Country: US/GB
Technical: col/IMAX 172m
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Zendaya, John Leguizamo
Synopsis:
Odysseus, haunted with guilt over his deception at Troy, is blown from landfall to landfall on his way home to Ithaca, each one a mockery of Zeus' law of xenia, or hospitality.
Review:
What better director to adapt a poem that jumps around in chronology and delivers visual moments pregnant with significance! We are given a sort of Athena but denied a Hermes or an Aeolus; nor do we have the Phaeacians, for Calypso is taken as the fulcrum in the narrative (that much is true to Homer). There are many good things here: the palace and interiors at Ithaca, a Goyaesque cyclops, some terrifying Laestrygonians, a clever fusion of the lotus flower and Calypso to let our hero off the hook with modern audiences, and a thrilling finale. Sound is well used, as with the bow string, but deafening much of the time, and there are opportunities missed, such as the olive tree built into the bedchamber, and at least one unwelcome addition in the treachery of the cowherd, Philoetius. Some of the casting decisions are downright peculiar, not least Lupita Nyong'o and Zendaya, and Agamemnon's face is never clearly seen. There are bound to be wrinkles and disappointments in any attempt to do justice to the best loved adventure story in Western literature, but behind even those there is an undeniable appreciation here of the themes and symbolisms underlying the epic.
Country: US/GB
Technical: col/IMAX 172m
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Zendaya, John Leguizamo
Synopsis:
Odysseus, haunted with guilt over his deception at Troy, is blown from landfall to landfall on his way home to Ithaca, each one a mockery of Zeus' law of xenia, or hospitality.
Review:
What better director to adapt a poem that jumps around in chronology and delivers visual moments pregnant with significance! We are given a sort of Athena but denied a Hermes or an Aeolus; nor do we have the Phaeacians, for Calypso is taken as the fulcrum in the narrative (that much is true to Homer). There are many good things here: the palace and interiors at Ithaca, a Goyaesque cyclops, some terrifying Laestrygonians, a clever fusion of the lotus flower and Calypso to let our hero off the hook with modern audiences, and a thrilling finale. Sound is well used, as with the bow string, but deafening much of the time, and there are opportunities missed, such as the olive tree built into the bedchamber, and at least one unwelcome addition in the treachery of the cowherd, Philoetius. Some of the casting decisions are downright peculiar, not least Lupita Nyong'o and Zendaya, and Agamemnon's face is never clearly seen. There are bound to be wrinkles and disappointments in any attempt to do justice to the best loved adventure story in Western literature, but behind even those there is an undeniable appreciation here of the themes and symbolisms underlying the epic.
