The Odyssey

Everything I knew about The Odyssey came from people pointing out parts of the movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou? that were taken from Homer's epic poem. Otherwise, all I knew was the very basic premise. Dude is trying to get home to his wife after the Trojan war. Runs afoul of a lot of crazy shit in the process. Cyclopeseses and Sirenseses and such.

I loved this movie. I really did. It was exactly what I wanted it to be. It was accessible without being dumbed down. It was incredible looking. It had phenomenal acting and the story was told in a compelling and entertaining way.

It's the kind of movie that you would hope a director like Christopher Nolan might make one day. A massive statement about who he is and what he's about on the biggest possible scale. Because between this, and Oppenheimer, he's made his worldview pretty crystal clear. I respect it.

The best thing this movie does, among a lot of really impressive things, is it re-contextualizes the Trojan war, and specifically, the Trojan Horse, and makes you think about what it means, and what they did, and the impact it had on the world they lived in. It's very powerful, and prescient, and it left me thinking about it for a long time after. I'm still thinking about it.

The standout performances, for me, were Matt Damon as Odysseus and John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, a blind mentor and friend to Odysseus.

His performance was weirdly both surprising, and also completely inline with the quality and diversity of roles he's chosen in the past. He's a guy who, like the best character actors, can both disappear in a role, while also putting their very distinct stamp on it. That's what Leguizamo does here. I never would have thought that Christopher Nolan's epic film The Odyssey would need John Leguizamo, but it sure did, and it worked so well.

Matt Damon also surprised me, and again, I don't why, because most of the time, he's pretty great. But this movie needed him to be both sympathetic, and also kind of a egomaniac bastard at times. He does that well. I don't usually think much one way or the other about Matt Damon. But when I notice him, it's usually playing complicated characters in such a way, that they still feel natural and real. That's hard. He does it well.

That's one of the real strengths of the movie: It cast the best actors for the roles they played, and it did so with intention and thought. These are actors who work well together, who have worked together before, and who have an existing report already, most of the time. There are definitely new faces. Tom Holland, Jon Bernthal, Lupita Nyong'o, among others, but there were also a lot of familiar Nolan regulars. Matt Damon, Eliot Page, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson. There was almost a kind of feeling of a troupe of actors putting on the best damned show they can. Everyone giving it their all. Every creative decision made with the highest level of care and creative spirit.

It honestly felt like an experience. Seeing it in an almost full IMAX theater, with the big sound and the big screen, it felt important. Like I was participating in an experience that people will be talking about for decades. Seeing The Odyssey for the first time.

It's going to win all the Oscars. Anne Hathaway is going to win, I think. It was a role she was made to play. She's so good. I expect nominations for John Leguizamo and Matt Damon as well.

The only complaint I had about it was the last big fight in the movie. I just felt like it wasn't what I wanted at that point in the movie. It wasn't paced well, and it seemed to drag on for a really long time. THAT said, the whole damned three hour movie was leading up to it, so it had to be long I guess. I just kind of wanted to get to the next part, and it kept going.

Otherwise, perfect movie. 5 stars. I'd say 4.5, but I'm leaning more like, 4.7, which, at that point, might as well be five.