I realize that this movie is the major trending topic right now, but personally I wasn't impressed with it. Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Homer's ancient epic is a lumbering, dreary affair that has a murky, overcast look to it.
Nolan tries to make the story "realistic", which results in a lot of awkward dialogue and awkward performances. None of the main actors seem comfortable with what they are doing--things might have worked better if Nolan used a cast of unknowns, but if he did he wouldn't have gotten the clickbait he received from the trendy people he did use.
There's a lot of flashbacks and flash-forwards in THE ODYSSEY, which is a Nolan staple, but here it just seems to drag things out more. As with all of Nolan's work, there's a remoteness and coldness here that prevents a viewer from being all that engaged with what is going on.
Plenty of folks are absolutely gushing over this film, so what do I know? For whatever reason, I just wasn't able to get into it. If someone had given Mario Bava about $200,000, a cast of European cult actors, and about 90 minutes of screen time, and told him to do a version of THE ODYSSEY, he no doubt would have a much more entertaining--and much more interesting--film.
When it comes to Nolan's work, I like his first three films, Following, Memento and Insomnia, and that's it. Interstellar was OK, but he lost me after that.
ReplyDeleteI can't say I have any real interest in seeing THE ODYSSEY. About the only thing I can appreciate is that Nolan is supposed to have gone to a lot of extra trouble to make the film with old-school effort without relying on a bunch of CGI. Commendable for an epic-scale film these days, but I have never been much of an epic-scale-film fan.
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