The (New) Odyssey

A selection from the transcript of Critical Drinker's take on The Odyssey (by Christopher Nolan, not by Homer.)

The Odyssey was pretty much exactly what I expected from a late stage Christopher Nolan film. Technically impressive and commendably ambitious. Visually dark and bleak. Emotionally sterile and weirdly lacking in pace, urgency or satisfying payoffs. Populated by cold, distant characters that give nothing away and invite no empathy from the audience. Dialogue that's jarringly clunky and on the nose, often delivered by talented but miscast actors, and ultimately an sending that fails to capitalize on its incredible buildup. It's a movie about love, yearning, adventure, wonder, mysticism, and epic mythology woven together by a man who either can't or won't understand any of those things.

I haven't seen it yet, but I suspect that that's pretty much what I'd feel. I already understand that it's most likely that Odysseus in particular has been completely rewritten as a tired, guilt-ridden, depressed, PTSD veteran struggling with the after-effects of the Trojan War, which would be completely alien to ancient Heroic characters, and not particularly interested in pursuing getting home, which is completely alien to his character as written. Odysseus was curious, adventurous, bold, kind of cheeky, and Nolan has turned him into a sad-sack, broken old man, by all accounts.

I'm not surprised. Every Christopher Nolan movie tends to be that way, because those are Nolan's greatest weaknesses as a film-maker. He's big into high concept and bold ideas, but piss-poor on human emotion, empathy, character, and the day-to-day issues of craftsmanship that make a movie fun and interesting to watch. Like James Cameron's Avatar series, people go see it for the spectacle and because of the buzz around it, but they rarely tend to come away thinking that they saw something magnificent, and they tend to have already forgotten what they saw by the time they get back home and rarely think about it again. My wife wants to go see it this weekend, but I already am pretty confident that I know what I'll see.

I think Nolan is too in love with his own inserted symbolism and messaging, which isn't exactly woke, but also isn't at all the messaging and symbolism of, y'know, The Odyssey, which is one of the oldest works of fiction and at the bedrock of art and literature for Western Civilization. One of my sons, who is a bit of a history and literature buff (but who's also a film buff and likes Nolan more than I do) quite liked the movie, but part of what he liked was that it had a lot of literature easter eggs that your typical "chud" viewer wouldn't even recognize. That may be kind of interesting the first time around, but isn't really a recipe, in my opinion, for a good or memorable movie. And, like I said, changing the nature of the titular character and the themes of the original work seems like a major mistake to me. Although it's not a great movie, Troy has been seen in a much better light lately because of it. 

To be fair, while I also didn't love Troy, I did like it. It's pretty cool.