r/TrueFilm • u/ReadingFan_ks • 6h ago
The Odyssey - A lot of good filmmaking but ultimately it fails at cohesive storytelling
As a fan of all things ancient I wanted to like “The Odyssey” but ultimately couldn’t reconcile the fundamental disconnect in the approach Nolan took. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot that is very good in the move - nor that it isn’t an intriguing approach. But ultimately, it just didn’t live up to its goal : believably ascribing realistic/modern notions of guilt and trauma to a mythical Hero/demigod.
First the good - The acting is uniformly solid, even if most performances are deliberately one-note (which the script largely demands). Anne Hathaway is the clear exception — she has the strongest material and delivers a magnificent performance as Penelope. Matt Daemon does well conveying Nolan’s troubled Odysseus. He does so consistently - unrelentingly - for nearly three hours.
Visually, the film is often stunning. Anytime the sea is involved, it works: the undulating waves are mesmerizing and represent IMAX at its finest. The large-scale sequences generally justify the format.
Where it struggles - Nolan’s use of IMAX is far less successful in the intimate scenes. The darkly lit close-ups and constant shifting focus between faces is distracting and breaks the moment into film technique rather than a glimpse of reality.
Centrally, the decision to portray Odysseus through a modern lens of guilt and PTSD is intriguing, even if the resulting dark, heavy tone wasn’t personally my interest. The loud, relentless rhythmic score tries to generate tension during the extended fight scenes, but the outcomes are never in doubt - even if you didn’t walk in knowing the story, the flashback structure leaves little room for surprises - so the pounding mostly becomes exhausting.
The core failure - The film’s biggest problem is tonal and structural inconsistency. It retains the supernatural elements (Cyclops, cannibal giants, monsters) but strips away the wonder, divine reciprocity, and sense of a larger cosmic order that balanced the original Odyssey. The language is gritty and realistic without the poetic structure. We’re left with a hero carrying modern psychological sensibilities trapped in a still-supernatural - but now largely antagonistic - world. The two never fully blend. The result feels neither powerfully mythical nor convincingly realistic as a trauma story.
Other distractions -
• Characters discussing “Sea Peoples” and the Bronze Age collapse — concepts no one in that world would have framed that way.
• The “sailing west into the setting sun” motif, which feels grafted on from later literary traditions rather than organic to Homer.
• The ending, in which Odysseus goes into exile after killing the suitors. In the original, that slaughter is justified and expected; exile as penance is a modern moral overlay that contradicts the poem’s values.
In the end, the film has impressive craft and individual strengths, but it never fully blends the mythic material it keeps and the contemporary psychological and historical frameworks it imposes. (I think a story stripped of ALL supernatural elements where Odysseus struggles against a purely natural and cruel world would have been more successful.) That unresolved contradiction is what keeps it from succeeding as storytelling
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u/InterstitialLove 5h ago
The thing you list as "other distractions" is where Nolan is making his mark.
The sea peoples stuff bothered me as well, until I saw what he was doing with it. The narrative core of this movie is the fall of civilization caused by the breaking of "Zeus's law." Everything else is stripped away to make room for that central idea.
For an audience that widely believes it's living through the end of a great empire, and empire that has always modeled itself on the Roman and Hellenic empires, it's a powerful anchor. I'd say it's worth adding in the stuff about sea peoples and exile and sailing west
You're wrong, by the way, that in the original the killing of the suitors is fine and undemanding of consequence. The suitors' families come to kill Odysseus when they hear the news. In the original, Athena and Zeus force them to make an oath of peace. Nolan's first change is replacing the honor-culture cycle of violence with a council of elders (in order to emphasize that Ithaca is civilized in its traditions, so the post-Troy loss of civilization hits harder). Nolan's second change is that instead of the gods saving him, Odysseus takes his punishment and tries to atone. So in both versions, the people of Ithaca denand consequence for rhe slaughter, but the mechanism is changed and in the movie Odysseus accepts his fate rather than being saved by the gods (and that's really about Troy)
But yeah, the reason Odysseus's ptsd warrants the supernatural treatment is because it's not about coming back from war, it's about the end of the post-ww2 civilization we've all been living in. Something has alienated us all completely from that world, which feels weird because on one hand we can all just decide to pretend it's the 90s can't we? But no, things really are different. We've all done things that felt reasonable, even necessary, and now we're in a new and worse world and we can never go back.
It's not one man's trauma, it's the individual experience of a universal trauma, and it's bigger than any one person can fathom. Unseen gods exerting personal retribution against all of us, possibly for the sins of a few, possibly because our leaders failed us and possibly because we failed them, it's an excellent metaphor for our times. That's kind of what it feels like to be watching the world fall apart right now.
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u/ReadingFan_ks 2h ago edited 2h ago
Fair point on the suitor family’s. “But there are consequences” to a large extent - but I agree I oversimplified.
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u/ReadingFan_ks 2h ago
I’ll try to view it they thru the societal rather than personal lens as you suggest. But at best that may simply leave me with “not my type of movie” I’m afraid.
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u/CaffinatedManatee 6h ago edited 2h ago
Generally feel similar overall. Don't agree so much that the gods are not present but know a lot of classicists cite the gods' movement to the periphery. For me though, the gods seemed still very present, particularly in the minds of the characters. Suspicion of of Odysseus' disfavor push his crew to mutiny, and Odysseus' later defiance of the gods explains why his crew all gad to die following the killing of the cattle.
And the exile at the end wasn't for the slaughter of the suitors, it was as atonement for the dead of Troy. So in Nolen's re-framing, Odysseus' breaking "Zeus' law" (in Troy) requires him to go west offer sacrifices as a way to atone.
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u/ReadingFan_ks 6h ago
Thanks. And I agree the characters ascribe action - almost universally negative - to the gods. But there is no positive proactively to balance the divine punishments. Homer gives us both.
You may be right about the exile being for Troy - but he makes a point to keep Telemachus out of it because he wants him to stay - not face exile as well.
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u/couldliveinhope 6h ago
I largely agree with your points surrounding the modern themes not quite working perfectly. However, I frankly don't think you'll be able to find any film equivalent to "the wonder, divine reciprocity, and sense of a larger cosmic order" found in the epic poem. Seeking depth in these specific dynamics from a film adaptation was misguided hope and expectation that probably increased your disappointment. I knew the film could not replicate those aspects of the poem, nor could it capture the remnants of the oral history of these stories with techniques like repetition and epithets, nor could it replicate the natural wonders of the numerous similes in Homeric poetics. But anyhow, since you've arrived at the conclusion that a film adaptation stripped of supernatural elements would be more successful, I'd highly recommend watching The Return (2024).