The clearest view of a man is from below.
Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” are two of the oldest surviving works of literature still read today. The poems, spanning 24 books and written in dactylic hexameter, once were considered near impossible to adapt for the big screen.
Few have attempted and achieved a motion picture — “Troy” (2004), “Helen of Troy” (1956), “The Return” (2024), and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000) — but none have, subjectively so, succeeded.
Until now.
Christopher Nolan, 56, is an iconic director known for epics such as “Oppenheimer” (2023), “The Dark Knight” (2008), “Interstellar” (2014) and more. When it comes to depicting intense action, tangible characters, and thoughtful cinematography, Nolan is the director of choice.
And when “The Odyssey” was announced in the winter of 2024, we all anticipated nothing short of perfection — and it is an absolute pinnacle, earning a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.5/10 on IMDb.
After nearly directing “Troy,” Nolan became intrigued with Homer’s poem, calling it his personal project — his “destiny” — aiming to push the boundaries of both technology and narrative.
He began writing the script in March of 2024 whilst studying several translations of “The Odyssey.” Eventually, he landed on the most realistic interpretation of the poem, drawing inspiration from other historical films such as “Andrei Rublev” (1966) and “Ran” (1985).
“The Odyssey” is unique when it comes to storytelling, building a non-linear narrative that contrasts with continuous flashbacks, waning between Odysseus’s journey home and Ithaca’s concurrent struggles.
The film opens with the preceding effects of the 10-year-long Trojan War — following Odysseus’s (Matt Damon) ploy to construct the Trojan horse and hide the Greeks inside, using Sinon (Elliot Page) as a decoy.
Production designer Ruth De Jong returned to work with Nolan after her collaboration on “Oppenheimer,” designing the sets and building the 36-foot-tall and 8,800 pound wooden horse, which had to be transported in 27 crates to the Moroccan shore.
It was built to be completely functional and moveable, and so background actors legitimately pulled the horse from shore into town. Nolan and the actors really crawled inside of the wooden model to capture the uncomfortableness of the soldiers, whilst taking their time to decipher the filming process, which took several hours.
“When you’re uncomfortable — and you are most of the time, physically, just by the nature of what’s required to get these shots — and you turn and look over your shoulder, (Nolan) is no more than five feet away and doing the same thing without complaint,” Damon said in an interview with Time Magazine.
“There’s something really nice about being a soldier in the foxhole and looking over and the general is right next to you.”
Narratively, 20 years later, the city of Ithaca has remained without a king because Odysseus never returned home from war. Multiple suitors — including the machiavellian Antinous (Robert Pattinson) — have attempted to pursue the Queen of Ithaca, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), to claim the throne for themselves.
Meanwhile, Odysseus’s son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), struggles with kinship restrictions and travels to meet with the King of Sparta (Jon Bernthal) to learn his father’s whereabouts.
Another incredible feat — perhaps the most impressive of them all — is the usage of IMAX cameras. Nolan previously utilized IMAX in films such as “The Dark Knight,” “Interstellar,” and “Dunkirk,” but “The Odyssey” made history for being Hollywood’s first feature film shot entirely on 70mm IMAX cameras.
However, there were setbacks to this accomplishment.
IMAX cameras are incredibly loud and thus hearing dialogue is difficult. After some deliberation, Nolan and his crew developed a boxed casing to put around the camera — called the “Blimp” — that could muffle noise and allow for those intimate, dialogue-heavy scenes to take place.
In addition, the camera was so large that the actors could not physically see around it, especially during close-up shots. So, yet again, Nolan and his team got to work in establishing a mirror system that allows actors to keep eye contact and stay in character without directly interacting with one another.
“The wonderful thing about cinema — about IMAX in particular — is that you can take an audience to a place of immersion, feeling close to events like the storms, turbulent seas, and high winds,” Nolan said in an interview with Time.
