‘The Odyssey’ Review: Christopher Nolan Takes On Time, Myth And War In Epic Retelling

Christopher Nolan has always thought about time as a malleable object. In Nolan’s worlds, its linearity is merely a suggestion. The clock may move forward, but its effect is omnidirectional. As early as Memento, Nolan wondered if, perhaps, we exist as constant possibilities of ourselves. In his cinema, we are all some version of Schrödinger’s Cat, both our youngest self at the exact same time we are our own future ideal. Past, present and future are all occurring simultaneously. Yet, while we can exist at all times, we cannot change what’s done. Nolan’s films are almost always about the masculine hubris to assume you can.

So it is for Odysseus (Matt Damon), whose decade-long journey home from victory in the Trojan War at the center of Nolan’s The Odyssey is equally about overcoming Cyclops, sirens and armies of giants as it is a reckoning with what he has done and inspired other men to do in his name.

If the late, great Pierre Soulages painted mostly, and only, with black, Christopher Nolan paints almost entirely in consideration of time and memory, and their mutual effect on the other. Homer’s Odyssey then seems like the most natural source for Nolan to inevitably land on. An epic poem whose very ubiquitousness defies its ancient place in the literary canon, it is a story told in perpetual flashback. Pushing backward and forward in equal measure, Nolan’s admirably faithful adaptation is, compared to his other work, remarkably restrained — even Ludwig Göransson’s beguiling score is perfectly used as propulsion rather than distraction, as can sometimes be the case with Nolan’s reliance on sound design. It may be his most achingly humanistic film. Not since The Prestige has the auteur so foregrounded his many characters’ emotional journeys. Extraordinarily staged and brimming with profundity, The Odyssey is a thunderous, anti-war screed on the persistent damage of patriarchal arrogance.

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Fittingly, therefore, The Odyssey begins with mythology. An entire banquet hall in Ithaca sings of the missing King Odysseus and his triumphs in the 10-year-long Trojan War. Eight years have passed since the fall of Troy, and Odysseus has not returned home. In his place, several dozens of piggish suitors have crammed the messes, deliberately draining Queen Penelope, played with career-defining bravado by Anne Hathaway, of her resources such that she may be forced to remarry without confirmation of her husband’s passing. In the process, they break the sacred Zeus’ Law, which dictates the necessity of treating strangers as family, since a God might be disguised as a beggar. The sanctity of the edict and the ignorance of its ethical importance is a backbone of the film and of Nolan’s ethos.

Penelope’s son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), a soft-hearted aspirant to the throne and devoted protector of his embattled mother, insists his estranged father is alive. If actors carry with them the context of past roles, Holland’s performance certainly seems tinged with the courageous naivety of Spider-Man, insisting on trying to influence those much more cunning and physically capable than he. Holland may be playing a child, but his performance is bursting with a newfound maturity. It is his strongest one to date.

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Chief amongst Telemachus’ rivals is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), a politicking snake attempting to erode Penelope’s fortitude through her need to be touched. Telemachus knows nothing can be done about him or any of the other suitors without verification of the existence (or lack thereof) of his father, and sets out, under cover of night, guided by Athena (Zendaya) and other unseen Gods into the sea. On his own journey, he is regaled with tales of his father’s triumphs by the kingdom’s loyal servant Eumaeus (John Leguizamo), Sparta’s King Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), and cautiously warned with the same by Helen (Lupita Nyong’o, who doubles as her twin, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife).

Meanwhile, Odysseus wanders the deserted beach of the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron). Clad in grey rags and shawls, the nearly white-haired Odysseus hypnotically drifts through an existence of relative serenity in her tranquil prison. He indulges in the drug-like effects of a lotus flower while sporadically recalling the major events of his past journey. Nolan more or less jumps between moments of Odysseus’ past as told either to Telemachus or to himself, in recollection.

Homer’s poem provides a natural canvas for Nolan to expound on any number of his favorite themes. His Odyssey is about the immutability of time, and it is also about the disastrous effects of being plunged, for too long, inside a memory, like Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Inception. Two men whose desperation to go home clouds their judgment and risks throwing them into the eternal depths of purgatory. Both films reflect a filmmaker interested in the sacrifices necessitated by artistry, even when that artistry is combat, and especially when that life consistently defies logic.

It is also a film about Penelope’s struggle to remain faithful to an absent husband, about Odysseus’ need to take ownership of the consequences of a multitude of choices, and about accepting the vulnerability that comes to a society that insists on hospitality as a pillar of its morality. Jennifer Lame’s cross-cutting editing, which has so defined much of Nolan’s work, turns The Odyssey into a fluid river of thrilling triumph and agonizing pain, allowing us to think of all these questions simultaneously.

Like all mythology of any oral tradition, it seems hard to know what might really be true, or what is not. At home, in Ithaca, Odysseus remains a legend of uncompromising stature; in his journey, however, he is fallible, pompous, impulsive and hard-hearted. Damon’s eternal boyishness is utilized to its logical end-point: playing a giant whose life is godlike and story is immortal. But he plays Odysseus as a simple man. In one of the decorated actor’s finest performances, he is someone whose knack for survival is pockmarked by an incessant need to prove his mettle, and to fervently deny his weaknesses.

That’s a task that becomes harder and harder as the challenges become more severe. Nolan and longtime collaborating cinematographer Hoyle van Hoytema render flashbacks of the war in all of its brutal, fiery agony. Shots of a fallen Troy become easy stand-ins for any number of current, prolonged brutalities in 2026. As with Oppenheimer, the film’s violent images inherently argue that war strips us of what makes us most human, notably the ability to see those we fight as the neighbors they are.

“We violated all that’s sacred between people and turned a fight into a hunt,” Odysseus says in recollection of his army’s action in Troy. Or, as Emily Wilson writes in the introductory pages to her translation, “the poem questions … the idea that change can be undone, and the notion that there is such a thing as home, where people and relationships can stay forever the same.” Nolan’s film, indeed much of his body of work, is about accepting these truths, and finding out what has remained human once the embers of war have been quelled. Only time will tell.

Producers are Emma Thomas and Nolan, with Thomas Hayslip executive producing.

Title: The Odyssey

Distributor: Universal

Release date: July 17, 2026

Director-screenwriter: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, Charlize Theron

Rating: R

Running time: 2 hr 52 mins