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The Odyssey: the five-star epic kicking cinema forward · The Front

0:08
Speaker 1: From the Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
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Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. The Odyssey hit cinemas this week. More
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Speaker 1: movies are being produced now than at any other point
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Speaker 1: in human history, around ten thousand per year. It's hard
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Speaker 1: for audiences to keep up, and even harder for filmmakers
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Speaker 1: to cut through the noise. But somehow a new film
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Speaker 1: from British American director Christopher Nolan still feels like an event.
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Speaker 1: The Odyssey is an epic in every sense. The stunts alive,
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Speaker 1: no CGI, the locations shot across six countries are real,
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Speaker 1: no green screens. It's almost three hours long and features
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Speaker 1: a cast of Hollywood Royalty Damon Hathaway Theron, alongside buzzy
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Speaker 1: newcomers like rapper Travis Scott and IT Girl Mayor goth Episode.
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Speaker 1: I'm joined by Culture's chief film critic Niki Gemmel and
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Speaker 1: content director Bianko far Marcus.
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Speaker 2: Yes, it's Nicki Gemmel and I'm from the Australian newspaper.
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Speaker 3: Would you like to be called Chris or Christopher?
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Speaker 4: Nothing's fine?
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Speaker 3: Hekay, okay, Chris? Why the Odyssey now?
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Speaker 4: Greek mythology has never really been taken on in a
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Speaker 4: sort of a movie sense. And what I wanted to
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Speaker 4: do was take the foundational myth, the Odyssey, that had
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Speaker 4: never been told in modern cinema, and really put it
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Speaker 4: on the biggest screen possible, with an amazing cast, you know,
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Speaker 4: with all the resources of a kind of Hollywood blockbuster.
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Speaker 4: This is a story that's fascinated culture for three thousand years.
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Speaker 4: There's always things to be found. There were just universal
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Speaker 4: truths and universal could and so I think each generation,
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Speaker 4: each culture finds their own way in and their own
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Speaker 4: resonances to the story.
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Speaker 1: The Odyssey is a twelve thousand line poem the ancient Greeks,
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Speaker 1: attributed to the poet Homer. The bullet points of the
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Speaker 1: story go something like this. A veteran warrior, Odysseus, trapped
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Speaker 1: on an island, just wants to get home to his wife, Penelope,
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Speaker 1: and son Telemachus. Penelope, besieged by violent suitors, stays faithful
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Speaker 1: while Telemachus sets out to find his dad. Odysseus manages
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Speaker 1: to build a boat and sets sail for home, only
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Speaker 1: to be tested along the way by every misfortune. You
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Speaker 1: can imagine, storms, temptations, and one eyed beasts wants home.
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Speaker 1: The focus shifts from reunification to retribution and things get messy.
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Speaker 1: The Odyssey is in cinemas now, and joining me to
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Speaker 1: talk about it is our chief film critic, Nicki Gammel
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Speaker 1: and Culture's content director at Bianca far Marcus.
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Speaker 5: Nikki, you've seen the movie. I think you loved it. Ah,
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Speaker 5: I loved it so much. Five stars, five stars.
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Speaker 3: And this happens very very rarely with me, but.
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Speaker 2: I feel like Christopher Nolan has kicked the art of
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Speaker 2: cinema forward. It takes cinema to a next level. Oh,
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Speaker 2: it's sublime.
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Speaker 1: Odyssey is played by Matt Damon is certainly a complicated man.
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Speaker 1: And you made the point in your review that Christopher
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Speaker 1: Nolan's Oppenheimer, the last blockbuster that he made, was another
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Speaker 1: very different complicated man. What do you see is the
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Speaker 1: connection between those two films.
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Speaker 3: They're so rich filmically, they're fascinating.
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Speaker 6: You know.
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Speaker 2: The Odyssey is almost three hours long, and when I
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Speaker 2: see these big films, I usually feel the fact that
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Speaker 2: they're three but this one just raced, we were and bore.
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Speaker 2: There is so much in the character of a Dseus,
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Speaker 2: but not only him, his wife Penelope.
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Speaker 5: I think as King is coming back.
