For 91 days in five countries, Christopher Nolan and the cast and crew of The Odyssey were pushed to breaking point as they worked to bring Homer’s epic poem to the big screen. They filmed at sea, across rugged mountain passes, through thick forests and on sandy beaches, battling wind, rain and a scorching sun in a cinematic brinkmanship almost as grueling as Odysseus’ long journey home.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more exhausted than I did at the end of this shoot,” Nolan said with heavy eyelids the day after the film’s premiere in New York City. “This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was a test of endurance for all of us.”
Some locations were so remote and harsh that no one had ever attempted to film there before. Many days began with production members hiking through rocky terrain just to get to filming locations.
“It felt more like an expedition than a movie,” says Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus. “The joke during filming was, ‘Hey, Greece was tough. I’m sure Italy will be easy.’ And then you get to Italy and it’s going to be just as intense. So you think Iceland is going to be easy. And then you get to Iceland and it’s raining sideways and you’re shooting all night.”
It helped that Nolan was able to brave the bad weather along with everyone else. “He was always right next to the camera,” Damon says. “When we were cold and wet, he was cold and wet. If you were climbing mountains, he was climbing mountains.”
Filming was scheduled to last even longer. “We could have shot it for nine more days,” Nolan said. “But the reality is we’re done. We couldn’t be in the boat any longer. We couldn’t accept that. So, sure, we finished early, but we also stumbled in the sense of crossing the finish line.”
Twenty-four hours before the July 17 release of “The Odyssey,” I’m sitting with Nolan in his publicist’s office in SoHo. The $250 million R-rated blockbuster is expected to be one of the biggest hits of the year, and reviews for the film have arrived and are rave. Nolan is tired but calm, wearing a blue blazer and having a “cup” despite the 95-degree heat. A lot depends on him. The movie stars big-name actors like Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland, but Nolan is a star who rose to fame in the “Dark Knight” series and went on to break out in his own right with “Inception,” “Dunkirk,” and “Oppenheimer.” In these films, Nolan maintained his egotistical fervor while creating big, bold populist extravaganzas.
“They broke the mold for him,” says Samantha Morton, who plays the witch Circe. “He manages to communicate with the public and moviegoers who just want to be entertained. I don’t know anyone else who has done it like he has.”
The Odyssey may be set in an ancient world, but Nolan saw it as an opportunity to test the limits of modern technology by shooting the entire movie with IMAX cameras. This was a first for photography, and the result was a film of truly monumental proportions. Not only does the sack of Troy and the battle against the Cyclops take place on a vast Imax screen, but the palace intrigue that awaits Odysseus when he returns to Ithaca unfolds on a grand scale. But getting through it was a challenge. Imax cameras are woodworking tools that weigh 300 pounds each and roar like a Cuisinart blender. Cast members initially had trouble understanding how to act in front of what appeared to be an SUV.
Christopher Nolan, Matt Damon and Zendaya co-star on the set of ‘Odyssey’
Melinda Sue Gordon
“It was an exercise of blind trust in Chris,” admits Hathaway, who plays Odysseus’ wife Penelope. “Chris had a loyal group of people around him, and many of them used Imax cameras to shoot action scenes, but they had never shot the intimate scenes that I was in. We were all newbies in a way.”
Additionally, the camera only holds less than three minutes of film, so you constantly have to reload it in the middle of a scene. After much trial and error, Nolan chose not to yell “Cut!” When the camera is gone. Instead, he gently asked the performers to pause, quietly take more film, and pick up where they left off.
“When I say ‘cut,’ the bell rings and everyone smokes or scratches their butts,” Nolan says. “It’s a word you don’t want to use if you want to maintain a certain level of tension. There’s a sacred space between the ‘action’ and the ‘cut’ in a movie, where everyone instinctively comes together, requires everyone to release their consciousness and do a great job at the same time, rather than peaking at separate points. The harmony you need is like a stage performance.”
The Odyssey is positioned as the classic sword-and-sandal epic adventure that gave the blockbuster its name. But most of those movies are escapist adventures, and The Odyssey, while thrilling and full of spectacular settings, has a much heavier theme. In some ways, the film is a spiritual sequel to Nolan’s latest film, Oppenheimer, which explores J. Robert Oppenheimer’s guilt over the liberation of the atomic age. When Damon, who stars in both films, read the script for “The Odyssey,” he noticed similarities between Oppenheimer’s role in making the bomb and Odysseus’ role in developing the Trojan Horse, an ingenious ploy that allowed the military to destroy the city of Troy. Both innovations lead to mass genocide.
