Much anticipated and ultimately quite disappointing. This is a film made with its eyes firmly fixed on the prize. It will almost certainly earn Christopher Nolan the long-coveted Oscar, but it may also come to define the last great Hollywood director under the age of eighty as a filmmaker willing to compromise his artistic integrity. Too much of the film seems designed to please the Academy rather than to remain faithful to its own artistic vision.
As someone smartly noted – this is “an Odyssey” not “the Odyssey”. Its interpretation of the ancient epic poem is grossly modernized. Thus, it becomes symptomatic of our time – the Odyssey of 2026. It is made as an antiwar movie – Odysseus carries the guilt of creating the Trojan horse and destroying Troy. It seems that Nolan wants to continue here the Oppenheimer theme – Odysseus as Oppenheimer and the Trojan horse as the atomic bomb. He should have done a better job in exposing the LACK of guild in Oppenheimer in his biopic instead of now injecting alien to the Greek epic ideas. Having Helen of Troy send her apologies to Odysseus for causing the Trojan war – this is done in very poor taste and is one of the film’s most ludicrous lines. Basically, all the faults of the film are inherent in the script – the modern concepts, (e.g. Odysseus as a “veteran” of the Trojan war with a PTSD), the modern street language, the pseudo psychological insights…All tasteless.
The above is combined with some very long action scenes. The viewer might keep thinking how difficult it was to film all these given that Nolan uses very little CGI. Still, appreciating the “difficulty”, or the craftsmanship is not enough for truly liking the film.
One of the most annoying performances in the film is that of Anne Hathaway. Otherwise a fine actress (e.g. WeCrashed), she is definitely inappropriately cast. She sentimentalizes the character, her trembling chin is ridiculous, her hissing remarks about not being able to become the queen of Ithaca are out of place (here the blame goes to the script again), etc. etc. An infantile audience could be fooled that this is high art, but most vieweres understand that here we are dealing with the interpretation of one of the foundational works of the Western canon and things can’t be that literal and simplistic!