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.

Review of The French Connection by Iona Singh

The French Connection 1975 

Director William Friedkin

With his passing, the anonymity and mediocrity of Gene Hackman's character in The French Connection in a dirty, pulpous, frozen-concrete, neon-signed, car dominated America springs to mind. The annoying ambient background noises, the rumble of the traffic, the wind, hard to hear conversations and finally Hackman and Schneider as the human center pieces that lend narrative to the chaos. These very ‘unfilm star type’ actors, are prefect as 'nonentities with a mission' in the gigantic monster city scape. 

Nothing here looks film-set controlled. Open spaces foreigners have never seen - rubbish strewn and unpeopled, are home-turf to the slightly silly Popeye Doyle, with his comical neurosis about "feet picking" and no concept of ‘upstanding’, going about roughing 'em up and half-frozen on a slice of pizza and horrid coffee. From across the street he can see the drug runners, (equally de-centred actors from European cinema) Fernando Rey and Pierre Nicoli, feasting on delicacies in a carpeted restaurant, which raises his desire to catch them to insane levels. No apologies are made for this hyperactive 'hero', a slob, a bit nasty, plugged in and energized by the city streets to fuel the magnificent chase scenes. While the bad guys are polite, 'middle-class' in twee attire and genuinely so very cruel, Popeye's ridiculous anti-conformist little hat is a great big finger to 'respectability'.

This cursory style of filming of New York City and its inhabitants lets us overhear incidental 'snippets' of a standard narrative plot from the midst of this bustle, boosted by theme music from the great jazz trumpeter Don Ellis, and the major performances as well as non-actor real people in a number of supporting roles and of course usually in the background. The homogeneity of it all, the communication between the various departments, the Director, technicians, wardrobe, sound, whatever, is wonderful.

The French Connection is a great example from a number of films at the time that owe their existence to 20th century street photographers like Winogrand, Gordon Parks, and Neil Libbert, Lawrence Shustak and others.

Gene Hackman in The French Connection

 

Still from The French Connection

Neil Libbert, 42 Street 1960

 Garry Winogrand, Utah (Wyoming), 1964

REVIEWS: Oppenheimer the film

Science develops differently to democracy. You can't vote for the science you want. It must be true, so it is never a question of what is popular. Science is not democratic. How does science go forward? How do the theories of science become accepted as true? We think it can, it appears to work. So, can science also offer a way of life? Can we have a scientific politics? Can we live a scientific way? 

There is an idea of the social environment in which science can flourish. There are the Universities, and sometimes projects, like the Manhattan Project, and their equivalent, where science happens, is encouraged, and it gets results. To succeed, science needs a lot of tools for learning, and a lot of debating, discussion, and argument amongst scientists, this need must be met somehow (if you want the fruits of scientific achievements). At the same time, it can also be quite a solitary pursuit by individuals, like Einstein in his earlier life. But even this requires the background of the scientific community and its history.

Christmas 2023 the film ‘Oppenheimer’ was out. In the story, the lead character discussed Marx’s Capital briefly with his communist friend. He said he read it all but was not sure about the idea that “all ownership is theft”, she ‘corrected’ him to say: “all property”. It is sad that the script had to make Oppenheimer say something stupid about Marx. As many will know, the concept that property is theft is from Proudhon and not Marx. The film also struggled with its depiction of scientists and the way they collaborated, in every sense of that term.