Odyssey, 2026 - Film Review

*spoilers alert*

(Have you really not seen it yet!)

What can possibly be left to write about Nolan’s latest magnum opus, that is not just his most successful movie ever, but is also breaking all box office records. Most have enjoyed the film, many have commented on how close, or criticised how not, it is to Homer’s original, some have chosen an alternate view of trashing it, and few have wondered WTF is the big deal. 

But what struck me most from the day I knew Nolan’s next was Odyssey and now after having watched and mulled over it for a month or so, is: “Why Odyssey? And Why now?”

The film, as per their own declaration, is based on Homer’s version of the epic. That follows the sequence of events after the Battle of Troy is finally won by the Greeks after ten long years, thanks to the cunning plan hatched by Odysseus, the (in)famous Trojan Horse. After brutally destroying Troy, the city and its people, all the Greeks set off on their ships to return home. While most get back home, Odysseus and his crew are lost in sea for ten long years, facing multiple natural and unreal threats, before making his final homecoming to his grieving-yet-patiently waiting wife Penelope and son-now-almost-a-man Telemachus.

Forever immortalised as the metaphor for an arduous journey, Odyssey is not only timeless, but also timely at a time, where our collective future couldn’t be in a more uncertain place today than ever before. With wars, climate change, collapsing democratic beliefs, and AI (to name a few!), we’re all on a reasonably bumpy ride, where the destination is unknown, and the journey gets more interesting and precarious with every passing day. Even though we all hope for our own version of Ithaca, our dominant truth today is not a vision for the future, but a survival on this journey, every day. And if I stretch this metaphor by saying that as for Odysseus and for each of us, it’s as much a journey outwards as it is inwards, you would yawn and say ‘heard-that-read-that’. So, let’s leave the “journey”, the most known and established connection to Odyssey, at that.

Let’s start with Polyphemus, the cyclops, the reason why it all goes South (sometimes quite literally!). Wasn’t it bad enough that Odysseus loses so many men in the cave  to the giant and barely makes the escape, that he also had to go out of his way to add insult to injury by blinding the being on his way out, angering Poseidon and screwing his fate for the next 10 years! But then, after all, isn’t it our egos and the delulu sense of self-importance and self-righteousness of the world’s most powerful leaders, that has triggered 3 big wars in recent times, wars that actually makes no logical sense at all.

When Circe turns his men into pigs, in one of the most understated-but-grotesquely-brilliant special effects scene, isn’t she just acting in self-defense against a bunch of hungry and lustful men who are quite capable of behaving like the animal they have been turned into. Does that make her a witch? 

When Calypso holds Odysseus captive, feeding him lotus stems, is she holding him against his will, or is it because after being away from home for so long, being responsible for the shameful ravaging of Troy, some part of him doesn’t want to go back home after all? Can he really face his family and himself with the burden of everything he has done? Is Calypso just Odysseus’s biggest excuse to escape from facing his karma? Isn’t Calypso and her lotus stems reminiscent of the various dopamine addictions that we all have succumbed to, in order to escape our realities and from having real conversations with ourselves and our loved ones?

When Odysseus has to make the difficult choice of choosing the direction of the Scylla (the giant spider) to lose six men versus choosing Charybdis (the whirlpool) to losing all men, it pays homage to the difficult choices we all make between ‘the devil and the deep blue sea’ and the price we pay living with the guilt and regret against the lose-lose situation we’ve had to live through. In deliberately listening to the excruciating pain of the siren’s song, Odysseus reflects our masochistic tendencies of punishing our own selves in different ways, because we believe, in vain, it will redeem us. 

How long do you comply with Zeus’s law and tolerate the deep rot and decay that the feudal and imperial foreigners are creating in your society in the name of law and world order, rules set by outsiders and imposed on your land. Surely every sovereign nation gets to decide their own fate?

In Hades, when Odysseus faces the anger of the dead, who he has wronged and cheated or not kept his promise to, and even sees the great King of Men, Agamemnon stripped of even a shadow of his human grandness, his realisation of what’s important and meaningful in life, is not very different from the realisation that many of us have had, seeing illness, death and suffering of our near and dear ones. What is really our purpose for the short and fragile years of human life that are given to us?

But, in Penelope and Telemachus, we see the beautifully naive and romantic counter point to an otherwise cynical and dystopian world. Their steadfast belief in Odysseus’s return, their vulnerable moments of doubt, their irrepressible readiness to fight till the end, and their complete denial to give into the rest of the world, is much like our Gen Z-like desire to fight for and create the world we want to live in. Which, in fact, eventually does save the day. As it might just for all of us in reality.

And this is “Why Odyssey! And why now Odyssey”

As I immersed in the sheer cinematic genius of Nolan through the entire IMAX experience, each of these adventures showed more meaning and relevance in our times today, than the journey itself. The journey back home, then, just becomes a reason, an over-arching North Star that makes Odysseus stay committed to the journey. The real anchor of the film, is not Ithaca at all, but the mirror that the film shows to us all, in each of the choices that Odysseus makes in the different situation he faces, and the consequence he and everyone around him has to deal with. Not unlike the choices we make everyday, guided by our own Athena, and the consequences that everyone around us deal with. In any case once we reach Ithaca, it is just the beginning of the next journey that Odysseus and Penelope take together. Isn’t it?

Thank you Nolan, for continuing to make the movies that you do. In the age of Netflix and Hotstar, Instagram and Snapchat, ChatGPT and Gemini,  where individualised and algorithmic content divides us and makes us a ‘powerless of one’, we desperately need more common stories that we consume and feel together as a collective and human society. That is the power of real cinema. Thank you Nolan for making us mere mortals continue to believe in the power and beauty of good movie making. Salute!