The Odyssey: Matt Damon and Christopher Nolan on their epic film
The Odyssey: Matt Damon as Odysseus and Zendaya as Athena.
For filmmaker Christopher Nolan, his first encounter with came in childhood, when he watched older students perform an abridged version of the Greek epic at school. The British-American writer-director was especially captivated by the story of the Trojan Horse and the poem’s fantastical elements, like the Cyclops, a one-eyed giant, and the Sirens, whose enchanting songs cause sailors to run aground.
Now, for his 13th feature film, the 55-year-old has adapted Homer’s mythic epic for what he describes as his most immersive and expansive cinematic experience yet. Location shooting primarily took place across six countries – Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland, and the United States.
Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, alongside Tom Holland as his son, Telemachus; Anne Hathaway as Penelope, queen of Ithaca; and Lupita Nyong’o in the dual roles of Helen of Troy, queen of Sparta, and her twin sister, Clytemnestra, queen of Mycenae. The ensemble cast also includes Samantha Morton as Circe, a powerful witch; John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, Odysseus’ loyal swineherd; Zendaya as the goddess Athena; and Robert Pattinson as Antinous, one of Penelope’s suitors.
Based on Homer’s epic poem, written more than 2,500 years ago, the film follows Odysseus as he embarks on a perilous 10-year journey home after the Trojan War, while his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, face their own battles in his absence.
Nolan, who won the Academy Award for Best Director for his 2023 film fulfilled a long-held ambition by making the first feature film shot entirely with IMAX film cameras.
“Your experience as a filmmaker informs the choices you make in a number of different ways, including what you feel prepared for, what you feel that you have the skill set for, and what will give you a new challenge but builds on what you’ve done before,” he says.
“The Odyssey is an incredible work that’s extremely important to the history of the world and the development of culture, but it has never been adapted as a modern blockbuster. I was energised by the challenge of creating the mythic world of Ancient Greece and excited about telling its story, with all its rich themes, in a way I’d never seen.
“Whether it’s the narrative through-line of Odysseus or the singular episodes that make up the entirety of the epic, The Odyssey underpins almost all of cinema. It’s certainly there in every movie I’ve ever made, to a degree I never before realised. It was a fun thing to discover as I got into the work of adaptation.”
Nolan praised films like (1963) and (1981), which were inspired by Greek mythology, but says he wanted to make something on a bigger scale.
He also felt it was important that the film would be accessible to modern audiences. “I made a decision when I was writing the script that I wanted the film to be accessible,” he says.
“I wanted the world of to feel like a world that a modern audience could relate to. We didn’t want it to look or sound like previous movie sets during antiquity, as many of them take their cues from certain periods of art and music, like Neoclassical painting from 18th and 19th century Europe or Romantic Era orchestral compositions. We wanted an earthy, modern, relatable tone to ground the story.”
Damon, 55, who won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for which he co-wrote with Ben Affleck, previously collaborated with Nolan on and playing bomb-building Lieutenant General Leslie Groves and the wayward astronaut Dr Mann, respectively.
“I said yes before he even told me what it was,” Damon says. “Chris said: ‘Don’t you want to hear the pitch?’ I said: ‘OK, sure’. And he said two words: ‘ ’.” To prepare for what Damon calls “the role of a lifetime”, star had to get into action-hero shape, not just to flesh out the character, but to endure the rigors of production.
“Chris told me in one of our first meetings that it was going to be a hard movie,” Damon says. “I said, ‘Yeah, I know’. And he goes, ‘No, this is going to be a really hard movie’. From the very beginning, I was mindful of not just what he wanted me to look like physically, but what being fit meant to the production, being diligent about my health, nutrition, and rest while filming, so that I am not sustaining any preventable injury that could slow us down and cost us days.”
For the film Damon went on an adventure around the world and in extreme conditions that was as arduous as it was exhilarating. “Every location we went to, I would get there and I would just start laughing, like, ‘Who thought you should shoot a movie here?’,” Damon says. “I remember when we got to Iceland after shooting in these hard places, everybody kept saying, ‘Iceland will be easy; it’s summertime’. And Iceland said, ‘Hold my beer, watch this’.
“Night shoots on black sand beaches, rain hitting us sideways in the face, windy, cold. There were no easy days on the movie. Every day would have been the hardest day on any another movie. But it was always amazing and rewarding and the camaraderie was incredible. There is something about turning around and seeing the same group of people every day, knowing that every single department is absolutely maxing out.”
At the journey’s end, Damon says he felt deeply grateful for a seminal experience in his career. “I feel like my whole life was kind of leading up to this movie in a way,” Damon says. “It’s the biggest movie that I have ever done in terms of its scale. Definitely the biggest movie I have ever made in terms of its ambition. I don’t know how long we are going to get to make movies this way, so I had this feeling of almost nostalgia the entire time.”
- is showing in Irish cinemas now
