The Odyssey: 'An astonishingly un-special epic tale'

Watched The Odyssey on its day of release. Given the sheer richness of its source material and cultural history, it is an extraordinarily ordinary film. If it were anyone other than Christopher Nolan directing it, we would have shrugged and gone back home complaining about the price of a Pepsi in a PVR. But this is Nolan, so...

The first thing you expect is spectacle. There is none (Where did that $250-million budget go?). The apocalyptic storms that Poseidon and the Sun God hurl upon Odysseus and his crew... well, we've seen better storms on screen in The Life of Pi, whose production cost must have been less than Matt Damon's hotel bills.

There are no grand battle scenes — instead we have skirmishes that consist mainly of Odysseus shouting "Go go go!" at his men as they are chased by monstrous creatures. And the war for Troy or the supposed majesty of that city? Forget it. Even the Trojan horse (inside which about 40 warriors were hidden) looks rather puny. For some obscure reason, the only towering figure is that of King Agamemnon, who is shown as a cross between the Dark Knight and Darth Vader shot at a low angle.

The monsters, one would think, would be the highlight of any Odyssey film. Here, the Cyclops is a creaky geriatric and Scylla appears and disappears before you can even take a good look at it. At no point do you get a sense of the scale of the dangers the men face. 

When the ship is lost at sea, you get a nice blue expanse of the Aegean/ Mediterranean on a bright sunny day. Hades looks like Mordor of The Lord of the Rings shot on a legacy smartphone using an early free version of Canva.

As for the unearthly femmes fatale, Circe is a dumpy house help from the servants' quarters of Downton Abbey; the sirens are seen only in such extreme long shot that they might as well be iPods for all we know; and Calypso is a middle-aged suburban single woman who knows that her best years are behind her.

The climactic set piece, where Odysseus fights and kills his wife Penelope's suitors, is, as my friend Shivram pointed out, a classic Kill Bill situation. Like The Bride, Odysseus is up against dozens of feral nasties inside a closed space. 

No one is asking for Tarantino's exhilarating comic book violence, but hey, how about having the mayhem a bit better choreographed? How about slow motion once in a while, for God's sake? How about making our man look a little, um, heroic? This is after all an epic of the Western world, right?

When Penelope challenges her suitors to string Odysseus' hunting bow and shoot an arrow through a long line of axe heads to hit the target, Nolan decides to film the scene in semi-darkness and one can't even make out the skill needed to string a bow, other than watch men heaving away till their faces turn purple. 

When Odysseus shoots the arrow and hits, it's all over in a jiffy. There is nothing special in the way Nolan shows that moment that Odysseus and Penelope have been waiting for for 18 years.

In fact, Nolan makes an epic tale astonishingly un-special. In the process, he also shoves in a juvenile anti-war theme. Odysseus is wracked by guilt, but all that he is really losing his sleep over is that he cheated!—he tricked the Trojans into defeat (that wooden horse). As a result, all his dead soldiers exist in a state of dishonour. They are understandably peeved and chase him and his still-surviving men ("Go go go!").

In Homer's Odyssey, his hero never repents the Trojan horse move and is very proud of it, since it quickly brought a ten-year siege to an end with minimal loss of Greek lives. But Nolan's version of the Mahabharata, I guess, would have Bhima feeling serious remorse after killing Duryodhana with a blow to his thighs, violating the rules of mace battles.

So does Nolan believe that if the Greeks had won the war "fair and square" (whatever Nolan's definition of that is—bore the Trojans to death with that interminable siege?), it would have been all right? Just as, in Oppenheimer, the Allies are fighting for a just case, but a nuclear bomb—now that's not on.

From the necessary breadth of vision that an epic demands to the personal motivations of individual characters, Odyssey disappoints at all levels. How I wish Ridley Scott had made this film!

So if you want to watch a gripping movie about an army veteran coming back to a small town and struggling with hostility and post-traumatic stress on his return, try Rambo: First Blood. And if you want a real fun version of the Odyssey, go go go for the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou.

PS: What about all the social media noise about Black actresses playing Helen of Troy and Athena? In my opinion, that feeble and gratuitous look-we-ticked-the-woke-box casting gesture should be treated with indifference and a yawn.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.