The NOdyssey

The Odyssey really is the movie event of the year; probably the biggest since ‘Barbenheimer’. It involved a Christopher Nolan film then and it’ll come as no surprise that none of his feature films come in at under 90 minutes. Far from it (though Dunkirk is fairly tight), but who is expecting an epic to be short, right?

I intend to watch The Odyssey on 70mm at some point, should real life allow. But real life is the school summer holidays and last week’s family movie was Toy Story 4 in preparation for watching number 5 at some point, which is far more likely trip for me. It comes as a blessing then the 70mm showings are booked up well into September.

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The Odyssey is the first major movie to be filmed on IMAX film, where special rigs were forged to make it all work. 70mm film has a boxy aspect ratio of 1.43:1 versus the more letterbox 35mm ratio of 2.39:1, so a significant portion of the picture is removed on standard screens and home viewing. In essence, your old hefty 4:3 tube TV would show more than your fancy paper-light widescreen. (Yes, it’s not that simple, but the principle stands.)

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The discourse has been plentiful from memes to the inevitable disappointment of some eminent classicists. One of the main charges is the lack of the sex and flirtatiousness that is more abundant in the source material. If Odysseus isn’t on the nest, so to speak, why then is it taking him so long to get home?

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One of my favourite clips – and it could very well have been staged, no matter – is of the three guys in apt fancy dress trying to enter a screening on one ticket with two of them hiding in a miniature Trojan horse. A felicitous device whether it worked or not.

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The meme of what is The Odyssey about wrong answers only saw the mention of what is possibly my favourite modern take on a long journey home beset with hurdle after hurdle after hurdle, and that is Planes, Trans and Automobiles (1987). Steve Martin and John Candy the original odd couple™️ as two professionals in very different environments trying to get home in time for Thanksgiving. It runs a few minutes over the 90 so I can’t officially rubber stamp it here, but perhaps skip the credits or something.1

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Mark Kermode talks about Nolan’s respect for Ray Harryhausen’s work in his review of the film, which possibly explains why Polyphemus, the epic’s giant cyclops, is a 18 metre mechanical puppet with digital enhancments in post rather than a straight to CGI animated beast.

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It’s a shame that the adaption of another Greek myth, the Ray Harryhausen infused Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and its Bernard Herrmann soundtrack is 14 minutes over our threshold. Sure, Harryhausen’s stop motion effects are far from class leading now, but the jerky animation gives the film’s baddies an uncanny edge, especially Talos, man of bronze and protector of Crete, who doesn’t take kindly to theft.2

What of other snappier, straight-up adaptions of Homer’s epic poem. There is Nostos: the Return (1989), which shows rather than tells Odysseus’s journey home over the sea and sea. It’s a film with with plenty of vibes and minimal dialogue, more a collection of a lush imagery and sounds than a date night movie. A cinematographic treat firmly in art house, so it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

Safer ground is found with an earlier Harryhausen where his ‘Dynamation’ technique – combining stop motion animation with live footage – had become a big selling point for the trailers. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) contains similar motifs to The Odyssey, and several of Harryhausen’s animated monsters became icons here. In a recent epiosde of The Rest is History podcast, Tom Holland (the historian, not the actor who plays Odysseus’s son Telemachus in Nolan’s adaption), mentions that the legend of Sinbad is quite possibly a later variation of the myths retold by Homer.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/X9BdAIn-WoE?rel=0

Finally, on the Tom Hollands, two Nolanesque worlds collided when they both met for a recent interview:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/eurcSRWn2jA?rel=0

A movie’s stated length does include opening and closing credits.

Also, see the final chase scene in The Terminator where the flayed T-800 android chases down Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor into the industrial factory.