The greatest epic and sensibility humanity left behind 3,000 years ago has been recreated on screen in grand and majestic fashion. Director Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" overwhelms audiences for 172 minutes with outstanding cinematic craftsmanship. Rather than simply adapting Homer's classic epic poem "The Odyssey," the film reimagines it as a wondrous mythological experience. The overwhelming scale, sublime mise-en-scène, and profound insight into human existence unfolding throughout its running time transcend the boundaries of the film genre. For this reason, "The Odyssey" is being hailed as Nolan's magnum opus and a modern masterpiece of mythological perfection, with hardly a flaw to be found.
The film first depicts Odysseus (Matt Damon), who led the war to victory through the Trojan Horse operation, embarking on a 10-year journey home after ending the decade-long war. In Ithaca, where the king has disappeared, suitors seeking to claim Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) covet power, while his son Telemachus (Tom Holland) watches the crumbling kingdom and waits for a father whose face he cannot even remember. Scenes crosscutting between Odysseus's homecoming and the time of the family left behind in Ithaca create tension. The mythological world unfolds ceaselessly—the cave of the one-eyed giant, storm-tossed seas, and islands inhabited by bizarre creatures—but the center of the story is always one man's desperation to return home.
In particular, the scene in which soldiers hold their breath inside the Trojan Horse, waiting for their chance before capturing the fortress, is regarded as the film's finest scene and highlight. The Bronze Age battle, illuminated only by torches, is far more primal and harrowing than the flashy explosions of modern blockbusters. Ludwig Göransson's music, evoking drums and gongs, maximizes the tension of the battlefield and pounds at the hearts of the audience.
In this work, Nolan restored "The Odyssey," left by Homer in the 8th century B.C., as a myth for present-day audiences to experience. The story, where great battles, the world of gods, and human fate intersect, is not mere fantasy but poses weighty questions about life, leadership, family, and responsibility.
The greatest virtue of this work is that even its overwhelming spectacle is ultimately directed toward humanity. Nolan does not deify his hero. Odysseus is portrayed as a great strategist who led the war to victory, yet also as a deeply human leader who agonizes over the choices that drove countless soldiers to their deaths. His responsibility as king, his longing as a husband, and his guilt as a father accumulate layer upon layer, and the hero increasingly approaches us as a single human being.
Nolan's obsession is also revealed in the production method. For the first time in film history, the entire film was shot in IMAX film format. The film used reaches approximately 640 kilometers. Instead of minimizing computer graphics (CG), he captured the actual nature of Greece, Italy, Iceland, and Scotland, realizing the mythological space as if it were real. The enormous presence of nature felt throughout the screen makes viewers experience just how small a being humanity is before the will of the gods.
Above all, Nolan succeeds in bringing the sensibility of the ancients—who accepted nature as the will of the gods—into the modern theater. The wind and waves, cliffs and sky function not as mere backdrops but as another character that moves human fate. Audiences come closer to the sense of experiencing a myth than watching a film.
The true greatness of "The Odyssey" lies in offering insight into life through a grand and majestic mythological experience. Following Odysseus—a war hero and a nation's king, a woman's husband and a child's father—as he wavers endlessly, audiences too come to reflect on their own lives. The 3,000-year-old epic has gained a vitality that transcends the ages in Nolan's hands, and the screen once again embraces the oldest story with the most modern sensibility. It is the pinnacle of cinematic perfection—one that would have made Homer smile, had he been alive. Opens August 5.
