to chase them down to the sea, and angers Polyphemus’s father Poseidon into whipping up endless storms.
I read The Odyssey at university in the ’90s but I can’t remember any of it, which is odd as I can recall every word of Wham!’s Fantastic album from 1982. So I did listen to The Rest is History‘s podcast before the movie, though you don’t need to. No one is speaking in the original Greek and it’s not hard to follow. They could have trimmed that runtime, though I also wasn’t drumming my fingers on my chair arm. I don’t feel drawn to a rewatch though I may reread the poem, which is a victory of sorts.
Odysseus (the man! the myth! the legend!), king of the island of Ithaca, raises an army and sails away from his queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and young son Telemachus (Tom Holland) to wage war against Troy. He joins Agamemnon, King of Mycenae (apparently Benny Safdie, but mostly hidden under armour that channels Darth Vader and a really efficient broom from Home Bargains). They spend 10 years laying siege, before Odysseus has the idea of constructing a horse, filled with hidden soldiers, as a gift for the Trojans. The ploy works, Troy is sacked, and Odysseus and his men then spend another decade trying to make it home, thwarted at every turn by an array of gods and monsters.
When your toddler refuses to leave the beach without their favourite rock
The film is non-linear, held together with visits from the goddess Athena (Zendaya) and episodes from Odysseus’s seven years on Ogygia, having washed up without his men. Here he is fed lotus flowers by the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron) to help him forget, in the manner of a defeated father returning from an ill-advised family holiday in Dorset being presented with an Olympic Breakfast at the Little Chef on the A303.
Odysseus can’t get home himself until he accepts that he doesn’t want to remember his men, and doesn’t want to make it back. Both would involve facing up to the enormity of his actions. Only when he does this, and gives himself up the gods, can he return to Ithaca, floating through rough seas on on a ramshackle raft.
Meanwhile Penelope holds off a palaceful of odious suitors; she doesn’t even have any weaving to show for two decades alone, as each night she undoes her work, having told them she’ll select a husband when it is complete. Telemachus, fearful for his mother and the kingdom, travels to visit Melanaeus king of Sparta (Jon Bernthal), and his wife Helen (Lupita Nyong’o), seeking word of his father. It’s a poignant trip and Holland is rather touching.
This is an often dark and thoughtful telling, though there remains a derring-do Saturday morning serial feel to elements of The Odyssey with its islands, giants and sea monsters, fought against (and fled from) by Odysseus’s rapidly diminishing army. It’s a 15 certificate so I wouldn’t smuggle in a 10 year old, but there is still something old-fashioned about it all despite the overlay of 21st century trauma-informed introspection.
The occasionally anachronistic language never really jars and it’s not as if Polyphemus is calling Poseidon on an iPhone. The scenes with Calypso are low key though, emphasising that Odysseus is now a man without memory, which means no past, which means no glory.
Robert Pattinson is deliciously sleazy as cowardly chief suitor Antinous, who dodged the Ithacan draft for the Trojan War and now hangs around the palace like he already owns it. Pattinson slots in perfectly without over-egging his character’s awfulness, though I also think if they remake the Costner/Rickman version of Robin Hood he should play the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Other standouts are Samantha Morton, simply superb as Circe the witch, her rage easily understood; who amongst us hasn’t wanted to turn a sibling into a crow to get some peace? And Himesh Patel as Odysseus’s right hand man and obstructive conscience, Eurylochus.
As to the man himself, Damon is a terrific tarnished hero who moves over a decade from self-assured strategist and living legend to a guilt-ridden man who must truly understand who he is, beyond other people’s songs and myths about him.
It’s a lot to face up to, and to admit to his queen: that his behaviour has helped collapse the Bronze Age itself, by abusing the laws of hospitality. He tricked his way into Troy, where his men killed the goddess Athena’s priestess and destroyed the city. Yet to reclaim his own throne he has to utilise those very laws: sneaking back into his palace, dressed as a beggar, using Zeus’s Law that strangers should always be given shelter and assistance, as you never know if they are actually a god.
Odysseus has helped break the social contract between the city and island states which kept society in safe balance. He finally understands that the near-mythical “people from the sea” who so terrified these island communities, including his own, were always the Greeks themselves. The Bronze Age is collapsing, thanks to a trick filled with soldiers dragged from the beach. Truly the call was coming from inside the horse.
Check out my article on the ending of Nolan’s The Odyssey, here
Watch the trailer for The Odyssey:
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