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Speaker 2: No, he's not all the different gods and monsters that
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Speaker 2: they come across on the way. I will say, though,
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Speaker 2: I was a little bit disappointed in Matt Damon's interpretation
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Speaker 2: Ray Finds a couple of years ago he was in
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Speaker 2: the return.
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Speaker 3: What will the.
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Speaker 4: People say when they see I have returned alone, that
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Speaker 4: I led all them men to their dads.
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Speaker 3: For me, he really embodied Odseus.
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Speaker 2: There was kind of a wounded, exhausted, bewilderment on his
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Speaker 2: transparent face. Whereas I thought Damon was a little bit
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Speaker 2: opaque in the role of Odysseus. But that's okay because
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Speaker 2: in a way Homer wrote him as someone opaque. Yes,
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Speaker 2: he's a complicated man, all those kind of things, but
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Speaker 2: for me, he is hard to grasp to get the
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Speaker 2: essence of him in this two thy eight hundred.
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Speaker 3: Year old text.
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Speaker 2: But also I think somewhat in Damon's performance, But that's
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Speaker 2: all right.
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Speaker 3: It was still wonderful.
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Speaker 5: So you think a little bit too much Jason Bournan.
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Speaker 2: Well, no, no, not Jason Bourne at all, because there
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Speaker 2: is this kind of weary exhaustion of a middle aged man.
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Speaker 2: You know, Damon is fifty five, as is Christopher Nolan.
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Speaker 2: I feel like it really speaks to their time in life,
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Speaker 2: both these middle aged men. Yes, he's an action he wrote,
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Speaker 2: but I think what is so interesting about Nolan's well,
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Speaker 2: let's call it a translation of the Odyssey, because it
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Speaker 2: is his version of the Odyssey. It's a very kind
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Speaker 2: of modern sensibility. He has dam and kind of the
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Speaker 2: scales falling from his eyes in terms of war, what
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Speaker 2: men do in war, the cruelty, the brutality, the futility
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Speaker 2: of war.
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Speaker 3: So it's very much about.
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Speaker 2: A growing awareness of the horror of battle and war,
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Speaker 2: which feels really contemporary and exhilarating, exciting to watch.
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Speaker 1: This is, as you say, two eight hundred year old story,
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Speaker 1: but it's for the Marvel generation. Bianca, how do you
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Speaker 1: think that generation will respond to this movie?
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Speaker 7: I think the Odyssey is such a fabulous allegory for
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Speaker 7: the modern marriage because he's got to like slay these demons,
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Speaker 7: he's got to navigate him, he's got to work on himself,
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Speaker 7: he's got to get past these temptresses. I'm just like, hello,
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Speaker 7: this is why this story's endured for so long. But
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Speaker 7: it is interesting to see how go and it's been
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Speaker 7: very clear in the casting, particularly with this work, is
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Speaker 7: that you do have, you know, these veteran figures and
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Speaker 7: then you have these young hot stars. Your Zindai is
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Speaker 7: your Tom Hollins. You're who's another hot start, the hottest,
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Speaker 7: the hottest of the I mean, it's just even from that, like,
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Speaker 7: it's so clever. And one of the things that has
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Speaker 7: been very interesting with Nolan's choices is the casting of
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Speaker 7: Travis Scott, the rapper made this. It's been sort of
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Speaker 7: promoted as this like he is the modern poet, which
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Speaker 7: rap often is labeled as. It's also caused a lot
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Speaker 7: of controversy in the sense that is this kind of
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Speaker 7: his step that bastardizes the meaning of the Odyssey and
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Speaker 7: whether it's a track.
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Speaker 5: Too far exactly.
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Speaker 7: I know that, but that's it's been fascinating to hear that.
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Speaker 7: That's kind of been one of the things that people
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Speaker 7: want to preempt and criticize this film with o'h.
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Speaker 2: Look, of course, so many things people want to pre
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Speaker 2: empt and criticize with, but I will say in terms
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Speaker 2: of Travis Scott, he opens the film and I feel
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Speaker 2: like it's Nolan playing homage to the Homeric rhythm. You know,
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Speaker 2: this was a text. We don't even know who Homer was.
