Why The Odyssey Proves Christopher Nolan Can Still Go Bigger | Culture Crash

Once again, Christopher Nolan has released a new film and once again, that film is a massive success, scoring big with critics, audiences, and at the box office. Like The Dark Knight, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer before it, Nolan’s new film The Odyssey is a slam-dunk smash hit, prompting even the most casual of moviegoers to consider what it might be like to see a movie in 70mm IMAX.

The Odyssey is, of course, based on the Homeric epic, a classic of Greek mythology and a cornerstone of Western literature. It’s a story full of monsters and reveals, and Nolan uses it as a canvas to create something that is both a perfect culmination of all that came before in his career and also a singular achievement that edges more into horror than he’s ever gone before. Odysseus’s clash with a cyclops and his crew’s run-in with the sorceress Circe are two jaw-dropping sequences in a film full of them. Samantha Morton plays Circe as a rightly scared woman living alone, willing to do anything to keep herself safe. Ludwig Goransson’s score, Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography, Jennifer Lame’s editing, and Morton’s performance itself culminate to create one of the best movie scenes in years.

Of course, the film is built around Matt Damon’s Odysseus, and he delivers in spades. In a cast chalk-full of stars, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Elliot Page, and Himesh Patel provide a few of the movie’s richest performances that punctuate Nolan’s practical filmmaking style full of wide vistas, stunning ocean photography, and some of the biggest and loudest action setpieces ever put to film with a surprising amount of emotion and humanity.

Already, audiences are asking what comes next for Christopher Nolan. Does he go pure horror? Does he scale back? Or does he find a way to somehow go even bigger from here? Of course, none of us have any idea, but I do know that The Odyssey is another record-breaking piece of Nolan’s filmography that is destined to be watched in living rooms and arthouse cinemas for decades to come.