What does it mean to “defy the gods?”
We’ve been noodling on an answer since the release of the first poster of The Odyssey, the latest film by Christopher Nolan. The phrase “Defy the Gods” floated above the disembodied head of a Greek statue, with embers flickering behind it. As one might expect of marketing material associated with the follow-up to Oppenheimer, the Oscar-winning, near-billion-dollar-grossing behemoth, the poster sparked a flurry of social media discussion, including criticism that Nolan might be misinterpreting Homer’s legendary text. (It wouldn’t be the last time that particular criticism would be levied against the film.)
Anyone familiar with Nolan’s work knows that his adaptations are less interested in fidelity than using the source material to interrogate the human condition, specifically its failures. It is the thematic force behind Oppenheimer, Interstellar, and The Dark Knight trilogy. Aside from the guaranteed visual spectacle, the appeal of Nolan tackling one of human civilization’s most influential stories lies in seeing what his adaptation can glean about humanity in a way that resonates with modern audiences. Following that logic, The Odyssey’s first tagline reads as a commentary on our complicated, perhaps antagonistic, relationship with the deities that shape our lives.
That anxious dynamic is the Sword of Damocles hanging above Odysseus’s (Matt Damon) head. The King of Ithaca has been on a years-long military campaign against the city-state of Troy. After sacking and defiling Troy, Odysseus’s army leave for a glorious heroes’ welcome. However, they encounter increasingly mythic trials that imperil their journey. Having lost years in an amnesiac haze with Calypso (Charlize Theron), Odysseus strives to return home and atone for his absence and excesses. Meanwhile, his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) and wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) are batting away rowdy, brutish suitors, including the uniquely duplicitous Antonius (Robert Pattinson) who seek the throne. Desperate to preserve his birthright, Telemachus journeys to Sparta to uncover his father’s whereabouts.
Homer’s original text has endured for millennia partly because of its overwhelming scale. That scale has ignited countless imaginations but has also rendered it virtually unadaptable in its entirety. The epic poem is essentially four stories in one, serving multiple locations, timelines, and complex characters. It’s almost promised that something will get lost in translation, whether it be Odysseus’s encounter with the Cyclops or his detour to Hades, the land of the dead.
Remarkably, Nolan makes the sprawling narrative work through masterclass editing. He and his editor Jennifer Lame float elegantly between the sacking of Troy, Odysseus’s postwar trials, his isolation with Calypso, Telemachus’s journey to Sparta, and Ithaca’s political machinations without disrupting our comprehension of the narrative. The story relies heavily on its characters’ recollections, and Nolan evokes the feeling of losing oneself in a memory, with voiceovers fluidly bleeding into flashbacks, building rich connections to the past. You believe Eumaeus’s (John Leguizamo) unwavering faith in Odysseus, as his narration overlays the king’s small and large acts of grace. You feel Penelope’s fatigued but steadfast loyalty to her husband as she remembers their last moment together before his departure. Nolan’s approach forges surprisingly emotional foundations for the unsurprisingly splendid visuals.
And the visuals are truly splendid. It’s table stakes at this point for Nolan to craft stunning, absorbing images. The Odyssey somehow exceeds the highest expectations, displaying a level of screencraft that defies both logic and precedent. In 70mm IMAX, its largest format, the film is an extraordinary collection of immersive, richly detailed scenes that fully capture Ancient Greece’s beauty and terror. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema effectively traps you within the frames of Ithaca’s peaceful clifftops, Ogygia’s eerily bare beaches, and Hades’ grimy, bluish-black landscapes. The overwhelming scope makes you yearn for more of them, which is exceptional for a three-hour film. The trap, fortified by Ludwig Göransson’s pulse-pounding score, also means there is no escape from the jaw-dropping horror, from the dual dread of Charybdis and Scylla at sea to the bodily monstrosity of Circe’s (Samantha Morton) punishment of the army. Nolan demands surrender to the mythical torment and the desperate politicking.
The unrepentant grandeur of Nolan’s visuals serves as a critical element to The Odyssey’s thematic, spiritual core. The Greeks in his film are slavishly devoted to “Zeus’s Law,” treating others as they would wish to be treated. However, some are skeptical of the gods’ wisdom and influence. Odysseus, having won a seemingly unwinnable war, is one such skeptic, arguing that the gods “don’t speak in ways they understand.” His disregard of the divine has cataclysmic consequences, with each trial opening his eyes to the far-reaching effects of his disregard for the gods and, by extension, his comrades. The film’s strongest moments directly engage his careless hubris. Odysseus’s confrontation with the soil-drenched ghost of Sinon (Elliot Page) captures the raw ache of the dead soldiers left in Odysseus’s wake, while Circe’s trickery symbolizes the fierce vengeance of gendered violence.
