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标题: "Thrilling but uneven, 'The Odyssey' is a homecoming for Christopher Nolan : NPR"
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**Thrilling but uneven, 'The Odyssey' is a homecoming for Christopher Nolan** ***The Odyssey* feels like a prism through which Nolan's earlier films can be understood. A downbeat realist by nature, Nolan imbues the epic with a fascinating tension between fantasy and skepticism.**

NPR

## Thrilling but uneven, 'The Odyssey' is a homecoming for Christopher Nolan

#### FA: Film Review: The Odessey

7-Minute Listen

[**Transcript**](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5894855)

Matt Damon is Odysseus in *The Odyssey.* **Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures** ****hide caption****

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Both admirers and detractors of the writer-director [Christopher Nolan](https://www.npr.org/2023/08/14/1193448291/oppenheimer-director-christopher-nolan) have noted his long-standing obsession with dead wives. In movies like [*Memento*](https://www.npr.org/2001/03/16/1120046/memento), *The Prestige* and [*Inception*](https://www.npr.org/2010/07/15/128493953/inception-a-masterpiece-only-in-someones-dream), the male protagonistsare driven toward reckless, delusional and even vengeful acts by the memories of their late spouses.

One of the refreshing novelties of Nolan's new film, *The Odyssey*, is that the wife in question here is alive and well: She's Penelope, queen of Ithaca, played by [Anne Hathaway](https://www.npr.org/2010/11/24/131566903/anne-hathaway-from-princesses-to-passion), and her husband, Odysseus, played by [Matt Damon](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/14/779465165/matt-damon-on-playing-a-race-car-driver-in-famous-ford-ferrari-rivalry-of-the-60), spends a decade trying to return home to her after the Trojan War.

### NPR's Book of the Day

### In her translation of 'The Odyssey,' Emily Wilson aimed for 'a crystalline clarity'

Nolan, working from translations of Homer's epic poem, including Emily Wilson's celebrated [2017 version](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/16/nx-s1-5542443/nprs-book-of-the-day-emily-wilson-the-odyssey), lays out the story in an unexpectedly straightforward fashion. Penelope and her son, Telemachus — that's Tom Holland — cling to hope that Odysseus will return. Meanwhile, coarse suitors have taken over the palace, vying for Penelope's hand in remarriage. [Robert Pattinson](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/18/780437800/robert-pattinson-does-not-want-to-play-an-english-prince-thank-you-very-much) plays the most conniving of the lot, who tells Penelope that Odysseus will never return.

But Odysseus is in fact still alive on a distant island. His memory has been bewitched by the nymph Calypso — that's [Charlize Theron](https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/786759703/charlize-theron-portrays-the-gray-area-of-sexual-harassment-in-bombshell) — and the story of his long, long journey tumbles out in a cascade of flashbacks.

The jumbled timeline suits Nolan's love of nonlinear plotting. Still, I had a lot of questions going in: How would a filmmaker known for his narrative surprises tackle one of the best-known stories in all literature? And how would a director of heady, high-tech action movies adapt to Homer's ancient world of gods and monsters?

### Movie Interviews

### 'Like it or not, we live in Oppenheimer's world,' says director Christopher Nolan

The gods themselves are largely absent, with the exception of Athena, who pops up every so often, in the form of Zendaya, to counsel Odysseus. Nolan is a downbeat realist by nature, which gives *The Odyssey* a fascinating tension; it's a fantasy made by a skeptic at heart.

The supernatural elements have been tamped down: When the island-dwelling sorceress Circe briefly transforms Odysseus' men into pigs, the magic has a low-key, almost tactile realism, aided in no small part by Samantha Morton's chillingly intense performance as Circe. And when the men outwit a giant Cyclops in his lair, Nolan pares away almost all the dialogue — gone are Odysseus' showboating speeches — and goes full-bore monster movie in a way he never really has before.

Visually, Nolan is clearly pushing himself. The film was shot entirely with 70mm IMAX cameras, and the images of Odysseus' ships at sea are stunningly majestic. There's a ferocious intimacy to the action scenes, some of which play out in near-total darkness, illuminated only by flickering firelight and set to [Ludwig Göransson](https://www.npr.org/2023/07/20/1189043792/composer-ludwig-goransson-on-oppenheimer) 's pulse-pounding score. Nolan brilliantly re-creates the famous Trojan Horse deception, masterminded by Odysseus himself, in two gripping set-pieces, culminating in the total destruction of Troy.

As he recalls these shattering events, Odysseus is flooded with regret, which Damon fully conveys in a terse, plain-spoken performance that ranks among his finest work. Nolan treats the sacking of Troy as an epochal tragedy, comparable to the dawn of atomic warfare in [*Oppenheimer*](https://www.npr.org/2023/07/10/1186743485/oppenheimer-looks-at-the-building-of-the-bomb-and-the-lingering-fallout) — an event that forever changed how humans and nations dealt with each other. In a way, Nolan has been telling versions of Homer's epic for decades. His films are about men trying to find their way home, even when home — and the world around them — has become almost unrecognizable.

*The Odyssey* is thrilling but uneven, though it moves pretty swiftly for being so overstuffed. There are striking performances from [Lupita Nyong'o](https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/1255693048/quiet-place-day-one-lupita-nyongo) as a fiercely defiant Helen of Troy, [Himesh Patel](https://www.npr.org/2019/06/22/735005865/himesh-patel-on-the-beatles-and-yesterday) as Odysseus' second-in-command, and a very moving [John Leguizamo](https://www.npr.org/2024/10/02/nx-s1-5131279/john-leguizamo-voces-american-historia) as an Ithacan swineherd who longs for Odysseus' return.

Throughout the film, you can almost feel Nolan thinking his way through the material, figuring out which parts of the text to leave alone and which parts to cut or embellish. Some sequences, like when Odysseus tussles with the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, feel a little perfunctory.

### What to Watch

### 15 movies we can't wait to see this summer, from Spielberg to 'Spider-Man'

But then we'll get an inspired subplot featuring [Elliot Page](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/07/1180437210/elliot-page-pageboy-memoir) as a Greek soldier whose grim fate weighs heavily on Odysseus' conscience, and you remember that Nolan, whose style has often been dismissed as coldly intellectual, is one of our most emotionally driven filmmakers.

There's no puzzle-like trickery to the final act of *The Odyssey*; it plays out with a classical simplicity and directness, and Damon, Hathaway and Holland are entirely convincing as a broken family being pieced together at long last. You realize why Nolan wanted to make this film, and why it feels like a prism through which his earlier films can be more deeply understood. For him, no less than for Odysseus, *The* *Odyssey* feels like a homecoming.

##### Correction

In the audio version of this review, as in a previous web version, we incorrectly say that Odysseus spent two decades returning home after the Trojan War. In fact, his return took one decade.