Review of the film The Odyssey, 2026

by Gary Tedman

Homer apparently wrote, or compiled (from songs), The Odyssey as a follow up to The Iliad, which is the story of the sack of Troy (Ilion was another name for Troy). Parts of this epic story are recounted in the film, but the Iliad does not begin with the preparation for or the start of the war, it begins with the hundreds of ships of the Achaeans (you could say this was the term for the ancient Greeks, but Greece is a relatively modern nation state which did not exist at this time, in which there were only city states like Athens) pulled up on the beach, and the siege of Troy having already begun some time ago. The Odyssey film also begins in a similar kind of way, with the war having been already won, at some cost, chiefly by the famous subterfuge of the wooden horse. There now seems to be only two ships on the beach, the one of Odysseus, and Agamemnon’s, and the plot concerns Odysseus’ trials as he tries to lead those Achaeans still under his command to home and safety after being away for years.

The doings of the gods feature quite a bit in The Iliad, Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Thetis, Hera, and so on, an extended family you might say. Achilles is for instance a demi-god. And this brings a problem for the film and Christopher Nolan, who opted for a treatment of the subject in a similar realist-like way to his other war film, Dunkirk.

Maybe Homer was even aware of this problem all that time ago. In The Iliad the author narrator tells us about the problem of not being able to make the reader aware of the simultaneous events in the battle at different gates of the beach encampment protecting the boats of the Achaean myrmidons from the Trojans, who have come out of the city, a problem of down-to-earth human beings acting in consort in a war. However, he evidently has no trouble knowing and telling us about what the gods are doing, in a very specific sense, and how they interfere in the lives of these fighters and who they manifest as, which seems contradictory (but perhaps this was standard practice).

Is it a timely film? It is anti-war. The aftermath of the horrors of war figure here in indirect ways, revealing guilt and an unclear search for redemption. The viewer or the reader does not really find out why Troy was being attacked, there are hints in the film about an economic struggle over trading routes to the east. Historic Troy, which was not long ago discovered, was on this sea route, at the Dardanelles, near the entrance to the Sea of Marmara, which itself connected to the Black Sea by what is now the strait of the Bosphorus (Thracian Bosporus). But the reason given in the epic account is Helen, the most beautiful mortal woman, possibly taken forcibly (or removed willingly from her husband), by Paris back to Troy. This involves the intrigues of the gods, but it seems to us a too feeble an excuse to launch the thousand ships. Possibly it is allegorical, symbolizing the Trojans unfairly stealing their trade and obtaining beautiful booty. Homer does not dwell on Helen much, although she seems wise and a little regretful.

The book is full of the top commanders wearing resplendent armour, which they fight over and strip from each other in combat, with bronze, silver, and gold decorations worn by the heroes, and amazingly wrought weaponry, but the film shows little of this splendour, it seems deliberately grubby, gritty, and dark, and no make-up is evident, the pores of the actors can even be seen, which is quite shocking really. Probably the ordinary soldiers, not professionals in the modern sense, in reality had to make do with their more humble gear and were modestly attired and evidently even needed to be cajoled and corralled into battle, but I suspect the leaders and nobility looked pretty impressive even in the mundane real world of the Bronze age, but not so this Odysseus. Otherwise, Matt Damon achieves all that is needed of him in the role, he is good at this sort of thing, if perhaps too recognisable, Jason Bourne in a Greek helmet.

Nolan does not show us the gods, but he does hint at them sometimes, a little, by some camera techniques if I am not mistaken, but also when he does have to show us the mythical manifestations and appearances, given they are a mainstay of the story, like the one eyed giant or the sirens, he does it in a realist manner, which is peculiar: the giant has a twisted face, malformed, disabled, rather than a central alien-like eye. I found myself wanting some CGI for once (maybe there was some, I don’t know, but I wanted it more obvious). If ever there was a justification for some extravagant special effects, this was it, it required a spectacle. But the opportunity was not taken up. I found myself pining a bit for Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion animation such as in Jason and the Argonauts. Nevertheless, the movie was gripping enough even without attaining the epic quality that Dunkirk did sometimes succeed in.