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Speaker 2: He or she was at many people. We have no idea.
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Speaker 2: But what we do know is the text is from
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Speaker 2: an oral tradition. It was passed down by the spoken word.
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Speaker 2: It's a poem. It has the meter the beats of
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Speaker 2: a poem, and you know, you think of rap, it's
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Speaker 2: the same thing. It's telling story through the beat. And
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Speaker 2: so Nolan is paying homage to all of that by
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Speaker 2: getting Travis Scott to open the film and talk about
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Speaker 2: the iconic story of the horse beached you know, a
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Speaker 2: Troy the gift of the horse with the loaded belly,
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Speaker 2: the men inside it. It's such an extraordinary story.
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Speaker 3: It's a big greed.
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Speaker 2: It's twelve thousand lines of poetry. But you don't need
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Speaker 2: to have read it, yes, because what Nolan does is
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Speaker 2: he streamlines the story. He brings Odysseus, the hero in
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Speaker 2: much earlier, so you know, right at the start. So
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Speaker 2: he makes it digestible and he puts it into modern
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Speaker 2: language with American accents.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, what did you think about those accents?
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Speaker 1: And there's been a bit of kind of dei controversy
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Speaker 1: about various casting choices.
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Speaker 7: And goodwill hunting is Odysseus a fasting accent.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Look, it takes a beat to get used to, but
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Speaker 2: actually it works because it connects. And I think that's
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Speaker 2: the point of what Nolan was trying to do. Take
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Speaker 2: this ancient foundational text and connect it to the contemporary world,
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Speaker 2: connect it to the younger generations of today.
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Speaker 6: Chris really invited me to choose the version that worked
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Speaker 6: best for what he had written. Chris really and trusts
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Speaker 6: his actors with being sprits for the character that he
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Speaker 6: mistills to them.
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Speaker 1: He cast Lepida Nyongo as Helen of Troy and her
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Speaker 1: sister Yes, and of course Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Odysseus's wife.
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Speaker 1: How did those two women pull off those roles?
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Speaker 7: I guess there's three things I like to mention. Number one,
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Speaker 7: I'm Greeg so whatever I say goes on. This is
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Speaker 7: my oral tradition. I think it is a fantastic casting.
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Speaker 7: And it's something Nikki actually mentioned earlier, which tends to
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Speaker 7: evade a lot of people before they get into these controversies.
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Speaker 7: This is a myth. It's not real, like sirens aren't
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Speaker 7: a real part of ancient Greece. O Nisseus was not
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Speaker 7: a real person. So the idea that Helen of Troy
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Speaker 7: is this like historical figure that they've now woke afied
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Speaker 7: and cast a black woman is absolutely insane.
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Speaker 8: Elon Musk just went on a bizarre rant about casting
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Speaker 8: choices in an upcoming Christopher Nolan film. Musk wrote, quote,
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Speaker 8: Chris Nolan has lost his integrity, questioning the integrity of
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Speaker 8: one of the most acclaimed directors in Hollywood over.
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Speaker 7: And Christopher Nolan is one of the most incredible casting
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Speaker 7: directors in cinema. He has faced similar backlash in the
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Speaker 7: past for casting people that everyone assumed would not be
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Speaker 7: able to play. Most famous rest is soul Heath Ledger
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Speaker 7: for The Dark Knight because everyone thought of him as
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Speaker 7: the gay cowboy and broke Back Mountain and the like
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Speaker 7: the naughty high school hunk in Ten Things They Hate
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Speaker 7: About You.
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Speaker 1: My father was a drinker, and.
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Speaker 7: Clearly history has proven that it was an absolutely brilliant choice, and.
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Speaker 2: The oscar goes to Heath Ledger in The Dark Nat.
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Speaker 7: So when it came to Lapea and her dual role.
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Speaker 7: Aside from the fact that she is absolutely stunning and
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Speaker 7: can pull off the fact that Helen of Droys's gorgeous woman.
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Speaker 7: She has played dual roles in the past. She was
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Speaker 7: in Jordan pa Us where she had a very complex
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Speaker 7: opposite sides of the coin character that she pulled off flawlessly.
