Odyssey (Christopher Nolan, 2026)
The Batman trilogy represents not only Nolan’s increasing fascination with scale — a cascading series of the ever bigger spectacle aided by the bigness afforded by the imax format — but also his fetish for its heroes suffering under the weight of their ‘image’. Told from the point of view of its protagonists starting with bruce wayne, cob, coop, oppenheimer, and now oddyseus, each hero is saddled by a clenching guilt that is meant to serve as a dialectic between the pursuit of greatness and its costs. Yet the scale at which Nolan operates undercuts any such consideration. Nolan might’ve fooled people into thinking he is a concept-guy. The premise of his movies does suggest this. But Nolan is more interested in the intrinsic genius of great men and their capacity to mould the world — any world — in their image, and this is important, despite the world they live in. His great men are libertarian renegades who fight crime, hack dreams, game space, concoct bombs and defy gods. Each does so outside the laws of the state, space, time, bureaucracy and mythology. But, since an omnipotent hero yields a rather boring story, Nolan deigns his heroes to be fettered by themselves, anchored by the weight of their own guilt.
But Nolan doesn’t understand ‘guilt’. The presence of guilt is not a guarantee of moral righteousness. Yet for Nolan ‘guilt’ comes prefigured with unqualified absolution. How else are we supposed to interpret the end of this movie, as Odysseus and Penelope sail off into the sunset happy like a couple on FIRE (Finacially Independent, Retired Early) when they are, according to Nolan’s text, exiled as criminals?
To be fair, Nolan’s take on the siege of troy as ‘the original sin’ and odysseus’ complicity in committing this sin not once, not twice but repeatedly is a wonderful conceptual departure from the text. I am all for recontextualising the original text as a means to investigate our political present. But Nolan assumes ptsd is a badge of honour worn only by the brave. And in doing so, once again, Nolan crafts a hero who believes his heinous actions are guided by an essential goodness, righteousness. There exists a straight line connecting Nolan’s heroes to the Silicon Valley libertarians especially those involved the effective altruism movement. In this regard casting Matt Damon in the titular role feels all the more perverse because Nolan is banking on Damon’s public image of being a ‘paavum’ fella. At least with oppenheimer, despite his androgynous alien beauty, Cillian Murphy can come across as a smug little shit.
A note about the formal aspects: Others more qualified than I have already bemoaned the lack of magic or colour but I am appalled at Nolans inability to craft a remotely interesting image. The last time I felt a sense of wonder in his filmography was Dunkirk, which seemed like an oil-painting of a movie. But the Odyssey parlays the power of an image for a series of montages. But where in Oppenheimer the montages propel the story forward at a pace that rivals and reflects the frenetic atomic fission of it’s nuclear revolution, the montages here have all the sweaty jostling energy of a mosh pit. Galvanising in the moment, sure. But step away and one does wonder, ‘why and what is that smell?’
While I’m glad that a historical epic was அ friendly, a humourless, bloodless, sexless rendition of this epic casts serious doubt over Nolan’s commitment to gritty realism. A tepid excuse for mere idol-worship.
Great music though. Also அ and I loved the bollywood-ness of that shot of Penelope reacting to the twang of the bow string (only to be followed by that interminable final act).