The Odyssey: the journey is the message
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey isn’t really about Troy. It’s about what happens after victory, when a man has to live with the consequences of his own decisions.
This morning I went to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. It is a long film, full of adventures, mythology and stories (it’s inspired, of course, by one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer). But the film is really about the journey, and what that journey does to a man.
In journalism, we often return to Marshall McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message. We see it clearly today with social media and AI. The place where something is published changes the message: how it is edited, framed, distributed and understood.
In The Odyssey, there is something similar. The journey is the message.
Odysseus spends ten years fighting in Troy and another ten years trying to return home to Ithaca. What begins as a war story slowly becomes something else. The film doesn’t spend much time explaining why the Greeks wanted Troy in the first place. The reasons almost seem secondary, and the conquest itself isn’t presented as glorious. If anything, the real story begins after Troy falls.
In the original story, Odysseus is reluctant to join the war and even tries to avoid it. Nolan barely touches on that, but once Odysseus is there, he becomes essential. The idea of the Trojan horse comes from him. It gives the Greeks victory, but it is far from an honourable one. Victory doesn’t bring peace. It brings guilt. It begins the voyage home.
(WARNING: some light spoilers ahead)
Odysseus keeps making mistakes along the way. He attacks people he doesn’t need to attack. He enters the cave of the Cyclops when perhaps he could have avoided it. He challenges the gods out of pride, anger and impulse. Those choices have consequences not only for him, but for the men travelling with him: storms, deaths, mistrust and the constant feeling that the gods are punishing them. His own crew slowly begins to doubt him. They followed him into war. Now they are following him through a journey that seems to have no end. That’s what makes him such an interesting character. He isn’t simply a great hero leading men through danger. He often creates part of that danger himself, and learns through loss.
The film is about ambition, leadership, love and regret. It asks what happens when someone believes deeply in a goal, pursues it for years, and only much later understands the full cost of what he did. The journey home becomes a process of recognising those mistakes.
There is also a figure who appears to accompany him throughout the film, almost like a vision or the physical form of guilt. She follows him through his thoughts and decisions, constantly reminding him of Troy and of the lives that were destroyed.
The gods are everywhere, although Odysseus doesn’t initially seem to place much faith in them. Island after island, he encounters different forms of magic, punishment and temptation. Sometimes the gods feel literal. At other times, they feel like expressions of fate, guilt and human weakness.
One of my favourite scenes comes on the island where Odysseus lives with the character played by Charlize Theron. He has lost the memory of his previous life and has apparently spent happy years there. When he says he wants to know the truth, she asks him what happens if the truth destroys the happiness he experienced. His answer is simple: then those were not happy years. I found that idea surprisingly powerful because he would rather face an uncomfortable truth than live happily inside a false memory.
That also connects to the wider journey. Odysseus needs to remember who he is, what he did and where he belongs. Returning home isn’t only about reaching Ithaca. It’s about recovering the truth about himself.
Love is part of what drives him. The desire to return to his wife, his son and his kingdom never disappears. But he also loses himself several times along the way. He becomes distracted, tempted and trapped. The return is never a straight line.
That is also why the voyage feels believable. You can see it in Matt Damon’s body and in his face. By the end, he genuinely looks like someone who has spent years fighting, travelling, losing people and simply trying to survive. Matt Damon is perfectly cast here because he isn’t the obvious heroic figure. He’s believable as an intelligent but flawed leader who doubts himself, gets things wrong, and is brave without ever feeling invulnerable.
He’s a very different kind of hero from Brad Pitt’s Achilles in Troy. Pitt has the physical presence of a mythical warrior. Damon feels more like a man who became a hero through intelligence, persistence and difficult decisions, while never quite escaping his own weaknesses.
The supporting cast is strong throughout. Anne Hathaway brings warmth and emotional weight. Tom Holland is convincing as Telemachus, and his energy helps him feel genuinely young, still trying to understand the father he barely knows. John Leguizamo gives a strong performance as someone defined by loyalty but also damaged by years of absence and change.
Charlize Theron is excellent, especially in the scenes where truth, memory and happiness collide.
One of the surprises for me was seeing Robert Pattinson, whom I interviewed 16 years ago, playing one of Penelope’s suitors, hoping to inherit Odysseus’ throne, with a backstory closely tied to Odysseus himself (Ulisses in Portuguese). He’s convincing, morally ambiguous, and brings real depth to the story.
I also found Nolan’s approach to language interesting. Everyone speaks with American accents, even actors who naturally wouldn’t. I assume that was a deliberate decision to avoid distracting the audience. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded hearing the characters language (Greek?), but it never became a real issue.
Visually, the film is impressive. If I have one criticism, it’s that I sometimes wanted Nolan to trust cinema itself a little more: more silence, more moments where the camera simply follows the characters without dialogue explaining everything, and more room to fall in love with the people before they explain themselves. That’s one reason Dune affected me more as a cinema piece. The Odyssey is different. I actually think it has the stronger message about humanity, leadership and consequence, even if it didn’t move me as a cinematic experience in quite the same way.
Oddly enough, it also reminded me of Gladiator, not because the stories are particularly similar, but because both films ask the same question: what remains of a man after violence, ambition and loss have shaped his life? They also hold some other similarities.
There is also a wider historical idea running through the film. Humanity often creates paths from which it is incredibly difficult to return. A war, a conquest or a decision made by a leader can destroy societies and set them back for generations. Odysseus wants to return home, but there is no simple return to the world that existed before Troy. That world no longer exists. He can only return as the man the voyage has made him.
Listening afterwards to The Rest Is History‘s excellent two-part episode on The Odyssey added another layer for me. Perhaps the story has endured for nearly three thousand years because it is ultimately about something so human through different ages. We make mistakes, we carry them for a long time, and somehow we endure, adapt and keep moving forward. Odysseus’ voyage belongs to another age (a very violent and god-driven one), but the emotional journey still feels surprisingly familiar.
The film isn’t perfect. It isn’t as emotional as I hoped, and at times I wanted it to trust the images more and the words less (some of the story arcs could also be better). But it is ambitious, and it resonates. It gives us a genuine sense of travelling with these characters through years of war, mistakes, gods, temptation, loss and regret.
More than anything, it is a film about a man trying to get home while slowly understanding what he did, what he lost, and what his decisions cost everyone around him. Ithaca is the destination.
The real journey is learning to live with the truth.