Critic Reviews

It’s great, a star-studded triumph that is at once overwhelming and accessible.

A worthy new translation of an ancient text, and yet another monumental piece of work from one of our boldest filmmakers. Watch it on the most colossal screen you can find.

For all its monsters, gods, armies, and thunder, “The Odyssey” finds its grandest image in a man confronting the dark mirror of what he has wrought. Nolan’s massive achievement understands that home is a place, a family, a memory, and a judgment. Odysseus may still recognize Ithaca when he reaches its shores. The more frightening question is whether Ithaca will recognize him.

The interplay of chance and fate is a through-line of this 172-minute IMAX epic, which feels shorter, thanks mainly to the impressive ability of Nolan and his regular editor Jennifer Lame (who won an Oscar for cutting "Oppenheimer") to make time seem elastic.

Though some sequences seem to fly by, The Odyssey isn't one of those three-hour movies you'd swear was half its length. It takes its time, and you feel it. But rather than signaling any issues with pacing – editor Jennifer Lame, an Oscar-winner for Oppenheimer, has once again done exquisite work – this is one of the film's greatest strengths. Cutting out the middleman of Homer's oral narrator, Nolan has brought us very close to these characters, immersing us as much as possible in their experience. In doing so, he has managed to capture the story's full scope. Odysseus' journey conveys the weight of its arduous years. The film's conclusion, told with a steady, patient hand, feels like a payoff 20 years in the making.

The result is a gigantic, shimmering mirage, a mysterious three-hour vision of crazy episodes that does not yield up wisdom or contentment, but only a grim resolution to continue with the fight, to make sense of ruined lives, to re-enter the scorched battlefield of loss.

Brutal, beautiful and a bit bonkers. It's also a Trojan Horse of filmmaking, with a war movie, history lesson, monster mash, body horror flick, moody zombie fest, maritime disaster extravaganza and father-son tale all scrunched together in a spectacular package.

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.

Who better to adapt an epic poem than Nolan, a man who unearths poetry in all of his epics? Here, he did not set out to use Greek myths as the foundation for a basic action movie, as so many do. Instead he dives into the psychology and moral thorniness of Odysseus’ plight.

The Odyssey is the first feature shot entirely on massive IMAX 70mm film cameras, meaning this is a blockbuster of literally unprecedented scale. It is also Nolan’s best work to date. It deserves to be the film that defines him.