The Odyssey

Never have I thought I will write a move review

I was genuinely surprised by how much this movie triggered me. Growing up, The Odyssey was a tale of adventure—gods, monsters, and a man’s journey back home to the people he loved. Nolan’s realistic adaptation turns it into a story of guilt and trauma, but in doing so, it strips away the heart of what I imagined. Throughout the movie, I kept searching for that emotional connection, but it never landed for me.

To start with, I have no problem with the casting at all. The acting is good. It was even okay for me that he introduces few characters and changes a few (Sinon, Helen being back with a sleazy Menelaus). My issue is with the adaptation itself. The film removed the gods for realism (with some dialogues to say they are everywhere around you), but keeps the monsters and their purpose is lost. Polyphemus talks to Poseidon, but it doesn’t lead anywhere. The Laestrygonians are reduced to giants killing people for shock value, without any deeper meaning(yes, I get the mutiny part might be due to this - but really why can’t they mutiny without this - he hurt Poseidon’s son earlier).

Circe’s episode, which was divine intervention and Odysseus confronting her to secure his men’s release, becomes yet another monologue about guilt—that all men are pigs and deserve what happens to them. But why is Odysseus spared? Was he not the man who devised the Trojan Horse and enabled the pillage of Troy? What suddenly makes him wiser—or morally superior to his men, that she starts helping him?

Calypso’s story—the temptation of immortality and freedom from suffering—is reduced to a seven-year pause in which Odysseus appears to forget his past. His struggle is not a conscious longing to return home; he simply begins remembering Troy, his dead crew, and the guilt he carries after Calypso stops him from eating the lotus and asks him to tell his story. She then tells him to take a leap of faith and lets him leave. Nolan turns the episode entirely into a story of guilt and trauma, rather than Odysseus’s struggle to return to his family..

The book I grew up reading was about Odysseus’ growth and wisdom—earning his return home. The movie instead portrays it as a journey of overcoming guilt, honouring his fallen companions, and slowly losing himself. But where is the emotional connection? The film should have shown him yearning to return home because of the sacrifices his crew made for him. Instead, it repeatedly shows him consumed by guilt of Troy.

Another recurring theme throughout the movie is Xenia—Zeus’ law of hospitality. The film condemns Odysseus and the Greeks for violating it at Troy, but then what is the ending trying to say? The suitors, from their perspective, were pursuing the throne of a kingdom that had been without a king for twenty years. Yet the story ends with Odysseus once again killing his guests. His final return feels more like violence and revenge than a homecoming driven by love, with a very bad fight scene.

I also want to talk about other parts - the visuals are stunning, and the Sirens sequence may be the best possible cinematic interpretation of that part. Matt Damon is getting his Oscar. Penelope’s arc is compelling, although it deserved more time and exploration. But the sound mixing and editing repeatedly work against the movie. Just when you begin to feel emotionally invested, the film cuts away to something else.When the film has such extraordinary locations, I also do not understand why nearly every feast and the suitors’ contest had to take place at night. What was the point about adding a greek dialougue and say we are greeks from Ithaca (I understand people fearing sea men but still). Scene one Telemachus is wary about people talking about his father - but in the final act he goes on searching for him - why couldn’t you show it as a son waiting for his return.

This mix of sensational individual performances with incoherent writing for a story I read 10s of times and imagined every part of it triggered so many things in me.