“You want the audience to be on a boat with them, fearing the ocean, fearing the wrath of Poseidon, the way the characters do. That, to me, is so much more powerful than any individual image you can have (of a god).”
As Odysseus and his men strive to make their way back home from the war, they stumble upon an island where the giant cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin) resides. He traps the soldiers inside of his cave, herding his sheep and devouring several men in the meantime.
In an attempt to completely minimize CGI, Irwin, adorned in complete prosthetics and makeup, was filmed separately to create the illusion of being on a larger scale than the actors. Irwin also provided real-time vocalization while the soldiers interacted with a 60-foot puppet of the cyclops.
The scene was filmed inside the historical 96-foot-tall Nestor’s Cave in Pylos, Greece, which is named after King Nestor and was featured in Homer’s original poem, “The Odyssey,” as well as several other Greek myths.
“It got very, very dank and smelly after some time,” Nolan said in an interview with Empire. “But I’ve built a lot of caves before. Shooting in a real cave — the feeling is utterly different. Once the rock is moved across the door, and you’re in the dark, it’s very oppressive. It gave a sense of reality.”
More challenges accumulated from filming here, such as intense hiking, 40 real sheep providing a pungent aroma, and the barrier of bees at the entryway. Damon touched upon this with People Magazine: “At the cave mouth, there was a buzzing. And you can hear it in the movie, because there were thousands of bees.”
The film’s credibility only escalates further after discovering how much effort and dedication was poured into every shot.
The voyage across the Mediterranean Sea, for example, was filmed with real ships on open ocean, with the cumbersome IMAX camera following suit. De Jong acquired a 115-foot-long Viking vessel from Norway — which the production team transformed into a Greek ship — that traveled from Scotland to Morocco during filming.
“I remember walking down this beach for half an hour, and I’m just seeing Greek soldier after Greek soldier, Greek boats and the Trojan war … for what felt like miles,” Holland said whilst talking with GQ.
“And I’m saying to the PA: ‘Where is the crew? I haven’t seen any evidence of a film set. This is more reminiscent of a reenactment than it is a film set.’”
While many agree that this is Nolan’s most impressive and monumental work to date, many have also challenged the film for being “too liberal,” griping that casting Elliot Page, a transgender actor, and the Grammy-nominated rapper Travis Scott, felt “historically inaccurate” and “absurd.”
Though these claims have gone beyond political — others mentioning that Agamemnon’s dark armor is erroneous and Odysseus’s ship seems a bit too Viking-esque, respectively — it is important to note that Homer’s original poem was not necessarily historically accurate in itself.
While the poem encompasses true cultural contexts and events, it also intermixes mythological elements that blatantly proves there is no room for complaint — or to hinder the film adaptation any differently.
“The Odyssey” had a budget of $250 million, marking not only one of Nolan’s most expensive films, but it is the highest-grossing R-rated movie in cinematic history, earning an enormous $1.6 billion since July.
The movie industry has been losing its traditional artistry as we venture further into the new generation of technology, and practical effects such as puppetry, models, and handcrafted sets have been neglected.
It is refreshing to witness the revival of said methods on such a large scale, and one can only hope this sparks a trend of revitalizing the lost arts.
“The Odyssey” has become an inspiration.
At a Glance: “The Odyssey”
- Directed by: Christopher Nolan
- Written by: Christopher Nolan (an adaptation of the Greek poem “The Odyssey” by Homer)
- Starring: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo
- Rating: R
- Review: ★★★★★
- The film was released on July 17 with a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and a runtime of 2 hours and 52 minutes, grossing about $1.6 billion worldwide.
- “The Odyssey” has made history on numerous accounts, including accumulation at the box office, intense practical effect design, and being filmed entirely with IMAX cameras.
- There is a scene in the film that showcases the witch Circe (Samantha Morton) turning the Greek army into a gaggle of swine. Morton’s performance was so powerful that she earned a round of applause from the crew, something that Nolan has not witnessed since Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight.”
