Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] To me, Inception is still his masterwork.
[00:00:04] And the Odyssey, while the Odyssey is obviously not this great sci fi epic on that scale, it has its own epic nature, but it doesn't. And its own greatness, in a sense. It doesn't scale those heights. It doesn't. It's not that.
[00:00:24] Hi, everybody. Welcome along to another episode of the Dispatchers. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again. And in this episode I'm going to be talking about the Odyssey, which I think would more appropriately be and should be known as Christopher Nolan's Odyssey or Nolan's Odyssey because it's not really the original. He's adapted it and there are moments where there are considerable changes. And I think the best way to go into this film, having seen it now myself, is to actually treat it as something inspired by the Odyssey. And I think you will just. The burden of expectations will be lifted off your shoulders if you go in that way. If you go in as a purist looking for a faithful replication of the original Odyssey, you're going to come out disappointed, I should say. Before we go any further, there are going to be spoilers. I'm just going to share my thoughts. I've got a couple of pages of notes that I've prepared. I'm just going to share my thoughts and if you're interested, obviously you'll stick around and listen to my lunatic ravings and my opinionated thoughts about the film, what I liked and what I disliked.
[00:01:39] But I should say that if you haven't seen the film and you don't want any spoilers, then you're probably best to actually shut this video off now. Stash this episode for later, go and watch the movie and then come back and, and watch the podcast and see what you think about my opinions and really whether they match up to what your experience of the film actually was. And remembering, of course, that this is highly subjective, each of us is going to go into this and we're going to have our own expectations, we're going to have our own things that we like and dislike and there's going to be aspects of this film that probably speak to us, other things we dislike. And so keeping all of that in mind, this is just one guy and his humble opinion about this particular movie. The one thing I would say is I really wish we don't have it in my town where I live, but I really wish that we had an IMAX option available because this was filmed in IMAX in 70mm, and from what I've heard it is quite an experience to watch it. The whole thing is filmed in imax. There are some issues with this. And you do notice this. It's.
[00:02:47] It is kind of subtle, but you can pick up on it. And I think some people, it will be really a lot more pronounced than others.
[00:02:53] The IMAX cameras are massive. They are huge. It's.
[00:02:58] I don't know if you.
[00:02:59] Those who are watching old enough to remember the old tube televisions. They were huge boxes, basically. The IMAX camera is about the size of one of those old tube televisions. We used to have one in our house. And you press the button to turn it on, you hear gunk. And then you'd wait for five minutes for the tubes to warm up. You'd hear that whirring and whining noise and then the picture would suddenly appear.
[00:03:21] They were huge monstrosities of televisions. The IMAX camera is basically one of those kinds of things. It's about that size and the way that Nolan created a workaround because it's not quite as simple having characters side by side and seeing each other face to face. And the way that Nolan works around that problem, the technology and the devices that he sort of came up with, the technological fixes, if you like.
[00:03:47] It means that when you've got characters who are in scenes together, something you might notice that something's possibly not quite right or it doesn't quite feel right, particularly with where they're looking and their interactions.
[00:04:01] Really. The IMAX camera makes a big difference there in that regard. But at the end of the day, I wish I'd been able to see the thing in its original IMAX format because basically IMAX opens up the top of the screen. He shot it in such a way that you can watch it on a regular movie screen. You've not lost anything. It's not like the old days where if you compressed, you know, widescreen high def format down, you lost the edges of the picture. This is more this way, but from what I understand, it is quite an experience.
[00:04:32] And this to me is if I could just before I get into any of the.
[00:04:35] My thoughts about. Specific thoughts about the movie and I get really into big time spoiler territory as a brief overall intro. And then I'm gonna explain it a bit more at the end as a sort of summary review.
[00:04:48] I think like, this is where Nolan is strong.
[00:04:52] His technological filmmaking is. Is really phenomenal. He's right up there.
[00:04:58] And I think it's important to note that a big part of this is also down to the director of photography that he chooses when Nolan, you know, another example is Denis Villeneuve. Denis Villeneuve's a like. He's another filmmaker who's right up there with the technical aspects of filmmaking. Denis Villeneuve often works with Roger Deakins as a cinematographer. And Roger Deakins works a lot with natural light. If you've seen the film 1917, that one, well, it wasn't one continuous shot, but it was presented as one continuous long shot. One continuous long take. The entire film set during World War I.
[00:05:34] And the amazing use of natural light. That. That's Roger Deakins.
[00:05:38] The. I think what is probably the best of the James Bond, the new James Bond films, Skyfall. That's Roger Deakins and you can see it in those opening sequences. He uses natural light really, really well. And so a lot of a technical filmmakers prowess really does depend on who he uses as his dp. And someone like Denis Villeneuve, who's done the Dune movies, Sicario Prisoners was another really good one.
[00:06:05] And also Christopher Nolan, they. They've worked with really good dps and that aspect of it adds to it. But Nolan also has a, excuse me, a technical filmmaking prowess. And I think we really saw this in a big way first with the Dark Knight and that opening sequence and his use of cameras in the Dark Knight.
[00:06:30] And so this is really his strength. And that is very much part of this film. The technical filmmaking prowess of Nolan is very much on display here. However, I think in this case it actually kind of comes at the cost of the real emotional core and the emotional heart of the movie. It's.
[00:06:52] My sense was I came away from this movie thinking, yeah, that was enjoyable. It was, you know, epic in scale.
[00:07:00] Not quite as epic as I'd sort of thought it was gonna be based on some of the commentary. I'll talk about that in a moment. But it was sort of epic in scale. There's these practical sets and effects, there's a lot in this to like, but as a whole, it feels like you walk away. And my sense was it didn't quite.
[00:07:23] Something's missing, something's not quite tying it all together like it should.
[00:07:30] I'll contrast this with something like Gladiator, which was an epic film in its own right and a different kind of epic, but it was an epic film. And Gladiator is imperfect in some of the technical aspects and it's not quite as perfect in some ways with some of the technical things as what you get with Nolan's odyssey, but the emotional core of it is just compelling and powerful. And you walk away. The emotional core stays with you.
[00:07:59] This one's a little bit different and there's aspects of it I liked, but overall it just. It felt like it didn't quite tie together well. And I want to talk about why in just a second.
[00:08:12] But as far as casting and stuff goes, there was a. This was really where the big controversy with this film lay. There was a lot of controversy online in the weeks and months leading up to it about some of the casting choices.
[00:08:24] So the controversial casting issues around having someone like Alan Page playing a male warrior in this, the casting of Helen of Troy, those casting controversies, they just. They don't dominate the film.
[00:08:39] They are so minor and passing in. Like, these are not main characters. They're not even. They are very much secondary subplot characters and they're minor secondary subplot moments, too.
[00:08:51] They just don't dominate the film.
[00:08:54] And so I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to come out of this and say, oh, my gosh, they ruined it with casting. I just don't really think that's a fair criticism at all.
[00:09:04] In regards to the main casting, though, I do think, like, if I go through the sort of. The main characters that really stick out for me.
[00:09:13] Antonius, played by Robert Pattinson.
[00:09:18] Robert Pattinson is. He's good in this. He's just. He's a villain. He's pure villain. I'll talk more later about why. I think that actually doesn't help the film as much. But he's really good. He is pure villainy. He is, as they say, chewing the scenery in this film. Like when Robert Pattinson has a scene and he's on camera, you know, he's there and he really plays up the villainy and he does that well. So he was great.
