Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens this Friday, and today the embargo on reviews of the film was finally lifted. The reaction seems to be extremely positive. The movie is debuting with a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Now I’m well aware that there has been a lot of controversy over the casting of this film. We’ve covered some of it here. But the reviews out today suggest the movie itself is more than the sum of its parts.
Featuring a tremendous Matt Damon as Odysseus and perfectly deployed supporting players wherever you look, it unfolds in that odd dual register of grandeur and intimacy that Nolan has been busily making his own – while returning to all the signature motifs of its writer and director’s earlier work, from prodigal fathers to exiles in limbo…
Nolan and his collaborators have constructed a strange, fearsome and trailblazing machine of a movie – by some distance, the best of the year so far. Its creator is known for playing tricks with time, and this may be his grandest yet: turning one of the oldest stories in literature into a vote of confidence in blockbuster cinema’s future.
The NY Times’ review also suggests the movie itself upstages the stars.
The performances are uniformly good, though Damon’s Odysseus is tamped down and notably devoid of charisma, as if he were as hollow as the wood decoy. In action-adventure terms it’s a counterintuitive choice even if it serves Nolan’s tricky, more non-triumphalist ends. One upshot, though, is that few of the actors, Damon included, manage to hold you with the same emotional force that Nolan’s filmmaking does…
Nolan’s gifts are excessively obvious, and even when his characters don’t stir you, his filmmaking does. Among other qualities, he doesn’t know how to make an ugly image and this one is filled with rapturous beauty. Nolan employs beauty strategically, using it to seduce viewers into stories that can seem needlessly byzantine to some — especially by impoverished mainstream industry standards — more the provenance of the art house than the multiplex. Nolan asks us to dream bigger. His “Odyssey” is a classic in every sense, a transporting affirmation of the art and a work of pure cinema.
The NY Post is similarly impressed.
[Nolan] took up Odysseus’ weighty bow, shot an arrow and scored another hit.
His stunning and captivating “Odyssey” is the director in his David Lean era, eschewing the cerebral topics that tickled him in “Tenet,” “Inception” and, to an extent, “Oppenheimer,” and building his own “Lawrence of Arabia” with a transportive, sprawling and emotional adventure with visuals that will reduce even the most jaded movie buff into a giddy child.
I’m just going to point to one more glowing review, this one from USA Today.
Not only is it the greatest work on the iconic director’s noteworthy résumé, but “The Odyssey” also tops Matt Damon’s not-too-shabby CV. Just give him the best actor Oscar now, for Zeus’ sake, as Damon brilliantly portrays the legendary Odysseus on a quest full of fantastical obstacles and psychological self-discovery that also takes a hard, honest look at the battles we fight and who we fight them for…
There are delights in every aspect of “The Odyssey,” from production design to costumes. (Benny Safdie’s helmet as Agamemnon should launch thousands of popcorn buckets.) That sort of all-around excellence is a staple in Nolan’s filmography, be it in “The Dark Knight,” “Interstellar” or “Oppenheimer.” “The Odyssey” is truly special even among those, though, making a 3,000-year-old story feel fresh and original again.
Out of 168 reviews published so far, there appear to be three that don’t rate the movie fresh. In fairness, let’s take a look at one of those.
Yes, going in, I had my reservations about The Odyssey, but my colleagues kept telling me this is Christopher Nolan. He’ll come through. That’s how I felt about Oppenheimer, but with The Odyssey, it all just felt like amateur hour. I couldn’t take anything about this film seriously. But at least we’ll get to see the end-credits song performed at the Academy Awards…that will be a hoot.
In the end, I just wanted The Odyssey to feel like an epic, grand adventure, and, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I wanted this story to say something about humanity. Anything that felt inspiring or profound. Instead, we just got this grand adventure all for the sake of being a grand adventure. Sure… many will find that enough for a fun summer movie, but what we really want is a great movie. One we’ll remember for decades to come. We’ll be lucky to remember this film a month from now.
I’m going to try to go see it this weekend or next. Apparently it’s difficult to get tickets to theaters showing this in IMAX 70mm. In the meantime, we should be getting audience reviews fairly soon. In the past there have certainly been cases where the professional reviewers seem to be reviewing the politics rather than the film. The audience rarely seems interested in that. So we’ll see if they react with similar glowing reviews.
The Critical Drinker hasn’t put up a review of this yet, just a video last week about the backlash. If he puts one up today, I’ll add it below.
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