r_suv

So freaking good man

Did not expect this

Holy shit. I'm truly ready to call Christopher Nolan one of the best filmmakers of all time, instead of just a personal favourite. Nothing else in his filmography, other than maybe **Interstellar**, is on par with this absolute work of art, an epic for the ages. I was utterly speechless coming out of that (IMAX) screening, knowing I had just witnessed legitimate best-of-the-decade stuff in there. On a technical level, **The Odyssey** is executed masterfully. The mix of practical effects with the real sets and the complete omittion of CGI, as we've come to expect with Nolan, is done so flawlessly that the film truly absorbs you into it's setting within ancient Greece. That absorption only serves to enhance the grandeur of the film even more, in a film that was a true epic regardless. The cinematography of the movie is one of the aspects I've seen regularly praised by critics, for good reason as the film looks absolutely beautiful. Each frame looks like it was ripped from a painting or some other work of art, similar to **Barry Lyndon** even if it's cinematography blows Odyssey out of the water. I couldn't find a single bad performance in the film. After a heap of discourse surrounding "terrible inaccurate casting", which confused me since how do you be racially inaccurate to a fictional story, the cast absolutely knocked it out of the park in my opinion. MATT DAMON was great. With so much screentime, you would have expected him to cock it up somewhere but no, he gives what is, for me, a career-best performance. Speaking of career bests, Tom fucking Holland must have had an aneurysm reading this quality of script for the first time. In "Spiderman: Dad's Coming Home", Tom's plays Telemachus absolutely flawlessly, with his performance amplifying the themes of home and honour. Furthermore, a surprising performance to me was none other than Anne Hathaway, who I maintain to this day is the weakest aspect of **Interstellar**. As Penelope, she gives her best performance to date, by a country mile. Robert Pattinson is amazing, obviously. All of the supporting actors, particularly Himesh Patel and Samantha Morton, play their characters flawlessly. Also, Benny Safdie received the greatest aura-boost of all time. The wonders of a black helmet and being called Agamemnon. The story is obviously great, it's Homer's the Odyssey. However, I'm still going to unpick the story anyway. The journey home from Troy should've been far simpler, if not for the selfish desires of men. "*We would rather drown than starve" *is a quote from Himesh Patel's character late into the film that encapsulates the fate that Odysseus' forces were always destined for. Their own selfishness and inability to listen to their leader's reason caught up with them in the end, despite their honourable leader's attempt to defy the Gods. In Odysseus' more personal story, honour and hope are clearly the most prevalent themes, at least in Nolan's adaptation (I've never read Homer's works). The constant belief and hope that he will go home are integral to the emotional connection you form with this character, throughout these 172 minutes. In addition, honour might be the more important theme to the story. Odysseus' story hinges on restoring honour to Ithica, after Zeus' law has been desacrated since he left. There was no more cathartic way to execute that than by Matt Damon becoming greek John Wick for 10 minutes. However, the more tragic lens to view the theme of honour by is Odysseus' journey to restore his own honour, after he became **the people from the sea**. He eventually does restore his honour by putting himself into exile, a poignant examination of consequences and the acceptance of his own wrongdoing. In the end, **The Odyssey **is likely Nolan's best ever work, in my opinion. I'm inclined to believe Nolan was so embarrassed of **Tenet** that he has locked in ever since and I am not complaining.

You can tell Nolan didn't write it.