[00:09:45] Anne Hathaway as Penelope. She was really good. I think she gave a really solid performance. I'll talk more about that a bit later, though, because I think there were some. It's not her fault. Her acting was good, but I just. I think it's more of a maybe casting and also the writing of the concluding, the final act of the film. I think there are a few little issues there.
[00:10:12] Tom Holland as Telemachus.
[00:10:16] Tom Holland was okay, but I don't think he was probably the right casting choice for Telemachus.
[00:10:24] He kind of was with how Nolan adapts and changes things at the end, but I just feel that character. And again, I'll get into this at the end where I think there's a better example of Telemachus and So I think Tom Holland is probably not the best casting choice for that particular role. And in the main role, of course, of Odysseus is Matt Damon. And I felt, interestingly enough, Matt Damon, he's a good actor and I like Matt Damon, but it felt a bit too much like it was. It was a bit like Matt Damon again playing Matt Damon in a movie.
[00:11:04] And obviously that's literally not what he's doing in his films, but he has a particular type and his, his range in this film, it like he doesn't go beyond the Matt Damon range, if that makes sense. It's not like when you watch an actor in a film and you go, wow, that was just. They did something very different there to what they do in their other films. A great example of this would for me would be. Or a very clear example of this would be Tom Hanks in the movie Road to Perdition.
[00:11:36] And Road to Perdition, great film based on a great graphic novel, actually. And 1930s gangster who's involved with the mob is the character played by Tom Hanks. And he plays that character very different to how he normally is in films. Tom Hanks has a particular range and in Road to Perdition he goes beyond that range. It's a different sort of out of the box moment. You don't get that with Matt Damon. And I actually think that it's possibly partly writing, it's directing, it's the choices that are made in the editing room as well, what they leave on the cutting room floor because they would normally take multiple takes and then they decide which one they think is the best. And you know, when they're editing the film together.
[00:12:15] But also I just, for whatever reason, I feel that the gravitas of the performance for like the man playing Odysseus.
[00:12:27] Yeah, I feel like you either needed Matt Damon bringing a performance that we'd really never seen from him before, or you needed a different actor in that role who was going to give you something that really one of the reasons why Gladiator, I think was so impactful is because Russell Crowe just embodies that character with such a gravitas and such a sincerity and an earnestness that, you know, the power of it sort of just overwhelms you. You can't help but like, in fact, he is often not just remembered for that, but he's compared to that. And some of those lines and the way that they are delivered and how he presents himself in that film, it's memorable and it gives emotional heft and it gives a Real heart and a core and a strength, a gravitas to that film.
[00:13:20] And if you had a different actor playing it differently, it would be missing and it wouldn't be the same film. Well, I think that's a little bit of what this film actually suffers from, is that just the heft is missing in that role of Odysseus, especially considering how Christopher Nolan has written this and the adaptions he's made. Odysseus very much is the jaded PTSD war veteran in this film.
[00:13:52] And Nolan really labours that point. And so if you're gonna do that, I think you need an actor who's going to really give you that emotional depth and hefty there that just like it grabs you, the viewer, the audience member, by the heart, really, and doesn't let go of you. You need like a force of nature performance. And I just don't think you really got that from Matt Damon, for whatever reason, and it might not be his fault. It's. You know, there's a whole combination of factors. Writing, direction, editing choices, which take. They choose, all that sort of stuff, as I said. But, yeah, for me, that was.
[00:14:29] I think that's possibly why. I mean, I know people who've seen it who said they feel that it just lacked a bit of heart.
[00:14:35] And I think that's not an unfair critique of this film. And I think, again, it's. You've got this technical director who's really excellent at the technical aspects of filmmaking, but maybe to the neglect of the real emotional core of mythology and what you. You know, when you have a mythological experience in the cinema, that stays with you, it is. It's not because of technical prowess, it is because of the story, the way in which it is an authentic mythology which touches on those fundamental and universal themes of the human experience.
[00:15:17] A good mythology really does present natural law in a profound way, in an artistic way. And then on top of that, it's how the actors deliver and. And translate that to the audience and. And it just. To me, it felt a little bit lacking the score, the musical score for this one.
[00:15:38] I'm really interested in music and particularly in film and. And films can be very quickly. They can. And very easily, they can be destroyed. Destroyed. Destroyed, Sorry, what is destroyed? They can be destroyed by a. A bad musical score. A musical score that perhaps is just not compelling enough or that's too overbearing or that's too light. In this case, for me, it felt. There's one motif that. That does appear a couple of times in the film that I actually quite liked.
[00:16:13] It appears in a major way when they tie Odysseus to the mast of the boat and they sail past the sirens on the. The island.
[00:16:24] And that. That. That's the motif that I'm talking about, if you remember that part of the film. And that motif is used a couple of times, and it sort of. It. It's a theme that just pops up in small ways throughout the. The score of the film. But apart from that, there's not really much in the score. That.
[00:16:42] And again, I have a feeling this is part of the emotional core of the film that was missing for some people, because you contrast this with some of Nolan's previous films. And he has worked on several occasions with Hans Zimmer. And Hans Zimmer, for whatever reason, I think, has done some of his best work, his musical scoring work. He's a phenomenal composer, but he's done some of his best scoring work with Nolan.
[00:17:08] And I think of Interstellar and Interstellar, you have the pipe organization, and that is. There's the scoring. And that was really. It was done quite well. And it's a bit different to what Nolan Norley does, but it's also sort of a homage, I think, to.
[00:17:22] In fact, that whole film has moments of homage to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. And so this sort of. The score is calling back to that as well.
[00:17:31] Inception is phenomenal.
[00:17:33] Once you hear the musical scoring and Inception, you can't unhear it.
[00:17:38] The. The whole point of Inception, Nolan's movie Inception, is it's really about time.
[00:17:43] And once you hear the score and you realize that that whole score is built around the rhythmic ticking of a clock. And that is what drives the musical score, you can't really unhear it, and you realize there's. There's a real genius to that. And Ludwig Gorenstein has worked with Nolan previously on Oppenheimer. And I think Oppenheimer had a better score.
[00:18:12] It was more memorable, I think, just like Hans Zimmer did with Inception, tapping into the whole narrative of time. I think Ludwig Gorenstein, when his scoring of Oppenheimer, tapped into the whole narrative of atoms and expansion and atomic collision, you can hear that coming through in the staccato nature of that.
[00:18:37] The way that soundtrack is constructed, the motifs there, it's not quite there with this one, for whatever reason. So there's that one motif that really sticks out for me and I thought is a very beautiful motif.
[00:18:51] But then the rest of the film, it's fine, but it's not.
[00:19:00] It just felt like it could have been something different and it could have been better, it feels like, to me anyway. And I do wonder if this is part of the emotional core of the film that was missing for some people. Because if you don't have that in your soundtrack, your scoring, it really does make a big difference. And this is a score where in other parts of the film you really probably could have had other.
[00:19:23] Many other composers just slotting in there.
[00:19:26] And that is a weakness, I think. So, yeah, for me, the soundtrack was a little bit light and felt sort of generic, even though it's impressive. Like he.
