Director – Christopher Nolan – 2026 – US – Cert. 15 – 172m
**** (regular cinema version, not the 70mm IMAX print)
While Odysseus is lost presumed dead returning home from the Trojan Wars to his island Kingdom of Ithaca, his wife is confronted with multiple suitors – out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 17th
For anyone unfamiliar with the classical Greek literature source, Homer’s Odyssey is about a journey (with which meaning the word odyssey is synonymous in modern parlance). Odysseus (Matt Damon) fights for ten years (a time span unclear in the new film) in the Trojan Wars, then spends another ten getting home to his island Kingdom of Ithaca (the film is clear that he’s away a total of 20 years).
Homer doesn’t play out his narrative in linear form, but goes back and forth, for instance using flashbacks. Nolan’s screenplay uses a framing device of Odysseus’ wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) holding out against numerous suitors hoping she’ll marry one of them and make him king, remarkably similar to that other recent, inferior adaptation of (the Ithaca bits of) the Odyssey, The Return (Umberto Pasolini, 2024), except that Nolan’s instincts for casting are a lot stronger and he has a bigger crew and budget with which to play.… Read the rest
