(Image credit: Universal Pictures)
Walking into my advance screening of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” earlier this week, I was certain of one thing: Nolan would deliver the kind of artistically ambitious spectacle that’s rarely seen in Hollywood anymore. Regardless of how engaged I am in any given Christopher Nolan movie, I always appreciate his tenacity in taking hundreds of millions of dollars from a major studio to bring his own particular vision to life. I got to see “The Odyssey” in 70mm, and Nolan is pretty much the only filmmaker who can bully an anonymous multiplex like my local AMC theater into showing a movie on film.So I can’t say that I was disappointed by “The Odyssey.” Yet unlike what seems like the majority of film critics (including TG’s Malcolm McMillan), I wasn’t blown away, and I doubt “The Odyssey” will make my top 10 list at the end of the year.But it’s a wholly satisfying experience at the movies, the kind that only comes from a handful of currently working directors. I felt the same way after seeing Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” another passion project produced on a massive scale. I didn’t love this movie, but I’m grateful that it exists.‘The Odyssey’ can only do so much with its familiar storyAside from the works of William Shakespeare, it’s tough to find any piece of world literature that’s been as extensively adapted and retold as the myths of the ancient Greeks. Nolan has shown an aptitude for interpreting modern mythology with his Batman movies, but there’s only so much variation that can be applied to such towering icons, and that’s true for Odysseus as much as it is for Batman. As he did with Batman, Nolan focuses on the main character’s inner torment, although “The Odyssey” is more of an ensemble piece than Nolan’s Batman films.