[00:19:38] Gorenstein, I understand, went and like, actually recreated original Greek instruments and stuff. And I love that kind of aspect. I love hearing those beautiful old flutes and things being played.
[00:19:48] But it's just the.
[00:19:51] The total picture of that composition, the total picture of the composing of the score. It's just. For me, it's. It's not quite there.
[00:19:59] The dialogue. There was a bit of criticism and critique about the dialogue. Yeah, definitely. For me, the use of Mum and Dad in this as words in the script, that was jarring. It did stick out. And I remember when we got to those moments, thankfully, it's not overwhelming, though. Again, it doesn't overwhelm it and it doesn't.
[00:20:22] It doesn't ruin the whole experience, but it does.
[00:20:28] Like, at the time, I thought to myself, he could have easily used mother or father there and there would have been no problem there and it still wouldn't have been an issue.
[00:20:38] I don't know why dad was used. And it is. It's not just that it's a modern usage because the dialogue has been modernized to its film. But it also. Those particular words feel really, really inconsistent with the rest of the film. It's not like the rest of the film.
[00:20:53] They're all, you know, sitting around using Gen Z speak.
[00:21:00] It's not at all. It has more of a serious character to the dialogue. And Mum and Dad just don't quite. Again, coming back to Gravitas, they're not quite in that zone. But as I said, it's brief, it's fleeting, so it won't ruin the experience for you. And it didn't for me. But I did definitely did find that moment jarring. The one thing I did find more frustrating was the fact that there were two or three F bombs.
[00:21:26] In fact, it might even be slightly more than that. But there were F bombs in this film. And I don't know why. Like the rest of this film, there's nothing about the rest of this film, that would prevent you from bringing your family members to it. Probably younger kids would be very bored by it, I suspect, but you could bring teenagers to this.
[00:21:46] And so the rest of the film, there's no. There's no major over the top graphic violence. There's no nudity, there's no graphic sexual content in this. And then all of a sudden, we get these F bombs in this. And to me, that was just a bit jarring. I don't know why they're in there.
[00:22:02] Yeah, I just. I feel like you can easily craft dialogue if you're a skilled craftsman without having to do this. It didn't. It did not. If you'd taken those F bombs out, you would not have lost anything at all.
[00:22:16] You would not have lost a single thing at all from this film. So they're not. They are gratuitous in that way. They are not necessary at all to the storytelling and the mythology in this film. But you probably don't need to panic much anyway because, as you know, per usual and true to form, Nolan still has issues with his. His final sound design.
[00:22:38] And this has been a recurring theme in Nolan movies where dialogue is often lost and swamped by the final sound design. And there's been some very memorable examples.
[00:22:52] One really big one was in the Dark Knight Rises, the Batman movie with the character of Bane. Remember Bane? What a lovely singing voice.
[00:23:02] And there are moments of dialogue there throughout that film that were.
[00:23:08] You're just. You're struggling to hear what's actually being said. You need subtitles. Well, there's moments like this in the Odyssey as well. And Interstellar had them too. And I know Nolan, I've heard him talking about this and saying. He sort of goes for the sound realism.
[00:23:24] So, you know, you're in a spacecraft and it's full noise and it's not like you can hear people talking normally. But the whole point of the movie going experience is that a good director can balance that.
[00:23:35] They can give you the experience of, wow, that would have been really noisy. And like, a really good, clear example of this is any film which features nightclub scenes, a bad director will have a nightclub scene where people are dancing and there's dialogue taking place and you can hear the shuffling of feet and the music is just so quiet. It's in the background and it just. Your willing suspension of disbelief is destroyed in that moment. It takes you out of the film because, you know, that's not what a nightclub sounds like.
[00:24:07] A good director will balance that.
[00:24:11] So the other extreme Sorry for a bad director is you go into the nightclub and you can't hear anything. People are talking.
[00:24:16] And it's so true to form that all you hear is the loud music and. And you can't hear the dolo.
[00:24:23] A good director will find a way to balance the both.
[00:24:27] And they get that. They hit that sweet spot.
[00:24:31] And Nolan's sound design doesn't. Doesn't do that. And I have to say, generally the film was okay, but there are definitely places where you're like, I can't hear what this dude is saying. I don't know what this character is saying in this moment because of the sound design. So I guess the upside is that there may have been more F bombs and bad dialogue that no one actually heard as a result of that.
[00:24:51] The cyclops scene. We've got to talk about the cyclops scene. The cyclops scene is not only one of the more well known moments in the original story of the Odyssey, it is also the funniest moment in the story of the Odyssey. In the cyclops scene, in the original, you have Odysseus in a dialogue with the cyclops, and he claims that his name is Nobody.
[00:25:15] And so when he attacks the cyclops and the cyclops calls out for help, he screams out that nobody is attacking him. And so no one comes to his aid.
[00:25:26] And it's a very clever pun. It's a very clever linguistic device. And it's a famous moment. And as I said, it's one of the probably. It is the funniest moment, I think, in the Odyssey.
[00:25:37] And Nolan did not have that in the cyclops scene.
[00:25:42] I don't know why. Like that cyclops, I understand. Like, it was a big puppet. It was a big tall puppet they had. The way they designed the cyclops eye I thought was very clever.
[00:25:51] It really does almost look like a birth defect where the eye has sort of fallen into the middle of the face, rather than your sort of traditional, you know, just one eye stuck in the middle of the forehead.
[00:26:03] But there's no dialogue with the cyclops. And in fact, they effectively reduce the cyclops to being almost like an irrational character who. Who's like an animal, who's subhuman, who can't be dialogued with, can't be reasoned with.
[00:26:21] And it's a shame because that's not what's going on in that original scene, in that original moment in the Odyssey.
[00:26:29] And so nobody. The nobody line is missing.
[00:26:33] And also just the bit more of the development around that, what happens in the original Odyssey. And so that kind of cave scene, it just feels a little bit deficient. And I know some commentators have said, oh, they thought it was really clever. We'll talk about this Zeus's Law in a moment. They claim it's highlighting how Odysseus is violating Zeus law. He's not respecting the stranger, he's not treating him well, but it really doesn't do that because in actual fact, they go into the cave, the home. They don't know it's a Cyclops, but they go into the home of the cyclops and they stoke the fire and they wait for him so they can dialogue with him and ask for the food they desperately need. And before any of that can happen, the cyclops just wanders in and starts attacking and eating them.
[00:27:16] So it's not really that they've violated that law at all. And, yeah, that was. That was an odd choice, I think, given the fact that there's other things he shoehorned into the movie and adaptions of his own that he's made.
[00:27:32] And it seems like this was one of those simple things that could have actually been included.
[00:27:39] Which brings me to, I guess, thinking a bit more deeply about this film. And there's some commentary that I've seen online about this film. The Daily Wire. Ben Shapiro has been promoting this idea that effectively Nolan's Odyssey is a subversive Christian story. And he's claiming this because he says the inclusion and the really strong emphasis on. On Zeus's Law and Nolan's Odyssey. And Nolan, I've heard Nolan talking about this. The whole idea of you should respect and be courteous to the stranger.
[00:28:14] Ben Shapiro and others have been claiming that this is actually a presentation of the Christian vision of reality, the Christian worldview, that this is actually do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. This is love your neighbor.
[00:28:31] But in actual fact, this is not.