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Speaker 7: You're deriving this character from a text that is twelve
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Speaker 7: thousand lines, and within that the only time Helen of
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Speaker 7: Troy's appearance is mentioned is the fact that she's fair.
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Speaker 7: I e to mean in the old fashioned times that
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Speaker 7: she's super smoking heart.
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Speaker 1: So she's the face he launched a thousand sheep.
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Speaker 2: She is.
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Speaker 1: Coming up more of my conversation with Bianca Anthoniki.
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Speaker 3: Anne Hathaway as Penelope.
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Speaker 5: She's in the midst of of a combat.
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Speaker 9: She is she's known as, you know, the paragon of patients.
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Speaker 9: She's known as, you know, the greatest example of modesty.
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Speaker 9: But I thought, what if she's just clever enough to
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Speaker 9: understand that's all that's expected of her, and so she
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Speaker 9: has to do that part perfectly. That doesn't mean that's
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Speaker 9: everything that she is. And what happens if she's actually
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Speaker 9: this tempest of a person.
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Speaker 2: I actually said to her when I was interviewing it,
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Speaker 2: I feel like I'm.
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Speaker 3: Seeing you so.
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Speaker 2: Much this year, and she went too much as Penelope.
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Speaker 2: This is a towering performance and I feel like it
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Speaker 2: cements her as one of the actors of her generation.
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Speaker 2: There is so much going on in her face. Towards
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Speaker 2: the end of the film, she is the emotional core
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Speaker 2: of the film. I cried, I found it so moving,
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Speaker 2: this story, and I really think Anne Hathaway, she's really
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Speaker 2: coming into her own.
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Speaker 3: With this role.
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Speaker 7: You know, like when she was everywhere and she won
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Speaker 7: Filet Miers and then hath the hate start and now
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Speaker 7: I get rid of this woman from our screens. She
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Speaker 7: became so toxic, fired online by this movement that no
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Speaker 7: casting directors would hire her in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen
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Speaker 7: until Christopher Nolan Interstella and he's clearly been waiting the
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Speaker 7: next ten years, which kind of makes sense with the
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Speaker 7: character as you yeah, as you've seen, to bring her back.
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Speaker 1: He's simultaneously the director's director, and he's making these incredibly
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Speaker 1: commercially successful blockbusters out of kind of an unlikely material.
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Speaker 1: I mean, who would have thought Oppenheimer would be a
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Speaker 1: massive smash? It's a rival Barbie Ye, Yeah, what's going on?
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Speaker 5: How is he doing this?
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Speaker 7: He's a rare breed of director particularly now that directs
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Speaker 7: for audiences and not for himself. Yes, every single work
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Speaker 7: you look at, he's able to crystallize what is going
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Speaker 7: on in the world at the moment, what is the
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Speaker 7: conversation and this is like, you know, three to five
14:46
Speaker 7: years out and be like, people clearly want to have
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Speaker 7: a conversation about this and they need an approachable way
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Speaker 7: to do it. And I think you can always tell
14:53
Speaker 7: when a directors did you kind of just can because
14:58
Speaker 7: you watch the work and you're like, it's amazing. You
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Speaker 7: can tell that they just wanted to do this, whereas
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Speaker 7: I feel like he really has that handle on what
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Speaker 7: do people actually want to see and what do they
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Speaker 7: want to feel?
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Speaker 1: Well, five stars from Nicki Gamil and from our own
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Speaker 1: Greek goddess. Doesn't get better than this. Thanks ladies, Thank you,
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Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Nicky Gemmel is chief film critic
15:24
Speaker 1: and Bianca far Marcus is Content director of Culture, your
15:28
Speaker 1: one stop shop for film, music, art and TV, available
15:32
Speaker 1: in every Saturday's copy of The Weekend Australian or online
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Speaker 1: at the Australian dot com dot au slash Culture. This
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Speaker 1: episode of the Front was hosted by me Claire Harvey
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Speaker 1: and produced by Jasper League. Our team also includes Kristin Amiot,
15:47
Speaker 1: Lee At, Samaglue, Tiffany Dimac, and Joshua Burton