Homer Run
The Oppenheimer filmmaker outdoes himself with an IMAX-sized tale of gods, monsters, and the original hero’s journey. It’s truly epic
“How long have I been gone?”
The question is asked by Odysseus — father, husband, warrior, king, and the lost soul at the center of Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey. Our man in the Bronze Age cosplay is none other than Matt Damon, rocking a hermit’s beard and perfecting the look of a man who’s seen too much, forgotten more than he’d like, and wants for nothing but the familiar comforts of what he once called home. The inquiry is aimed at a caretaker named Calypso, who may or may not have taken him captive. She is played by Charlize Theron. Calypso stares back at Odysseus sadly before slipping him a lotus flower and informing him that many, many years have passed since he’d last trod upon the island shores of Ithaca.
This brief yet highly pertinent exchange takes place near the end of Nolan’s adaptation of the literary touchstone. Or maybe it takes place somewhere near the middle. Perhaps it’s located in what might normally qualify as the third, or possibly fourth act, if the film adhered to anything close to a traditional movie structure. After checking our notes, we’re pretty sure it happens shortly after the end of the second hour, yet definitely before the beginning of the 10th or 11th hour. Frankly, it could be days, or even weeks, inside your local theater before a viewer eventually gets to the conversation that will finally send Odysseus back to where he belongs. Time has been the great thematic obsession of the filmmaker behind Memento and Tenet: its passage, its slippage, its toll. And while you, the viewer, are in this great tragedy’s thrall, it’s virtually impossible to track the amount of time you’ve spent in the company of The Odyssey‘s heroes, villains, gods, and monsters. The experience of watching — if that’s not too passive a verb in this instance — an immersive, IMAX-sized behemoth like this is intoxicating, transporting, and borderline dissociative. How long have we been gone?
