The Odyssey and the Horrors of Fantasy
The Odyssey has always been a story that I cling to when it comes to the classics. It’s because of Mr. Krills’s 6th-grade social studies class; he really sold this story and showed us the 1997 TV film. The journey of a great war hero’s home filled with trials and tribulations just captured my imagination. When they announced that Christopher Nolan was adapting the film, I will admit that I was skeptical. Nolan has never struck me as a fantasy director, with so much of his work being deeply rooted in a grounded reality. I was dead wrong. Not only does Nolan nail fantasy in his own distinct style with a cast full of the best actors working today, but he also leans deeply into horror elements to sell the trials that Odysseus and his crew face.
After the Battle of Troy, the war-worn soldiers of Ithaca and their King Odysseus (Matt Damon) embark on the voyage home. Along the journey, they face the most turbulent trials, including the Cyclops, Circe, and the wrath of the gods themselves. While back home in Ithaca, Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) is holding the kingdom together as droves of suitors bang on her door and eat away at it piece by piece. Their son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), believes his father is alive and sets out on his own quest to learn more.
Nolan is known for his non-sequential storytelling, and in The Odyssey, it’s woven together like a beautiful tapestry to tell one of the biggest stories ever told. The three major stories of the Battle of Troy, Odysseus’s Quest, and the troubles at home are interwoven carefully to reveal elements of each slowly through the film. I was curious to see how he achieved this in the film, but using the major story elements to piece together something more abstract in its form was much more enthralling than a linear sequential retelling of the Odyssey.
The story is over 2,000 years old, so it’s been told in so many forms that everyone has a basic idea of its elements. But that is never to the detriment of this adaptation of the epic poem because it uses those familiar elements to tell a very heavy story exploring the true exploits of war. We see Matt Damon struggle as Odysseus as he faces each new trial with these men he has taken from their families for over 10 years already by the time the war ended. There is a weight to every choice he must make, which lends the story a modern authenticity through Damon’s masterful performance and Nolan’s use of familiar elements to tell a very large story.
With Fantasy, not everything that is awe-inspiring is magical. Nolan understands that with his directing because so many mundane elements feel magical. One example is something I was thinking about as I walked out of the theatre. There is something magical about boats. I am talking about massive wooden ships with massive sails, capturing the wind to propel them across the seas without true maps to know where they are going. Nolan’s practical effects approach to filmmaking makes boats feel magical again. The real wooden recreation of the Viking ship, Draken Harald Hårfagre, was used to physically represent Odysseus’s vessel on screen. There is something about watching a crew work a ship that feels unreal in the time of motors and GPS. Seeing the wind fill sails through Nolan’s lens feels almost mythical. They describe, at one point, how, through their eyes, the gods are doing everything in the known world, which washes over you as you let yourself sink into the movie. It’s real movie magic to make me see a boat and forget that it is something that has existed far beyond my own life.
Talking about movie magic, I do need to talk about the Cyclops in the film. The scenes deserve an Oscar for everyone involved. When handling a monster, there are many ways to do it wrong. Treating it as a flat violent creature would have made the scene fully hokey in many ways. But the portrayal of the Cyclops, Polyphemus (Bill Irwin), was heavily inspired by director Guillermo del Toro. Nolan adopted Del Toro’s philosophy that a monster is never just a simple beast, treating the Cyclops with empathy and depth. There are actions taken against the Cyclops out of anger and hatred, but the film shows a much more humane side to it, even as the men fear it. It shows a look into the hearts of those that Nolan is examining in the film.
But what brings the real magic is that the Cyclops is practical effects. The 60-foot-tall puppet was constructed with practical effects and animatronics by designer Adam Wright. You can feel the influence of Willis O’Brien, who pioneered the use of puppets as monsters in the original King Kong, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. As audiences felt when seeing King Kong for the first time, I feel now, knowing what I saw was done using a puppet. I sit here writing my silly little review while I bask in what feels like real movie magic. How lucky we are to live in a time when minds like Del Toro and Nolan are making movies!
Carrying on with my love of monsters, The Odyssey doesn’t shy away from horror in all of its forms. While the trials Odysseus and crew face are horrific in nature, that’s not the only element explored. The Laestrygonians, a tribe of gigantic, man-eating cannibals ruled by King Antiphates, aren’t just terrifying because they are unkillable; they are also unknowable in the film. They are massive beings that tower over even the strongest of the Ithacans. It’s a stark reminder that there are things in the universe that tower over you despite your own conquests. Coming from a battle where they slaughtered nearly an entire city, to be made to feel small in the universe is a terrifying thing.
The same sea they flee to for protection from the giants is also a foe in the film. The sea is a powerful element of horror, crushing them under its weight and fury. They blame the god of the sea, Poseidon, but even if the gods aren’t lurking below, the ocean is scary on its own. The night scenes shot by Nolan and his cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema bring some of the most well-shot night scenes in recent memory. The crashing of the seas upon the boats is horrifying in a uniquely man-vs.-nature way because it’s not a war you can win. Each and every threat they go up against is set upon them as if the universe’s rubberbanding for their own actions.
With everything I have said here, I want to thank Mr. Krill for introducing me to such a powerful story at an impressionable age because it let me just give myself over fully to the magic of The Odyssey in a whole new way. Going from a classroom desk listening to him almost perform the reading of the poem to an IMAX theatre seeing Matt Damon deliver a performance that hit me with the same ferocity was something else. I love movies, and I love The Odyssey for being such a big movie that harkens to the days of The Lord of the Rings and Ben-Hur in its scope and hopeful impact.
