The Odyssey: A Review

8^th Aug 2026 – It was raining terribly coinciding with my experience of watching a Christopher Nolan’s film in IMAX. It happened for the second time after Dunkirk in the summer of 2017 (American summer but Indian monsoon). I think watching Nolan movies will surely get me ill. Thank God he makes only one film in 2-3 years. I escaped this occurrence with TENET as it was a Covid time winter release and didn’t watch Oppenheimer in theatres due to my study leaves. But was waiting eagerly and patiently for his next release and might be his biggest yet i.e. Nolan’s portrayal of Homer’s “The Odyssey”! Calling it a masterpiece would be an understatement. This is purely a work of art where everyone has cooked and delivered an immortal creation. There are so many things going on spectacularly perfect that we have to talk about each of them in detail.

Firstly, the Auteur himself, Sir Christopher Nolan’s first film after his knighthood! His vision and unwavering commitment to make this film possible with near zero CGI is definitely praise-worthy. You are able to see the efforts that were put in by the entire unit to set the film at real locations and doing away with the blue-screen/ green-screen fatigue. This aligns with the best traditions of western filmmaking: making fantasy films feel as real as possible. Each frame from Ithaca-Troy-Mycenae, every second on the ship and each encounter with monsters, witches and savages looked surreal. This coupled with this film being entirely shot on IMAX cameras elevates the experience multi-fold. This is no time to make an excuse not to watch the movie in theatres. It is a must-watch in theatre.

Talking about the story, “how can you ever doubt The Odyssey itself?” An epic which has survived the test of time for past 3000 years! So many twists and turns and sub-plots which have inspired countless works, be it movies, books, songs and paintings! The theme of home-coming and journey which one makes in search of his place of belonging/ his promised land/ his home is such a universal concept. Homer weaves all aspects of life be it friendship between man and animal, a wife’s yearning desire to unite with her husband and a son’s attempt to live up to the reputation of father. All emotions just perfectly come together at one place. I think we all are living in our own Odysseys. All are trying to find that place in life where we feel like we have arrived “HOME”, the place where we have it all! There is no better text to visualise than this, Chris Nolan has made a spot on choice.

For an average Indian this opens up as a great entry point into Greek mythology. We should definitely make attempts to understand it and compare it with our own epics Ramayana & Mahabharata. There is often debate of whether all this is real or just imaginary or they copied from us. I have one simple thing to say; we were not alive when all this was written so we are in no position to verify its existence. What we have is a great text whose creativity we should appreciate and adore. And this goes for various casting choices Nolan has made here. I don’t think they should prevent you from watching the film. After all, every work of art is an interpretation or individual’s expression of perception. So, we should rest this debate here itself.

Talking specifically about casting choices; Matt Damon looks perfect as Odysseus; Robert Pattinson looks as vicious and cunning as one can be. But I am in awe with the grace and beauty of Anne Hathaway. I just can’t fathom how can anyone be so talented? You could easily tell the difference in her portrayal of the younger “The wife of departing Odysseus” Penelope and slightly older “Lonely Queen of Ithaca” Penelope. Both had completely different nature as one was in deep love with her husband, painting pictures of their future and trying to convince him not to go. The other was in perennial waiting of her husband, while simultaneously managing suitors at her palace as per Zeus’s law while making attempts to forge Telemachus (her son), a fit King of Ithaca. In my opinion there could be no better actor than Anne Hathaway to play Penelope.

This was a rather straight forward narrative looking at Nolan’s previous work. No time travel or sci-fi voyages. The only difficulty new viewers may experience is being unfamiliar with the mythological characters. Any basic video on YouTube will suffice. Putting the links of a few videos in the post script.

To sum up, we must appreciate the sub-plots and various traits of the characters. Such as Odysseus’s encounter with Cyclops or Sersi even the story of Agamemnon’s post-war return to Mycenae. Also, I liked the way Odysseus used to warn the prey at the time of hunting with the sound of his bow string. I felt surge of joy whenever that sound used to play. The same goes for the “Leap of faith” he takes at the end. It perfectly summarises our everyday struggle. We strive for the greatness; we work hard to reach at the pinnacle. We encounter and act to win over our everyday struggles. Many a times we are not able to claim victory over those, then sometimes we should take “Leap of faith” and let things as they are. To our surprise things may happen as we always wanted just as we stop hurrying. As they did Odysseus. We should believe in our destiny/ luck/ God whatever you call. At the end everything falls in place!

There is a lot to say, a lot to write. It was a crazy experience to be able to sink in all these moments, felt truly special to exist in this era. I didn’t get to experience it in an IMAX 70mm film theatre though I watched it at Phoenix Palladium IMAX, yes the place of India premiere. But surely I will try to catch it in future in 70mm if and when I could. Will end this blog here with the expectation that each one of you will watch this movie in theatres “Just the way Nolan intended”.

Post Script: Link for getting familiar with Greek mythology 1. Khabargaon episode 1 & episode 2, 2. TedX Odyssey playlist ,

Pic credits – The Stanford Daily, Flickr, YouTube/ Universal Pictures.