The Odyssey’s greatest thematic and aesthetic achievement is the sacking of Troy. The battle is told twice, from the perspectives of Spartan king Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) and Odysseus. Menelaus sees it as a feat of wartime engineering, a jaw-dropping display bathed in Nolan’s brutal, fiery earth tones. Odysseus is horrified by those same flames, accompanied by violent depravity and desecration. (Odysseus replaces the decapitation of Athena’s statue with Athena herself, tears running down her face before the sword swings down). With the benefit of recovered memories and years of self-reflection, Odysseus admits that his ego has effectively damned human civilization. It is a lament similar to that of Robert Oppenheimer, tortured by the weight of his brilliance and humanity’s careless use of it. The Odyssey is an evolution of that existential crisis, with sharper pessimism and greater reverence for the collegial, romantic, and religious divine.
The Odyssey’s staggering ambitions are unrivaled, but not without minor difficulties. Nolan’s use of modern language has been subject to much debate online. In practice, the anachronisms are less concerning than the spates of inelegant exposition that hold the script back from matching the visuals’ lyricism. While the film balances the multiple narratives well, they aren’t equally rendered. Telemachus’s story and character development feel particularly underwritten and passive, especially compared to the journeys of Odysseus, Antonius, and Penelope. That storytelling gap leaves room for what could’ve replaced it to match the scale of the other stories. (The yearning for more of the Trojan War is especially strong off the back of the stunning Trojan Horse invasion.)
One of The Odyssey’s better challenges is granting satisfying time to its sprawling, uniformly strong cast. Matt Damon is an excellent Odysseus: prideful, intelligent, and, in the final act, mournful and ferocious in equal measure. While Odysseus’s dialogue is among the most uneven, Damon’s confident tone and movements project the necessary regality to overcome it. Anne Hathaway imbues the long-aggrieved Penelope with bone-deep weariness and whip-smart mental reflexes, her eyes powerfully communicating both her loss and political acumen. Her palpable resentment explodes in a riotous denunciation of her inability to rule Ithaca in her name, despite having led the city-state for decades in Odysseus’s absence.
Tom Holland is fine as Telemachus, but the character’s passivity leaves him a bit short-shrifted. Holland typically excels as a narrative driver, but the script’s modernity limits his ability to fully convey the gravity of Telemachus’s tenuous political position and the burden of Odysseus’s myth. (His best work comes in his listening to Menelaus, effectively conveys the awe and intimidation of his father’s legend.) Pattinson is a fun scenery chewer, relishing in Antonius’s haughty treachery. However, there are glimmers of vulnerability and inadequacy in his eyes that could’ve been unpacked more on the page. Himesh Patel is a great, resolute soldier advocate as Eurylochus, who can cut through the spiraling mysticism with firmness and empathy to bring Odysseus back to Earth.
In supporting roles, John Leguizamo is gentle and heartbreaking as Odysseus’s loyal shepherd Eumaeus, just as dedicated to the King as Telemachus and Penelope. Samantha Morton is deeply unsettling as the vengeful sorceress Circe, gleefully molding the Greek soldiers into animals with groping hands and a snarling grin. Disturbing as Circe’s trial is, Morton does evoke empathy for the character through her defeated requiem for the abuses women face against warring men. Although largely serving as marginal characters, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, and especially Lupita Nyong’o all leave lasting impressions as Calypso, Athena, and Helen of Troy, respectively.
Returning to “defying the gods,” The Odyssey is not a desecrated misreading of Homer’s epic poem. Nolan uses the text to grapple with the hypocrisy of ostensibly pious men, who will abandon their laws, civic or spiritual, in pursuit of their own aims. The pessimism is earned, especially in a sociopolitical context that reveres anti-intellectualism. However, Nolan is not without hope. He responds to Robert Oppenheimer’s existential crisis with the possibility of retribution, shaped by the next generation. Rather than defying the gods, Nolan pays tribute to them with faith that is the cinematic equivalent of Mount Olympus, a soulful and ambitious monument that only he could construct. It is his triumph.
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