My daughter who is home from her university film making course and with whom I share a deep love of cinema, is desperate for me to take her to see the Odyssey by Christopher Nolan. I must confess that aside from Interstellar which I consider superb, I haven’t enjoyed any of his movies at all… But I seem to be in the minority judging by his box office receipts. Has anybody seen it and is it as bad as I expect? (especially considering I loathe men in loincloths brandishing swords at the best of times!)
My feelings are that Nolan is one of the most fundamentally boring producer/directors to have ever picked up a camera. The man has little grasp of narrative, he abuses timelines, his dialogue is largely banal and his only redeeming feature is he is technically competent (or rather his crews are) in the same way that my dishwasher is technically competent. Only he could have turned one of the most exciting and extraordinary developments in human history: the development of the atomic bomb, into the 3 hours of turgid twaddle that was Oppenheimer. I actually went to the cinema that night because my wife wanted to watch Barbie, but I decided to watch Oppenheimer which was showing at the same time (my wife didn’t mind us watching different movies). Quite honestly I’d have been better off sticking with her - at least Barbie would have been entertaining, fun and satisfying in the same way that a knickerbocker glory is satisfying.
Nolan has made one masterpiece: “Interstellar”, and everything since has been overblown, over-long, pretentious drivel directed by a man who vastly over-estimates his own talent and actually believes he is on the level of Kubrick or Fellini. Yes, I admire his desire to push technical boundaries and his love for celluloid over digital, but his films are elevated and venerated simply because of internet hype and the fact that everybody suffers FOMO if they don’t go and see what everyone else is obsessing over. If Nolan was making films in the pre-internet age, nobody would have heard of him.
That’s the difference between Nolan and the true greats like Spielberg, Cameron, Hitchcock, Antonioni and Linklater. The latter directors take you on an astonishing journey, they constantly surprise you, they make you think about life, love, morality or the human predicament and they absolutely know how to produce an entertaining film. Nolan just wants to hurl $250m up on the screen the way a decorator throws wallpaper paste up on the wall, as a way to pander to his own over-inflated ego.
A contentious view I am sure! Interested in other’s thoughts… Just how bad is it?
You don’t get 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and a five star review in the Guardian if it’s not pretty good. You seem determined not to like it before giving it a chance. We are going tonight. I hope my £5.50 is not totally wasted.
I’m lukewarm about Nolan. The only movie of his that I wholeheartedly enjoyed was Memento, and I loathed several of his others. So no, not a true great in my estimation. But then again, neither are Cameron or Linklater, as far as this old grump is concerned. It’s hard to argue about Spielberg because of his range, his success, and his enormous popularity. But I haven’t enjoyed any of his movies since Catch Me If You Can in 2002, and Jurassic Park in 1993.
@JonathanG@bhoyo I agree. I really don’t get the Nolan worship. Most overrated director working today. I thought Memento was brilliant, and his debut Following was very good, Oppenheimer and Dunkirk were both OK, but those Batman films and Inception are just overblown rubbish. And when I say rubbish, I mean really, really poor. Tenet and Interstellar are just boring and meh.
He – and his fans - seems to mistake big budgets, bombast, lots of FX and narrative fuzziness – for “epicness”. When you look into his pictures, there’s actually not a lot there: it’s as if Roland Emmerich was trying to pass himself off as Stanley Kubrick. Now, I’m not a big fan of Kubrick – I think he’s massively overrated too - but at least he made three bona fide masterpieces in Paths of Glory, Dr Strangelove and Barry Lyndon and he was a director of immense talent and possessed of a truly singular vision.
I’m with @bhoyo on Cameron (three good movies, the rest technocratic hackwork) . Linklater I honestly haven’t seen enough of to pass judgement. Hitch and Antonioni I’m with you all the way. Spielberg’s record is spotty, particularly in recent years, but his best films (Duel, Jaws, Schindler, Jurassic Park, Empire of the Sun, the first Indiana Jones flicks) are hard to not love and his skill with the right material, as well as his influence, are both immense.
Anyway, I will go to see Odyssey when the hype dies down a bit. Maybe Nolan can convince me this time round.
Watched it this afternoon and enjoyed it. Straightforward action film. Didn’t feel like 2h 46m. Found the American accents more disconcerting than the ethnicity of the cast. Don’t go the pictures often and have no views on Nolan.
Just back from seeing it.. surprisingly action free for an ‘action’ movie.. time flew by so the 2hr 45m run time was not an issue.. Dont expect a 1960’d sword and sandals type of thing as it’s all rather low key and character driven.
I have no idea about RT, but one should remember that The Groan is a newspaper with an agenda and is a midwit philistine rag aimed at people who like to think they’re better than the scum who read the red-tops. So I’m not sure that a five-star review from them means anything. Since dear old Derek Malcom died, their movie coverage has been woeful, cretinous even - a combination of the wilfully obtuse and the smugly downmarket.
Given that The Odyssey has been the subject of much trolling by “anti-woke” YouTubers and other culture war warriors (mostly on the strength of a[n admittedly poor] trailer rather than an actual viewing), it was always inevitable that The Graun was going to get itself into a frenzy over Nolan’s latest effort, whether it’s a good movie or not.
Loved @JonathanG opening post. Careful though, you’ll have non Graun readers pulling you up for writing essays .
Could have been merged with the existing cinema thread though as I’m not sure anything by Nolan deserves its own thread. As per others, I loved Memento but also The Prestige. Inception was okay. Dunkirk was okay in parts. Oppenheimer had the most incomprehensible vocal soundtrack to a film I’ve ever not heard so I lost about a hour of dialogue and can’t really comment beyond that basically being sh1t. Tenet was just a mess. Never bothered with all the multiplex simpleton stuff since the offspring grew up so I can’t comment there either.
Sort of interested in going to see this having read the mess of a book a long long time ago. Friend who is a historian/teaches history was not impressed. The usual Hollywood nonsense of inventing hybrid characters who never existed and misreading the main character energy completely. Described it as… well I won’t use his description but it wasn’t good.
Nevertheless, there’s a 70mm version and I live close enough to one of the three UK iMax in a position to show it so…
Looks like I won’t be seeing it. No point in going to an iMax if you can’t sit dead centre at least 6 rows back and that option isn’t available. Vue unusually showing it can be booked to mid August except… no. Even the 8am showings have sold out the practical seats.
I’m not a fan of Superhero movies but I have to disagree with you on his Batman Trilogy, the second of the three anyway. Heath Ledger’s “Joker” is one of the best movie villains of all time IMO.
Saw this in iMax on a Tuesday afternoon with a surprisingly large audience - 250 or so?
Really enjoyed it and found the time went by relatively quickly. I thought the cinematography was excellent and the script had a surprising amount of pace for what is an involved story. Matt Damon was very good and I really liked the last 30 mins when the story about Troy is told; the struggles with conscience were well done.
Weak spots for me were the submerged dialogue (a common complaint with Nolan films) and I thought the roles played by Rob Pattinson and Zendaya were very thin and not befitting their respective talents.
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