film diatribe

Like most white men in their thirties, I’m a big fan of Christopher Nolan’s work. I’ve caught (almost) all of his films in theaters since Batman Begins (2005).

Millenial Man Remembers Newspapers!

This was still in the days where you would have to either call the Movie Phone line or open the newspaper to see the recent releases and local showtimes. My parents didn’t want me racking up a big phone bill constantly calling Movie Phone (they were right to do it, I would’ve called every day just to know what’s playing) so I’d check showtimes in our newspaper. I still remember sitting outside with my mother as she read off films in the newspaper, trying to talk me out of seeing Batman. “You don’t want to see that” she told me. She thought I would be bored by it because he’s only Batman for a little bit of the film. Naturally, I took it as a challenge and went to see it anyway. It blew me away; I didn’t know a superhero film could feel so fresh and exciting.

So naturally, in preparation for Christopher Nolan’s latest film, I wanted to read The Odyssey by Homer. The one available at my library was the new translation by Peter Green, and I really enjoyed his preface where he cast serious doubt that The Odyssey was actually written by the same man that wrote The Illiad. I was prepped for the Homeric pentameter and was ready to dig in.

I made it probably 60 pages before I gave up.

Look, I don’t want you to assume, dear reader, that I’m not a well-read man. I read a lot. My library card gets as much use as my gym membership card (and I go to the gym a lot. I’m like really buff). I spread the gospel of the library and its apps (like Kanopy for you fellow cinephiles, check it out. It’s amazing). I also don’t give up on books easily; I read the entirety of The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma despite hating the premise set up in the first fifteen pages (that is a separate rant for another article). So please give me some grace when I admit my failure as a book reader.

The original text is an impenetrable fortress of namesakes that open and close every line, “Sagacious Telemachaus, son of the one who sacked Troy known as the great Odysseus. Heir to Ithaka. I, Menelaous, brother of Agamemnon, Uncle to…” and so on before they get to any actual information.

Luckily for me, Peter Green pre-empted my lack of patience and wrote a cliffnote-style section in the back where he summarizes the several books in The Odyssey (complete with catty comments like “Odysseus shoots an arrow through twelve axes, although I’m not sure what the author means by this, it’s not like there were skeletonized axe heads in the bronze age”

So, fully prepared, having bought my tickets months ago, I entered my local AMC at 10 PM for an IMAX showing of The Odyssey that would let out at 1:30 AM.

The Theater

We showed up to a packed house. The film was sold out in multiple showings all day long, so we had to park in the back of the lot where the people with fancy cars park. Amped up on caffeine for the late night film, we made it to the theater in record time and I parked my 2010 Scion xD next to a very nice Porche 911 and giggled to myself at how upset this driver would be to see my car next to his.

As we walked to the theater, we saw a group of teen boys in togas. Ah, to be a teenager. Willing to do anything for attention, dressing up in bedsheets just to sit down in a dark theater for three hours. “This is going to be a rowdy show” I warned Page as I nodded in their direction. I was wrong, of course. The entire theater was sucked in from the first knock of the Bard’s (Travis Scott) staff.

The Film

Usually, these kind of period-set hundred-million-dollar epics are too ambitious. And of course shooting it on IMAX 70mm cameras takes it to another level, but reading about the hikes they took is what got to me. These weren’t ten minute, or twenty minute walks; we’re talking forty minutes just to get to the filming location. Some of these scenes were so secluded, they needed to helicopter in gear. It’s a recipe for disaster.

But, in my humble opinion, Nolan knocked it out of the park. The near-three-hour runtime breezes past you. Don’t get me wrong; by the end of the film, you truly feel like you’ve been on the journey with Odysseus, but at no point was I considering checking my watch. The pacing of the film (edited by Jennifer Lame, one of Nolan’s newest post-production partners) is what makes it fly. The non-linear storytelling allows you to throw in these huge, sweeping action setpieces just at the right moment when the film has lulled you with palace intrigue.

The cast is a deck stacked with all aces, which wouldn’t make a very good deck of playing cards (woof, swing and a miss with this analogy), but it makes for a phenomenal cast. Each of the main players (Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, Tom Holland, John Leguizamo, Himesh Patel, Robert Pattinson, the brief but remarkable Zendaya) gets their moment to shine and they all knock it. Out. Of. The. Park. It’s some of the best work of each of these actors, many with a storied career of standout performances. I was blown away by how good Zendaya was with so little screentime. At the end of the film, she nearly moved me to tears.

The length is this film’s greatest strength. Nolan uses all this time up front establishing characters’ desires and lives, slowly building it up over the course of three hours; endearing you to some, infuriating you with others, and bringing the drama to a boiling point at the end where the pressure is so strong, it explodes in a ruthless, bloody mess that had my theater cheering and gasping in unison. It is a truly passionate, epic film.

On the surface, its the perfect film for Nolan to direct. Its the original non-linear story! Thays his whole raison d’être as a filmmaker. But I couldn’t help but see the story of a man separated from his family because of his job, desperately trying to get home and see it as a movie about being a filmmaker. He’s a man grasping at lost time, endlessly trying to get it back. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to get home.

The Theater Returns

Not only did I see it on Thursday night, but I went to The Music Box Theatre in Chicago to catch it on 70mm Saturday. We showed up early to hang out in the lounge, but it was clsoed for a private event: an engagement party (made a mental note of that, what better place for a private event than the best theater in Chicago). The Music Box has no assigned seating, so when we showed up around 5 for a 6:30 showing, there was already a dozen people in line. By the time I got in line at 5:30, I was nearly at the end of the street.

God bless the Music Box; real butter on the popcorn, staff that lives to throw people out of the auditorium for being on their phones, and consistenly screening films on film. It was a great showing. Since I saw the film already, I was prepared for some of the shocking parts, and chuckled at the unison gasp! and cheering as bodies fall to the ground, and one woman in front of me had to turn away during the scene with Cersei (Samantha Morton) working her magic on Odysseus’ crew.

Funny (true) story: As we were leaving the Music Box, Page and I were behind a middle-aged couple. The woman turns to her husband and goes, “I mean, Matt Damon, Greek? C’mon! Get outta here!” That’s all I was able to catch, and honestly, if Matt Damon was where she drew the line, I don’t wanna know what her thoughts on Clytemnestra were.

Like most Nolan films, this one needs to be seen in a theater, preferrably on film. I got my tickets to see it at the only IMAX 70mm theater in Illinois. It was sold out through August 5, where I got my two tickets for 7:45 AM. I checked back on Friday to get more tickets for family and the rest of the run is completely sold out, which means word of mouth traveled fast. Everyone is clamoring to see this on the biggest screen possible. If you don’t have an IMAX 70mm theater near you, good ol’ fashioned IMAX will be your best option. RUN! Don’t walk to this one, showings for premium formats are almost uniformly sold out.

Rating: 4.5/5

Who should see this film?

• Guys who wanna have a toga night with the boys
• People who gave up on the original, impenetrable text
• Nerds who read four different translations in the time it took me to read the footnotes
• The people that gave up on this article and scrolled to the end
• Anyone in the movie-going four quadrants (Father, Mother, Brother, Sister)
• Cyclops everywhere