The Odyssey

An adventure film by Christopher Nolan after Homer's poem: he wrote the screenplay himself, and Ludwig Göransson composed the score. Matt Damon plays Odysseus; Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and Lupita Nyong'o are in the cast. The picture arrives in 2026 and continues the line of large productions Nolan makes for the cinema screen. Homer's poem tells of the king of Ithaca who sails home after the fall of Troy and spends ten years on the journey. He blinded the cyclops son of Poseidon, and the sea god's anger holds him away from his island: the road becomes a chain of shipwrecks, foreign shores and encounters with beings who each offer him a reason to stay and forget his home. In Ithaca meanwhile the suitors occupy the palace, consume the king's property and wait for his wife Penelope to declare him dead, while their son Telemachus leaves to look for his father. The poem sets the same choice before Odysseus several times over: remain where he is promised peace and even immortality, or keep walking towards an ageing wife and a plundered house. He chooses the road.