[00:28:34] There's a subtle but very important distinction here. Zeus law is not actually a presentation of Christianity at all. There are similarities, but there is a major fundamental difference. So Zeus's Law is basically this, that you should care for and respect the stranger in your midst, because the stranger could well be a God. It could be Zeus in disguise.
[00:29:01] And so if you mistreat a stranger, then bad things will happen to you if that stranger happens to be a God. If you care for the stranger, then good things will happen to you if they happen to be a God. So what's actually being said here is that you should respect and care for the stranger, because either something bad will happen to you if you don't, or something good could happen to you if you do, if they're a God.
[00:29:27] And so the idea here is that you're actually. This is actually a form of consequentialism. I do an action because I'm thinking about the consequence that will happen to me. I'll either get a good benefit or harm will come to me. And that's why I act and show respect to the stranger. That's not Christianity, though. That is absolutely not Christianity.
[00:29:48] First of all, for Christianity, the stranger actually is Christ. Always. It's never a question of is it God or not. It is God. Christ is present with the poor, the vulnerable, the stranger. There's a. There's a very real sense for Christianity that is the case, but that's a secondary point.
[00:30:04] The fundamental difference and core difference is this. The Christianity and Christian virtue is not.
[00:30:12] The Christian moral theology is not I will do a good thing because I will get a good outcome, or I will do a good thing because otherwise something bad will happen to me. In that case, what have you done? You've put yourself at the center of the action and you are acting for your own self interest.
[00:30:34] You are seeking your own consequence, a good outcome for yourself. That's why you're acting.
[00:30:41] But Christianity doesn't tell you to do good because you'll get a good outcome or to do good because otherwise something bad will happen to you. Now, Christianity calls you to self giving love. And even when something bad happens to you, like the stranger is hostile to you and the stranger becomes an enemy, when the stranger persecutes you, you are told to love even more in that moment. So for Christianity, the call is, I love my neighbour precisely because my neighbour is the imago dei. Every person is the image of God, there's no question about that. And they have profound human dignity.
[00:31:23] And when I love my neighbour, I am loving God in a very meaningful way. I am loving and respecting the image of God in that person. And I'm loving God because God says to me, love God with all your heart, mind and soul. And then the second most important commandment is love your neighbour as yourself.
[00:31:41] And there's also a sense in which my love of neighbour and love of the stranger is a reflection of a healthy love of self. So not arrogance or pride, self love, but a genuine respect for your own imago dei. You know, this person shares this with you. There's a common brotherhood and sisterhood that we have here in this. And so that's a very distinct difference. The example I like to use when talking about Christian moral philosophy is that of marriage.
[00:32:07] So if I told you that I only do the good things that a loving, sorry husband and father would and should do in a marriage.
[00:32:17] So, you know, being present, you know, picking up my share of the responsibility around the home, caring for the children, loving my wife when she is perhaps an orphan, but especially when perhaps she is in her own weakness and sufferings and all those kinds of things, and you know, my outworking of the role of loving husband and father in my day to day life in a family home. If I told you that I only do those things because I'm afraid that if I don't my wife will leave me, like a bad thing will happen to me or she'll mistreat me, you'd say, hey, something's not healthy, something's not right there. If I said to you alternately, I only do those things because I actually want to get a good outcome, I'm doing these things because my wife treats me better if I do these things. So that's the only reason why I do these things, or I do these things because, you know, maybe she cooks me a nicer meal, whatever it might be, you'd say, hold on, something's not right there either.
[00:33:15] The reason why I should do those things is not because I get something out of it. The reason why I should do those things is because I love my wife. I love God and I love my wife. And I love my wife in a very unique and particular way because we have entered into a covenant bond together in marriage.
[00:33:35] And so I love that marriage covenant too. I love God, I love truth. And as a way of honouring both him and my wife, I show my love as an outworking of that original marriage covenant.
[00:33:48] And it's not about me, it's not about my self interest, it's total self giving love.
[00:33:53] And that's a big difference.
[00:33:55] That's a great way, I think, to give a metaphor for the Christian moral vision.
[00:34:01] So if you think about this and what we see with Christ in the gospel, the great moment of those anathemas that he gives, sorry, the antithesis that he gives when he says, you have heard that it is said, thou shall not kill.
[00:34:15] Now that's the old covenant law, the old Jewish law, and in the old covenant law, thou shall not kill is you do an ethic, you follow an ethic, you don't kill someone, you follow the rule.
[00:34:28] And to be fair, it's actually pretty easy to go through your life without intentionally killing another human Being that is a pretty easy ethic to follow.
[00:34:36] But then what Christ says, this is the one of the great antithesis moments is he turns around and he says, but I tell you that if you have held anger in your heart against a brother or sister, you have already committed murder.
[00:34:52] So now Christ is saying, it's not enough just to follow the ethic, you must now have the ethos, the very cultural heart.
[00:35:02] It must be lived.
[00:35:04] So you don't just avoid certain actions or do certain things, you actually live that self giving love that underpins the action. The ethic is a fruit and a reflection of the ethos.
[00:35:18] And so you must embody and live the ethos.
[00:35:22] You know, you've heard that it is said, do not commit adultery. But I say to you, if you look at a woman lustfully, you've already committed adultery. So you see how now this is very different. It's a call to a complete and total self giving love. Love for God, love for neighbour. And it's embodied. It's not simply a set of black ink rose rules and ethic that I follow. And I don't do that either for my own self interest. It's not because I'm afraid of a bad outcome or I'll get something out of it. And so that is a big distinction. But and this is the important part, because in the Odyssey, Nolan's Odyssey, there is definitely a Christianization that is much more profound, I think, and it is a very powerful one.
[00:36:13] And that is the fact that Nolan has very much labours the point that Odysseus is a jaded warrior, he is a war veteran, and it's really PTSD, we'd call it in today's context that he is experiencing.
[00:36:30] And he really labors that point.
[00:36:32] And there is a very beautiful moment in the film and I actually quite like this moment and I'm sure because I've seen some people already criticizing it, that some people won't like it if they haven't seen the film yet. And others who've possibly seen the film didn't like because it's not consistent with the original pagan ideology that underpins the Odyssey. And this is the moment where Odysseus is lamenting, he is mourning, he is contrite and expressing deep sorrow and sadness for the evil they committed and the sacking of Troy and what they did.
[00:37:05] He is actually, he doesn't say it, but he's all but saying war is evil and we participated in something evil there that is not at all consistent with the pre Christian pagan Ideology, the, the cre. The pre Christian pagan world celebrates strength, they worship it. In fact, the whole point of these great Homeric tales is like if you do see your neighbour as weaker and more vulnerable and you like, it's. There's a sense in which you have a moral duty to conquer them and take their stuff. And when you do that, you are celebrated and you all lauded for that greatness and the raping, the pillaging, the murdering, you know, and the conquest. It's a sign of your greatness, your strength. You are the Ubermensch that Friedrich Nietzsche claims we should be.
[00:37:56] So this is Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christianity. He hates Christianity. He doesn't just disagree with Christianity, he thinks Christianity is a moral evil that is destroying and underpinning society. And he says we need to go back and look at the example of the pre Christian pagan world because they celebrate strength, they're not obsessed with mercy and compassion. He thinks this holds society back.
[00:38:18] He says, you know who's obsessed with mercy and compassion?
