Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey reveals a darker, less triumphant heroism

Christopher Nolan's three-hour adaptation of Homer's Odyssey opened with more than two hundred sixty-four million dollars in its first weekend, well above its two-hundred-fifty-million-dollar budget. According to The Conversation, Nolan shot the entire film on IMAX seventy-millimeter cameras, marking the first feature film to use the format throughout. But the true ambition lies in Nolan's interpretation of the hero's journey: Odysseus, played by Matt Damon, finally reaches his home of Ithaca only to exile himself, consumed by guilt over the violence he caused and the companions he left behind. It's a starkly different ending from the triumphant homecoming of traditional tellings.

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