FORT MADISON - Downtown at FOX Theatre in Fort Madison played Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and its plot deviations from the book have sparked discourse over inaccuracy from the Homeric version.
It has made over $425 million worldwide so far since its release and a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes . A film adaptation from the book The Odyssey, about King Odysseus of Ithaca and his 10-year journey home after winning the Trojan War, but gets cursed by Poseidon after a particular arrogant attack. Odysseus and his soldiers face a series of trials set by the curese to keep them from returning home. His wife Penelope and son Telemachus are back in Ithaca fending off her suitors and faithfully waiting for his return amongst the public's growing resentment and waiting game for a new king. Odysseus narrates his past, from defeating the Trojan War to his journey back home, to Calypso, a woman who found him stranded on her island seven years before.
The Odyssey is a difficult work to translate to a modern audience through film, as people have had a 3,000 year long collective fascination for this story, being told through a poem, rhapsodies, theatre, scripts, and translated books.
Watching this film adaptation without reading the book is a fantastical experience as you watch the mythical beasts and trials Odysseus and his soldiers encounter. Nolan has a delicious rhythm to his films, from the direct and immersive storytelling, to crescending action scenes that put you on the edge of your seat, and his instistence on doing as much practical effects as he can. The unforgiving relentlessness of the beasts and trials were obstacles that gave the audience reason to be scared.
A highlight of the film is the Trojan horse scene where the soldiers are hiding in the belly of the horse as they are being carried into Troy to launch their night attack, laying on top of each other, arm in arm like an ancient Greek painting. At the beginning of the film, you can see Travis Scott, a notable rapper, playing a bard who is recounting the story of Odysseus. According to Time magazine, Nolan cast Scott because he believes bards and rappers were essentially the same role in society, and he wanted to translate that depiction on screen.
Nolan has been criticized for leaving essential parts of the story out of the film, such as people they encounter or essential personality traits. According to Sandy Schaefer from SlashFilm, author Emily Wilson who wrote her own version of The Odyssey in 2017, questioned Nolan’s need to make Odysseus an ancient Jason Bourne, a largely held sentiment of the audience on Reddit who also think the character is too cleansed of his flaws, such as repeated infidelity and his cunning trickery. The audience also didn’t like that Nolan removed character flaws from Telemachus, Odysseus and Penelope’s son, who was more brutal towards his mom and didn’t allow her in the room for political discourse. There is a highly debated scene with deadly sirens, Odysseus has his crew plug their ears so they don't get lured to their death, then also has them tie him to the ship so he can be the first to hear them and live to tell the tale. In the book he gets tempted with glory and wisdom, but in the film Odysseus is tortured with his own psychological trauma, revealing a truth about him that reveals what exactly drives him to be so brave and revered from Nolan's perspective.
Matt Damon played Odysseus, he has an immersive film presence that makes you want to root for him. However, whether due to the script or his own interpretation of the role, he did have a distracting cadence that sounded less like ancient mythical Greek king and more of a modern sergeant giving orders. Anne Hathaway did a great job depicting a new side of Penelope, particularly her strength showing through her loyalty and hope in conjunction to her anger and sadness as a queen trying to uphold her diminishing power. As she’s waiting for Odysseus, she is forced to entertain her suitors at a nightly supper, getting courted by one particularly greedy suitor played by Robert Pattinson, Antinous. Pattinson is a great villain and he knows how to change his mannerisms true to Antinous' sneaky, wimpish and evil character. Penelope’s son Telemachus, played by Tom Holland, is a determined young man desperate to find his father Odysseus as he defends his mom from suitors. Holland does a great job in this role, as he brings a curious and sharp charisma.
Nolan has a tendency to reshape a character or a version of events in favor of emphasizing the central idea he wants audiences to digest, such as in his Oppenheimer film, which was a singular perspective and flattening of the female characters. However, there is artistic merit to Nolan creating his own version of many versions of a 3,000-year-old story and fitting into his method of storytelling.
For this particular film, it seems more so like he was not only modernizing the language they spoke in the film, but making the characters more relatable to modern times and the sensibilities we have. As seen in his previous work, he likes to tell a story about an antihero who yields immense power and how greed, lack of foresight, and selfishness can lead to negative consequences. The heart of this story as a film doesn't detract from the main point of the original story. It is a great version of the story, and as time changes it is bound to be retold again and again as it has before.
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