[00:38:22] The slavers, because they're weak. But you know who's not obsessed with those things? The slave master. Because they are strong, they don't need to be.
[00:38:30] And so he thinks that Christianity promotes this master slave mentality and it's destructive and it's holding western society back. And we need the Ubermensch. And so in the pre Christian world, someone like Odysseus and the other great heroes of these epics, they are these Ubermensch characters, the display of strength and these, even these acts that we would rightly look at now through the lens of the Christian vision of reality and called barbaric, they just all in a day's work for them it's all part of being the strongman and being the hero. And so when you have Nolan with Odysseus really lamenting that that is a deeply Christian vision of reality.
[00:39:15] To look at that and say that in actual fact I have done something morally wrong there and something that is not commendable.
[00:39:23] That is a profoundly Christian idea, that a truly great person is a person of authentic love. And at times authentic love will require you to take up the sword to defend against evil aggression that is perpetrated against the vulnerable.
[00:39:38] But a man of authentic love, a leader of authentic love, is also a leader of mercy and compassion.
[00:39:46] And we understand that. And that's a big distinction.
[00:39:49] And there's also, there should be a moral center and core to your actions even when you are engaged in battle and in war.
[00:39:58] And that is very much an idea that you feel is missing.
[00:40:03] Like in Nolan's Tale. It's not missing as in he's. He's avoided it, but he's put that into the story that these men are missing. Like they're on this beach for years.
[00:40:13] And it's like, why are they still fighting this battle? What's the point? And then when they. Do you really feel, I have to say, though, that what is previously we'd probably think of as a very clever ruse, the Trojan Horse, which, by the way, is very well done, that practical set piece to get them into Troy.
[00:40:30] You now you really do feel like, oh, my gosh, these guys are actually just nefarious terrorist type characters who have, you know, they don't have real courage at all.
[00:40:46] They almost cowardly snuck into the city and then let the armies in. So it's missing. That's very different. It's very stark. Again, as I said, this is a very Christian idea. And this is where you do get this very Christian rejection of the Ubermensch and of the worship of strength.
[00:41:05] It's. It's very, very noticeable in this particular tale, and I actually appreciate that. It was a very beautiful moment, I thought.
[00:41:12] I mean, one of the good things is people are discussing the Odyssey now. They're talking about the Odyssey. And that's not a bad thing. It's good. It's a very important piece of literature in the Western canon. And it's clear that more and more of us are learning lots of interesting things by the fact that we've got all these scholars now in as a result of this film who are producing, you know, very digestible commentary. And we're seeing a lot more of it and it's getting boosted all over the place. So it's really good, actually. I'm enjoying actually reading different commentary from scholarly experts in this and learning more and more stuff myself about the Odyssey. So I think that's a really good thing.
[00:41:47] One thing I really loved, because it sounds like I'm hypercritical of this film. I don't want to appear that way because, as I said, overall, it's a.
[00:41:53] It's Nolan showing that he is still one of the top filmmakers of today. But it is one thing to be a top filmmaker. It's another thing to put together a complete film, if you like, with the fullness of mythology and the gravitas and the heart of it. And I feel that aspect is lacking here. But I don't want to sound like, you know, everything in this film I didn't like. A single thing was awful. No.
[00:42:16] One of the things I really loved in this movie was, was the way he chose to depict Hades and the depiction of Hades. Cause before going into the film, I remember thinking to myself, I knew it was gonna be in there. And I thought, I wonder how he's gonna depict Hades. I wonder how he's gonna do this. Cause he has a sort of grounded realism to it.
[00:42:36] And that's one of the things about this film.
[00:42:38] Despite what you might have heard, the gods are present in this film. But the way they are present.
[00:42:45] Nolan prefers to have that sort of grounded realism. Even when he's making a comic book movie like Batman, he grounds it in a more realistic tone. And that's very much present here. But the gods are also still present in this.
[00:42:57] And the way he does it is very grounded. So I thought, well, I wonder how he's gonna do Hades then. How is he gonna do the underworld with that in mind? And he does it really, really well. And I think it's Norway or Iceland or something like that. I'm not entirely sure. Probably should have done a bit of research, shouldn't I, and gone and looked this up where they shot this.
[00:43:16] But it's a volcanic black sand coastal region where it's filmed. And they had actors.
[00:43:24] The characters who are in Hades, they're actually in the black sand with snorkels. And then they come out of the sand, they emerge from the sand. And it is very. I thought that was very, very cleverly and very well done. I really, really like that.
[00:43:38] The Trojan horse and the sacking of Troy, leaving aside the emotional aspects of it, it's a very well shot set piece, an action set piece. And the, The. The Trojan horse.
[00:43:51] Yeah. I mean, for a real set piece, it was great. It was just very well crafted. And the way that they bring it into the city as well, it is not.
[00:44:01] It's. It's very clever. It's a take that I hadn't really considered before, because every other depiction of the Trojan horse, it's already standing upright. And very commonly you see it on wheels. So they wheel it into the city.
[00:44:15] Nolan goes from a more grounded realism. I won't spoil too much for those who haven't seen the film, but I actually quite like that. And the look of the horse was awesome. And I loved this one scene where the Trojan horse is brought into the city and it kind of looks pretty fragile and you. And all of a sudden you get our actual characters who are hiding inside the horse.
[00:44:41] They.
[00:44:42] You can see the panic on their faces where they Wonder whether or not the horse might actually be their undoing, whether this, this great device might not actually succeed and it might fail them and this might become their tomb. And. And I really love that it's. You sort of get the sense of fragility and also the cleverness of it. It's a very good little set piece.
[00:45:04] So, yeah, there's other examples like that as well, that they're really well crafted stuff. However, in saying that, I do think that ultimately why I feel this film falls short. And funnily enough, this might sound strange because this is a very long movie.
[00:45:23] To me, it feels like they didn't stick the landing. The ending, it feels like to me, is where the film ultimately sort of fails. It fails at the final hurdle and as a result, it undermines the totality of the experience.
[00:45:41] There's a film called the Return that's also about Odysseus. Ralph Fiennes is playing Odysseus in this particular adaption.
[00:45:51] And it's not the complete Odyssey. The Return begins at the point in the story in which Odysseus is washed up on the shores of Ithaca.
[00:46:02] So it is literally the moment he's shipwrecked back on his home island. And then it proceeds to tell the story, the rest of the story from there. Ralph Fiennes is phenomenal. He went through a training regime. He didn't become big and buff, but he leaned down and became muscular.
[00:46:19] And man, he really does look like what you would imagine an aging Greek warrior quite conceivably would have looked like. And it really added to the realism and the way that that film is written and the way that it all unfolds, I think that's a better ending. And I said to my kids who came with me to watch the Odyssey on Friday night, I feel that if Nolan had followed the tone and trajectory of the movie, the Return as his ending, then I think that that would have been just a stronger and more compelling conclusion to Nolan's Odyssey.
[00:46:59] The one thing about the Return, like Anne Hathaway, was great. She's a great actress and real powerhouse of a performance as Penelope. But one thing to me that's very noticeable, and I contrast this with the Return, is you don't feel her. Well, I didn't anyway. You don't really feel her vulnerability.
[00:47:16] She is in a very vulnerable situation when Odysseus is away, her husband is away.
