“The Odyssey” is bound to be an Oscar favorite. Clearly, it’s an epic—with angry seas, forbidding landscapes haunted by the gods, and battles sparking with brutality.
As a bonus, writer-director Christopher Nolan reveals that when a troop of warriors hides for hours inside a giant wooden horse, the results can be nasty, unhygienic and even fatal.
But aside from that, what kind of hero is at the center of this heroic tale?
As played by Matt Damon, Odysseus is brave, cunning and aware that the war he’s going off to for his lord, Agamemnon, is a political excuse to seize trade routes, and isn’t about Troy abducting the legendary Helen.
After victory over Troy, Odysseus’ voyage home is long and difficult, including encounters with a cannibalistic Cyclops, the Sirens that can drive men mad, and the witch Circe (played by Samantha Morton) who knows how to handle visitors when they act like pigs.
Meanwhile, back home in Ithaca, the hero’s wife Penelope (played by a strong, regal Anne Hathaway) has her home invaded by a grubby pack of suitors aiming to replace Odysseus. Robert Pattinson, as the worst of the bunch, Antinous, instantly draws boos and hisses.
In Nolan’s hands, much of the film is concerned with violations of what’s called “Zeus’ law" of civility—where a host should welcome and protect strangers and, in turn, a visitor won’t abuse such hospitality.
Odysseus devises the duplicitous gift of the Trojan Horse—for him, the worst violation of the code, and maybe a death knell for the whole world he knows.
I don’t know if a guilty Odysseus is your classic hero of mythology. But he’s haunted by the destruction he enabled. In that, he’s related to Christopher Nolan’s last epic hero, J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The cast includes John Leguizamo as a blind, loyal servant; Charlize Theron as Calypso, who bears a lotus flower of forgetfulness; and Zendaya, a goddess/apparition who is Odysseus’ companion.
Tom Holland as son Telemachus is a staunch hero-in-the-making, but is stuck with the lunkheaded line, “My dad is coming home!”
There’s been controversy about some of Nolan’s non-traditional casting choices. In the end, they aren’t a great asset for the film, nor a serious liability. If you’re wondering how the diminutive Elliott Page wound up as a Greek warrior, the film shows Page playing a doomed boy soldier, Sinon, who was unfairly enlisted in the ranks because of the draft-dodging Pattinson.
“The Odyssey” is fine as a walloping fantasy-adventure. I’m not so sure it successfully blends the values of the traditional past with our present day. I can imagine the gods giving it three-and-a-half stars out of five.
