The Odyssey review: Christopher Nolan’s epic is a glorious cinematic experience and a triumph of both story-telling and movie-making… one viewing simply isn’t enough

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. Sir Christopher Nolan, a film nut since childhood, is by his own admission one of the geekiest of directors and in storytelling terms can also be one of the more long-winded.

So what might he make of the legend of the Trojan Horse and the subsequent adventures of Odysseus, King of Ithaca, as he encounters a one-eyed monster, malign spirits and Zeus knows what else while attempting to get back to his native land?

Ever since we first heard that Nolan was tackling Homer’s epic poem, some of us have been worrying how long he might take over it. After all, his awards-festooned Oppenheimer (2023) lasted three hours. Interstellar (2014) was almost as long.

Back in the 8th century BC, Homer is said to have taken ages to relate his mighty tale. There was an awful lot of story to tell, and even with bits of it left out, so there still is today. In Nolan’s hands, The Odyssey was always likely to challenge those susceptible to cramp.

But set your apprehension aside, sort out your food and water supplies, and buy your tickets. The good news is that it isn’t quite as lengthy as Oppenheimer.

Set your apprehension aside, sort out your food and water supplies, and buy your tickets. Christopher Nolan’s star-studded film The Odyssey is a glorious cinematic experience; Pictured Matt Damon and Zendaya

The better news is that Nolan’s film – its star-studded cast led by Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron and Zendaya – is a glorious cinematic experience, a triumph both of story-telling and movie-making.

This is the first feature film shot entirely in the 70mm IMAX format, something Nolan has wanted to do for years. In simple terms it creates a breathtaking sense of scale.

He is breathtakingly audacious, too, introducing us to the hollow horse of Greek mythology not as you might expect, as a vast wooden structure being dragged into their city by unsuspecting Trojans, but as a damaged curio, seemingly abandoned in the surf.

A sci-fi obsessive, Nolan surely intends this as a homage to the famous ending of Planet of the Apes (1968) when Charlton Heston finds the wreckage of the Statue of Liberty. More prosaically, it may also be because he loves beach scenes.

There is one in his 2017 picture Dunkirk once described by Quentin Tarantino, another film nut, as the greatest single shot in the history of war movies. The Odyssey, too, has some fantastic beach scenes.

Nolan might be the best director of sand since David Lean.

It’s not a glib comparison. Nolan already belongs with Lean on any list of the greatest British directors.

Unlike Lean he writes his films too, and here makes a notably fine job of it. The dialogue in The Odyssey is smart but also sensibly pared-down, making it easy on modern ears.

Matt Damon is is wonderful as the flawed hero Odysseus, matched by the superb Anne Hathaway as Queen Penelope

The most conniving of Queen Penelope’s rabble of suitors is Antinous, irresistibly played by Robert Pattinson

In truth I found it a little jarring to hear Holland as Odysseus’s slightly drippy son Telemachus speaking with a jaunty American accent, falling only just short of referring to his missing father as ‘pop’.

But then there’s no reason why ancient Greeks should sound English, either, which brings me to the lively debate over Helen of Troy, played by the Kenyan actress Lupita N’yongo.

Blatant wokery, some have shrieked, and I can see why purists might object to a sub-Saharan Helen. On the other hand, Damon doesn’t look very Ionian, either.

He is nevertheless wonderful as the flawed hero Odysseus, matched by the superb Hathaway as Queen Penelope.

Most of us know at least the bare bones of their story. After his defeat of Troy, it takes Odysseus 10 years to get home to Ithaca, where a rabble of suitors, assuming the king dead, are competing for her favour.

The most conniving of these is Antinous, irresistibly played by Pattinson.

It is little jarring to hear Tom Holland as Odysseus’s slightly drippy son Telemachus speaking with a jaunty American accent

But for me the real scene-stealer in this majestic picture is Samantha Morton, who as the enchantress Circe turns Odysseus’s men into pigs and brilliantly delivers a kind of feminist diatribe, like a Homeric Germaine Greer.

There is truly so much to savour in The Odyssey that – and I rarely say this of movies nearly three hours long – one viewing simply isn’t enough.