[00:47:21] Her son Telemachus, played by Tom Holland in Nolan's Odyssey, is not capable of defending her. He's just too vulnerable himself. And the Return does that much better. And I think, again, this was a casting thing and a writing decision. Telemachus in the Return is really, I think, what you need Telemachus to be. He is the young son who is not ready to resume, is not ready to actually take up the mental of his father, and he can't. He's not capable of saving his mother. He's almost on the Cusp, but he's not there. Tom Holland feels like he's actually already crossed that cusp. And particularly towards the end, the way Nolan has written his ending, he needed Telemachus to really be ready to take over as king.
[00:48:05] And so in this one, I think Telemachus is kind of too, too much over. He's too overpowered, basically.
[00:48:12] Whereas in the Return, he's much more vulnerable. And you feel the powerlessness of Odysseus's household with all of these suitors and these scoundrels who have taken up residence and who are now they have come to. It's like, you know, the scourging of the shire in the Lord of the Rings, this evil has overtaken his kingdom and his vulnerable wife, she's in this awful situation and she is powerless.
[00:48:38] You really feel that with Penelope in the Return, but with Anne Hathaway and the writing and her performance, she's. She's too powerful, I think. Like, I didn't feel her vulnerability. It never really felt to me like she was ever seriously in danger.
[00:48:55] You feel that in the Return. In the Return, it's just. It's.
[00:49:00] In fact, if I'm remembering this correctly, in Nolan's Odyssey, it really is Penelope who finally is the one who takes charge and decides when the final.
[00:49:13] The final challenge for these suitors will be and how that will all unfold. And she sort of resigns herself to this, but in a very. It's her decision, and she's very much in charge. She's the one dictating terms.
[00:49:27] But in the Return, it's not like that at all.
[00:49:31] It's the desperation, and you feel the fact that she is trapped, and you really feel the weight of this and Odysseus absence and the desperate need of his return.
[00:49:42] And then that adds to the impact of his return. And what that means.
[00:49:45] Nolan doesn't have that. It's all missing.
[00:49:48] And the other thing, too, is that Nolan includes a scene in his Odyssey that is not in the original Odyssey. He's written a whole new scene with the temple at Philos and an encounter where Odysseus meets his son and that, I think that completely undercuts and undermines the actual homecoming.
[00:50:13] Because Odysseus, that final moment where there's that realization, this is my father, and Penelope realizes this is my husband, it's not a beggar.
[00:50:24] That moment needed, I think, to have more impact. The impact is sort of lost. So that when we actually do get to that final moment and the killing of the suitors, the scourging of the Shire, if you like, it actually kind of just feels a bit hollow. It's like, yeah, they already know who he is.
[00:50:42] The other thing that I was really kind of surprised by was the final moment with Odysseus and his hunting dog.
[00:50:52] And the Return, again, the movie, the Return does this moment a lot better.
[00:50:58] So Odysseus, very aging hunting dog is waiting for him patiently to return.
[00:51:06] And when Odysseus returns, there's a beautiful moment of reuniting, and then the dog dies.
[00:51:13] In the movie, the Return, the depiction of that moment is much more powerful and compelling. Nolan rushes that. It just. It was very noticeably rushed. It's like, okay, dog's dead, right? Let's get on with it. It just. Again, great technical filmmaker, but the. The human emotions missing. The thing you really want to labor there is missing.
[00:51:36] It's just not complete.
[00:51:37] And so. And that was really noticeable. So it, As I said, it feels like the Return actually was a better and more compelling return of Odysseus to Ithaca than what this great epic of Nolan's was. This. This tour de force of cinema.
[00:51:55] Couldn't stick the landing, the Return. And then it's also, I think, hampered by, like, the reason why I think Nolan overpowers Telemachus and is writing because he wants Telemachus to take over as king so that Odysseus can then get into a boat and. And right off into the sunset with Penelope, his love. Because there's this whole theme of. Now, initially, it makes sense when she wants him, you know, let's just go. Let's just get into the boat and sail off into the sunset and we don't have to go and fight this war. I don't want to lose you.
[00:52:32] And it makes sense initially why she's proposing this because she's afraid. She knows the cost. She knows. She understands what Odysseus is signing up to when he leaves to go to this war.
[00:52:47] And so it really does. It's compelling.
[00:52:52] It is compelling and dramatic when she is saying, no, let's just leave.
[00:52:57] We don't have to. We can go. We can leave. And Leave all of this behind us.
[00:53:03] But then to come back to that at the ending and to have Odysseus actually have that as his final conclusion where he, they sail off into the sunset together, they leave their son behind, they leave their homelands behind.
[00:53:18] I look at that and I think that is a very modern liberal take.
[00:53:23] And to me that was really quite jarring.
[00:53:27] It just. To me it didn't.
[00:53:30] Part of me is like, well what's the point of the homecoming?
[00:53:33] What's the point of fighting all the way home and then restoring, you know, removing, scourging the shire so that you can then get in a boat and leave and go and do your own thing again? It's this very liberal self referential idea and I should be happy. This is absolutely not the Christian vision of reality and it is not ultimately a recipe for happiness either when you seek your own pleasure, your own self satisfaction and it's very much, well we should be happy and we'll just take off. It's very much, I think a modern and this is, no, I'm not trying to insult the baby boomer generation but it's very much a trend we see with the baby boomer generation. This whole idea of, you know, I'm going to sell the house and I'm going to go on cruises and I'm going to my final year should be life of happiness and pleasure sort of thing.
[00:54:24] And there's something incomplete about this.
[00:54:28] It's not. Yeah, there's something incomplete there. And so that theme is very much how this is a very modern western liberal way of ending your film.
[00:54:36] It would be very foreign to tradition and to the characters, whether they were Christian, Jewish or pagan, but characters in the ancient world and for much of human history would think that was a very strange and very. They would probably even think it was a selfish thing that he, he'd done there.
[00:54:54] Because in actual fact, particularly for the ancient cultures, cultures like the pagan Greeks, homeland is essential. Your gods are tied to your homeland, your homeland.
[00:55:09] To lose your homeland is to lose something divine and fundamental to your very essence.
[00:55:17] So to just sort of willingly leave it all behind and unless you're going to present him and they don't really do this as some great explorer, navigator type character then in many ways it almost feels like the polar opposite of what you would want anyway. Because the whole movie labours the point that he wants to get home.
[00:55:39] It's home in totality that he misses.
[00:55:42] It's not just his, you know, sentimentality or lust for Penelope.
[00:55:50] It feels to me that something's been cheapened in this ending.
[00:55:54] It's homeland, it's his family, it's his land, it's his responsibilities, it's his. It is his divine right and his divine place.
[00:56:03] And that's the thing. So he labors to get home and then you have him effectively immediately getting in a boat and leaving and just leaving that all behind and going on another odyssey. It's. It doesn't quite work.
[00:56:18] And to me that was really quite a jarring inconsistency.
[00:56:23] And what I think you really need is a sense of that understanding of family as the first and most fundamental community.
[00:56:33] And that's what the pagan world understood. The liberal world doesn't understand that.
[00:56:38] They see the autonomous self choosing individual and their personal happiness as first and foremost. And that's a very different idea. That's how Nolan concludes his film. That is not a Christian ending, I'd argue to this movie at all.
[00:56:50] Instead, what you're really looking for, I think in that moment is a return to the Shire and a return to something. It's like a Samwise gameji type moment.