“Oppenheimer’s work reflects the ingenuity of Odysseus and the tragic consequences of his discovery,” says Damon. “They both suffer for what they did.”
Part of what Nolan wanted to uncover in his latest film was the Greek concept of Xenia (Law of Zeus), which says you have to show hospitality to strangers, essentially because you never know if that person is really a god in disguise. In The Odyssey, this civic duty is often ignored, with dire consequences. “It’s meant to keep people off the straight and narrow,” Nolan says. “I was interested in the idea that the interdependence of people is the basis of, and perhaps the definition of, civilization, and both Oppenheimer and The Odyssey show how often that is ignored, and therefore how fragile civilization is, and how easily it can be unraveled.”
Like Homer’s poem, the Odyssey takes place in a mystical world where people fight monsters, walk among gods, and witness miracles. However, Nolan wanted the film to be rooted in reality. That meant using practical effects as much as possible instead of CGI, so that the mythical elements of the story didn’t become too fantastical.
“The word Chris kept using was ‘grounded,'” Damon says. “He wanted something real and tactile. He wanted layers of dirt over the wardrobes. He wanted the set to feel like a real place where people live and work, so it seemed relatable rather than a distant world.”
The content of “Odyssey” remains unchanged. After defeating Troy and setting sail for home, the ruler of a small kingdom, Odysseus, and his men are thrown off course. At the edge of civilization, they struggle to survive, plagued by giant cannibals, sirens who drive sailors crazy with their voices, and sorcerers who turn humans into pigs. But it’s also a human story about the cost of war and the innocents caught up in the wreckage. Morton plays the sorcerer who gives Odysseus’ crew the upper hand when they come to his home island in search of food, playing the role not as the legendary temptress but as a battle-hardened woman trying to protect herself.
“My family is a military family,” Morton says. “War is complicated. Men are complicated. Our relationships with men as wives, sisters, daughters are complicated. I drew on that. And I have people in my family who have been sexually assaulted and raped. I thought about that too.”
Perhaps the most subversive thing about The Odyssey is the way it repositions its female characters and brings them to the forefront. For example, in the poem, Penelope is portrayed as patient and virtuous as ever as she waits for her husband to return. In Nolan and Hathaway’s interpretation, Penelope is a more calculating authority figure who takes measures to protect her son’s chances of ascending the throne by keeping the wolf-like suitors who seek to replace Odysseus at bay.
“I was always open to stories about Penelope that focused on her likability, her goodness, her morality,” Hathaway says. “Rather than denying them, Chris has created a character who deals with a restrictive and difficult set of circumstances. This paragon of perseverance faces an uncertain future and grows thin. The cost of playing the game is becoming clear.”
Hathaway said one of her friends went to see “The Odyssey” despite her misgivings about Homer’s work, and came away transformed. “She always felt like it was a war story where women were blamed for everything bad in the world,” Hathaway says. “And she came out crying. She said it was the first time she felt welcomed into this story. This version of ‘The Odyssey’ reached out to her.”
Most people talk about the battle scenes from The Odyssey, from the fall of Troy to Odysseus’ battle with giant, cannibal soldiers in shining armor. And they are thrilling. But there is also real darkness. In Troy, for example, we become ensnared by soldiers who sneak out of the Trojan horse and surprise the city. But our excitement fades as Nolan’s camera captures men raping women, ransacking homes, and engaging in violence.
When I spoke with director Nolan at the press tour for Oppenheimer, I was struck by how upset he was about the state of the world. Russia was invading Ukraine, and he openly worried about nuclear Armageddon. Since the film, the situation has become even more dire, with wars escalating in Gaza and Iran. That must have influenced how he interpreted The Odyssey.
“That’s my job,” Nolan says. “And if I do it right, there’s always a correspondence between what’s happening in the world and what’s happening on screen. I don’t like to be self-conscious or didactic about it. I really want to entertain people, and that’s still the most valuable thing in movies.”
