The Odyssey

I always say that it's been a while since I last went to the cinema - taking a closer look, it turned out to have been almost seven years. The last movie I saw on a big screen was actually Rise of Skywalker, which... to be honest, the jokes about how that could put you off going to the cinema forever pretty much write themselves.

However, the simple truth is that I just haven't felt the need to go to the cinema. I can see new movies soon enough on Disney+ or some other streaming service, and the extra effort of going to town and paying extra to see something sooner and on a larger screen doesn't really feel worth it when you don't have anyone to go with you. (I don't have any friends that are local and my husband isn't a big movie-goer either.)

This week, an opportunity arose though. We're staying at a friend's place for a few days and I had just heard about all the rave reviews Nolan's Odyssey was getting, so I suggested that we could go see it together, and the friend we're visiting was in favour, allowing us to out-vote my husband.

Just being in a cinema for the first time after so many years was pretty nice and brought back a lot of fond memories, making me think I should really do this again more often, but I doubt anything will really come of it.

The film itself was good, though I've got to admit I don't really get all the 10 out of 10s. For me personally, it was more a 7-8/10. We saw the Imax version and I didn't quite see the point of having this particular movie in Imax, as - at least to me - it didn't have many scenes that really benefitted from the larger format.

As for the content of the film itself, I did think Nolan's interpretation of the Odyssey as more of a human drama about a soldier dealing with PTSD was definitely interesting. No silly gods feuding (they only get talked about in vague terms) and instead of Odysseus being this lovable, clever scamp, he's a man traumatised by the fact that even when it seems that he's winning, he's also losing, and it inflicts all kind of trauma on him along the way. Plus there's the bigger "moral" of how breaking the unwritten rules of civilisation for the sake of winning has ripple effects that harm more than just the original losers.

The main characters and their emotional development were the strongest part of the film - Anne Hathaway as Penelope was a particular standout in my opinion. Weirdly, I thought the "adventure" bits were actually comparatively weaker. I'm being told that Nolan used some cool practical effects for a lot of things, but the end results didn't really grab me. As an example, the encounter with the Laestrygonians is basically: Greeks go up a hill, see a child, child screams, armoured giants appear and attack, Greeks run away again. It's actually not that exciting. The section with Circe spends an uncomfortable amount of time on the soldiers' transformation into pigs, which is evocative of some serious body horror, but again, not really what's interesting about meeting her.

Still, I'm happy to have seen it.

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