[00:57:05] This is where you really ground yourself again and you discover your moral heart again. And it's found in family, it's found in your obligations as king, it's found in your obligation to your son, all of those kinds of things. And this is why Telemachus is overpowered, because Nolan needs him to be ready to be king.
[00:57:25] So yeah, for me, that was that. That's the thing. It just doesn't stick the ending that the ending doesn't land well. The return, I think, is a better ending.
[00:57:36] Final thoughts?
[00:57:37] Well, I don't agree with anyone who claims this is Nolan's greatest film. People are claiming that already.
[00:57:44] Absolutely. It is not.
[00:57:46] I can think of at least three other films of Nolan's that I would say have a gravitas, a mythology, a mythological heart, a powerful, compelling, emotional heart that is much deeper and I think more meaningful and complete than what we get in the Odyssey. As far as film greatness goes, you'd have to say the Dark Knight is a phenomenal, complete piece of technical filmmaking. And it really is, and it elevated a genre.
[00:58:16] Nolan has done this a couple of times.
[00:58:18] Nolan has made films that really define and create something new.
[00:58:25] And they're the sort of movies like the Matrix was, where you go into the movie, you've never seen it before. You go into the movie theater and you watch that film and you come out the other side and you go, wow, I've never seen any that Was. That was new. That was amazing. It was just. It was an experience and it's sort of almost overwhelming. It's what cinema really should be in a sense.
[00:58:45] Cinema at its greatest. And it's the type of experience where people will often say, I wish I could forget all of that and go back into the movie fresh for the first time and experience it all over again. It's one of those kind of experiences. And he's done that a couple times, so. One was the Dark Knight Rises. He absolutely did that in the Dark Knight Rises. It was phenomenal filmmaking. And it was also this genre defying. He took superhero genre like Batman and he elevated into something else completely different. A very serious drama with these really interesting and profound themes running throughout it. It really does have some deep themes, that movie.
[00:59:30] And also a gravitas and a technical proficiency that, yeah, it was just off the charts. That. That is a phenomenal film.
[00:59:38] I personally think Interstellar film me. Even though Interstellar didn't receive as much love, ironically, Interstellar is kind of like an Odyssean story. It is an odyssey that Matthew McConaughey's character goes on in Interstellar. He leaves his family and he's desperately trying to get back to them. It's very much a sense of the Odyssey in this.
[01:00:03] And so I think Interstellar, for me, it was really. I liked Interstellar again, the cinematography, the filmmaking, and also the story. And I think some people kind of missed the heart of that film. People were like, oh, you're saying that love is, you know, is the thing that at the heart of the universe, it's what drives the universe. They're like, what a silly idea. It's physics that is the typical reductionist materialist mentality at work that has failed to recognize there's this profound truth here. And it's a very Christian idea too, actually, that love is at the center of all things, has existed for all of eternity and all of the material world, all of the cosmos, all of creation, flows out of love. And that love is the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit engaged in an eternal act of self giving love.
[01:00:55] And so, yes, the love. The universe is driven by love. And it is love that is at the heart of all things and the greatness of all we see around us. There is a very beautiful Jewish tradition, Christianity obviously adopts this as well. That every profound and beautiful thing you see around you, the whole of creation, the only reason it exists is so that you can be here and be in relationship with God. And that's a Very profound idea.
[01:01:20] And so this. Yeah, and there's also a theme in this movie about technology and morality.
[01:01:27] And it really does. Like, Matt Damon's character represents the best of the technological, the, the myth of progress, the kingdom of man. We will save ourselves with our own science and technology. And we are literally told that Matt Damon's character represents the best of all of that, of humanity. And yet in that movie he turns out to be the villain who, if they hadn't have worked out a way to resolve that problem, he would have destroyed them. And his lack of love would have been the undoing of, of all of humanity in that film.
[01:02:03] And so there's really beautiful stuff in this and I, I really liked Interstellar. I, I perhaps think that maybe some of it just went over people's heads a little bit too much. And I understand that and I don't, I don't begrudge anyone for that, but I think Interstellar for me was a more complete and better film.
[01:02:20] And again, Matthew McConaughey carries the, the gravitas of that film is carried by Matthew McConaughey in a very.
[01:02:31] Yeah, he just. If he hadn't have given the performance that he gave in that film, then again, I think he would have had another Odyssey problem with Interstellar. But for my mind, I think that the complete, the most complete, the best Nolan film so far.
[01:02:49] I was not as big a fan, by the way, of Oppenheimer.
[01:02:53] I get it and I get the hype around Oppenheimer again, amazing, well crafted film, but it just didn't land for me as a.
[01:03:02] It's kind of hard. I really felt for Nolan in a sense because he's adapting a non fiction work and it's real history and he's.
[01:03:12] Yeah, he. It's not like you can just adapt that and do what Nolan normally does with films. It's a very different thing.
[01:03:18] But to my mind, I actually think that Inception is Nolan's greatest film to date.
[01:03:29] And I say that because Inception is just, to my mind, it is the complete package.
[01:03:37] You have an idea that I think is, and certainly in cinema is at that blockbuster level.
[01:03:45] It is wholly original, but it really shouldn't work on paper.
[01:03:50] If I said to you never seen the film Inception, I said Inception is about a group of people who go somewhere with another person who's the victim, the mark.
[01:04:03] And they all go to sleep and they enter that other man's dream to try and convince him to change his plans.
[01:04:15] And so the whole movie is them inside his dream world. If I Told you that, you'd probably think, okay, this doesn't sound like a really compelling movie.
[01:04:26] What we got, though, was like he took that idea and he delivered that idea in such a way that it was just ingenious.
[01:04:38] And not just the technical aspects, the set pieces and everything else that were amazing. All of that Nolan esque stuff you usually get, but the way he created the different characters and how you need a team and even the training and preparation, it was all very compelling.
[01:04:56] The idea that you have to have someone who's a dream architect who creates and is responsible for holding the architecture of the dream world together. So the victim, the mark, it's believable for them, the fact that you have to have a technician who knows how to get you into a deep state of sleep. Then he says, let's have the. While they're in the dream state, we'll enter another dream state within the dream. And then we'll even enter a third level. We'll go to another dream within the dream. So you've got a dream within a dream within a dream. And also the great danger in this cause how do you do this and have meaningful stakes in drama? Well, the way you do it is you create a world, a mythology, in which you can easily get stuck in that very, like the deepest level of a person's subconscious. You could get stuck there in a type of limbo, a permanent state of comatose, and you never get out.
[01:05:46] It's compelling, it's ingenious. And then you have characters who are very cleverly named.
[01:05:55] You have Ariadne, you have the character from Greek mythology who actually helps you get out of the maze and escape the Minotaur.
[01:06:08] And that's exactly what her character does in this film. Like, there's a. I think possibly people don't realize just how much thought really went into Inception. And then on top of that, it said you've got this thing delivered in such a way as there's these new ideas. It was groundbreaking stuff. Like it's delivered with Nolan's phenomenal, you know, filmmaking, technology and prowess, but with unique ideas that just stay with you long after the film and that are new and are different to what you've seen before. And then on top of all of that, you have got an amazing Hans Zimmer score. It is one of his best. It's memorable. As I said, it's the ticking clock, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. That sets the rhythm and the design and the creation of that musical score.
[01:07:00] And the pieces are memorable and they stay with you, when you hear them, you know instinctively what that is and where it's from. It's, as I said, it's some of Hans Zimmer's best work, I think has been done when he has worked with Nolan. Whether it's the Dark Knight, whether it's Inception, whether it's interstellar, Hans Zimmer consistently produces really good scores. I think when he is working, he has done when he's working with Nolan. And then on top of all of that, as if that wasn't enough, there's a compelling human drama at the heart of this. And the film ends on a twist which will be debated and still is debated to this day about what the meaning of this is.
[01:07:43] A compelling twist that causes people still to this day to debate how much of that movie was actually real.
[01:07:53] It's like, it's just phenomenal.
[01:07:57] Like I just, to me, Inception is still his masterwork.
[01:08:03] And the Odyssey, while the Odyssey is obviously not this great sci fi epic on that scale, it has its own epic nature, but it doesn't. And its own greatness in a sense. It doesn't scale those heights. It doesn't. It's not that.
[01:08:20] In fact, speaking about the epicness of this film, I'd heard this, people said this is an amazing epic film and you don't get epic cinema like this anymore.
[01:08:27] But I have to say I actually, at the end of it was like, okay, I kind of get it. But you actually still do get epic cinema like this.
[01:08:38] I mean, often there's a lot of cg, but you do get big, massive world building epics still.
[01:08:45] So I don't think it was really drastically unique in that way. It didn't really stick out to me. And in fact, as I said, possibly part of this is the score and also the storytelling and sticking the landing.
[01:08:57] I was, I went into this after hearing this commentary about how epic this was and you don't get filmmaking like this anymore. I sort of thought that what I was going to be going into was more like what you saw with Gladiator. You did. That was an epic film. There was an epicness to it. The score, Hans Zimmer again, Ridley Scott, the visuals, the story, the character, the epic arc and sweep of the narrative.
[01:09:22] I thought this is what we were going to get but with Nolan's amazing technical creativity and prowess. But it didn't really, it didn't reach that height. So yeah, I don't, I really don't think this is Nolan's best film.
[01:09:37] I guess some people, it will resonate More with them because of the subject matter and what it is and they might not like that other. The other types of films that he produces. But I don't think it is all reasonable to at all reasonable to say that this is his best movie. I just. I don't think it is.
[01:09:55] It's great. He's a phenomenal filmmaker. He's showing, he just, he does show in this film. He still has it. Even when Nolan produces a film that is not as good as his greatest films, it's still.
[01:10:06] He's talking streets ahead of other filmmakers around him today.
[01:10:12] And so, yeah, it's still phenomenal filmmaking overall. As I said, it didn't quite stick. The landing. The emotional heart, I think is missing. The ending is really incomplete.
[01:10:24] But yeah, it's a good film. I don't think as far as. Will this film have legs?
[01:10:33] Will it be remembered and talked about the way say the Dark Knight is still talked about today in 10 years time? Will it be talked about the way Inception's talked about?
[01:10:43] Will it be as memorable as things you saw in Interstellar?
[01:10:47] I don't know. I don't think it will. I don't think it will.
[01:10:53] And so, yeah, I mean, it's very. I guess my interview feels like. Sorry, my interview, my review here feels like it's coming to a rather flat ending.
[01:11:05] But in some ways that maybe is quite fitting when you consider and think about this film.
[01:11:12] As I said, the Return and what I really like. One thing I really liked about the Return, as I said, was Telemachus feels vulnerable and in need of his father, which he obviously is Penelope. You really feel the danger and the drama and the. And the vulnerability of her situation and the need of her husband, Odysseus.
[01:11:31] And then the other one is Antonius. So Antonius in Nolan's Odyssey, played by Robert Pattinson. As I said, he's cheering the scenery. He is pure villainy. He's great.
[01:11:42] What he's doing there, what is the direction Nolan's chosen to take. It works.
[01:11:47] However, Antonius in the Return I think is a more compelling character because he is more complex. He is not one dimensional. He's still the moral coward. But you find yourself at times going, ah, yeah, maybe he kind of has a point.
[01:12:04] And it's almost like you feel a sorrow for him when he dies in the end.
[01:12:10] And I think that's actually okay because in reality that's really how moral cowardice works.
[01:12:18] A moral coward is, generally speaking, is not someone that in the moment you look at and you go, oh, My gosh. That's such a despicable, evil, horrible person.
[01:12:28] That's who Antonius is in Nolan's Odyssey.
[01:12:33] But in the Return, you see Antonius as a man who basically he just lacks essential virtue. And so his priorities are disordered because of a bad formation.
[01:12:48] And he's.
[01:12:50] It's not that he's this evil psychopathic villain, it's that he lacks this essential thing called virtue that allows him to see the fullness of the world. And so I think, I think many of us could easily identify with Antonius in the Return and I think rightly be challenged by that.
[01:13:08] And he's a more complex, he's a more well drawn character and that was very, very noticeable for me between these two films.
[01:13:17] Should you go and see it? Yeah, it's a good film.
[01:13:20] There's things. I mean, some people are now going to be frustrated.
[01:13:24] The scene on the island with the pigs, man, there's a real modern narrative going on there. It's. And that character is, is changed from the original.
[01:13:36] But look, if you go on with your eyes open.
[01:13:39] Yeah. None of that stuff really overwhelms the movie to such a degree that it destroys it. None of that stuff has you going, oh my gosh, this film is awful and it ruined the experience for me. And as far as films go today, I disagree with the commentary. Those who have claimed that this is actually a type of Trojan horse and Nolan is sneaking in something here. I, I don't, I don't think that's. I think people want that to be the case, but I don't think, especially listening to Nolan himself and his own take on why he did this and why he wrote the story the way that he did. I don't think that's a fair assessment. But at the same time, this is not like a lot of other films today that you get where the woke ideology, it's just a bully poppet to preach at you. And the characters are just poorly crafted. They're. They're sort of very shallow and superficial because they only exist as placeholders to try and lecture you about how you should be living and what's wrong with you and what's wrong with the world and your society, etc.
[01:14:43] That's not this film. This film does not do that. It definitely doesn't do that.
[01:14:48] It is much more subtle in that regard. And as a result, yeah, it is. It's kind of refreshing to go to a film where you've got a filmmaker who is following some of those cultural trends, but they do it in such a way that you can still have a really good cinematic experience at the other side of it. It's not ruined, and I think it is. I think everyone. I mean, ideally, if you can go and see it on imax, I think that's something I'd like to do if I ever get that opportunity, just to see the full creative vision. But if you get the opportunity, especially if you can get discount tickets, go along and see it. It is a. I think it is a film that deserves to be seen at least once at the cinema. I'm definitely glad I did that. I think seeing this on the small screen probably would have lessened the experience for me. And I would say one very sage piece of advice, definitely do not watch this movie for the first time. If you're going in for the first time when it arrives on one of your overseas plane trips, don't watch it for the first time on a plane. Too small. Wrong experience.
[01:15:48] At the very least, watch it on a big widescreen tv. But ideally, watch it in the cinema. Hopefully you've enjoyed that conversation about the Odyssey, Nolan's Odyssey, as I think we writers should be calling it. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let me know what you think in the comments section below. Thanks again for tuning in. Don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the Dispatchers.
