The Odyssey (Review)

[Timcognito]

I have never been a nonfiction guy in reading because of my dyslexia, but The Odyssey would be an huge exception and a love. I will have hold back my critical eye.

 

[Grimoire]

I have never been a nonfiction guy in reading because of my dyslexia, but The Odyssey would be an huge exception and a love. I will have hold back my critical eye.

The Odyssey is fiction.

 

[Timcognito]

The Odyssey is fiction.

Dyslexia strikes again. Fixed not a fiction guy, movies are enjoyable though. Thanks for correcting my error.

 

[pablolie]

The original Odyssey is not an action movie... it's more about the manipulative nature of the Gods and their bickering at humans' cost. Odysseus was not as much of an action hero as a smart resourceful thinker.

 

[Prana Ferox]

O Brother, Where Art Thou? remains the definitive screen adaptation for me

 

[Chaconne]

it's more about the manipulative nature of the Gods and their bickering at humans' cost.

I tend to agree, but I'd say it's even more about a clever man who just wanted to get home to his wife. Here's a guy who was held "captive" for 7 years by the most beautiful of goddesses who only wanted to feed him delicacies, make crazy love to him and—oh yeah—grant him immortality! Yet all he wanted was to go home to Penelope. The ancient Greeks called this a nostos, or homecoming story. (From which we get the word nostalgia.)

A recommendation: The new translation by Daniel Mendelsohn is spectacular and a clear departure from its predecessors. And if you want to be knocked out be another, related, father-and-son book, I implore you to read Mendelsohn's An Odyssey: a Father, a Son and an Epic. One of the most moving accounts not just of The Odyssey but of the sometimes difficult love between a father and his son.

And...why do I think the wildly gesticulating reviewer above is not a huge fan of the classics?

 

[MattHooper]

I'm sure it's a good film. It'll be on the telly at some point.
Nothing would drag me into a cinema these days, being crushed in with people munching, slurping and nattering when they can't follow the plot! Or doom scrolling on over-bright phones. And having that sweaty 29 stone person half flopping onto your seat.

I find this so sad.

I guess because I’m such a longtime movie fanatic who is always loved the movie theatre experience. And I have a fairly high tolerance for my fellow moviegoers.

But the idea of seeing something like the Odyssey shop for IMAX “ on the telly” as if it’s impossible to go see the movie in IMAX without it being ruined by somebody.
Seems a bit extreme. There are countless people who go to movies, and there will be countless reports of people who see this movie in IMAX, who were thrilled and managed not to not have it ruined.

But people vary in their sensitivities.

I grew up with a close friend of mine, who is a movie fanatic, and we went to movies together constantly. But he was always a little bit of a curmudgeon to begin with, and he became ever more sensitive to people and sounds at movies. I’d be watching a movie and ghosted and the next minute I know I’m jumping on my seat as my friend has turned around to yell at some guy three rows back opening a candy wrapper.

It got to the point where he would insist we always sat at the back of the theatre so nobody could be behind him eating or whispering or chatting or bothering him.

And then it came to the point where we had to also go during weekday matinees were there would be a few people in the theatre to bother him. And eventually, we just tended to stop seeing movies together.
I just enjoy sitting closer to the screen, and I love being immersed in a crowd watching a movie, and he didn’t. So that was that.

 

[pablolie]

I find this so sad.

I guess because I’m such a longtime movie fanatic who is always loved the movie theatre experience. And I have a fairly high tolerance for my fellow moviegoers.

But the idea of seeing something like the Odyssey shop for IMAX “ on the telly” as if it’s impossible to go see the movie in IMAX without it being ruined by somebody.
Seems a bit extreme. There are countless people who go to movies, and there will be countless reports of people who see this movie in IMAX, who were thrilled and managed not to not have it ruined.

But people vary in their sensitivities.

I grew up with a close friend of mine, who is a movie fanatic, and we went to movies together constantly. But he was always a little bit of a curmudgeon to begin with, and he became ever more sensitive to people and sounds at movies. I’d be watching a movie and ghosted and the next minute I know I’m jumping on my seat as my friend has turned around to yell at some guy three rows back opening a candy wrapper.

It got to the point where he would insist we always sat at the back of the theatre so nobody could be behind him eating or whispering or chatting or bothering him.

And then it came to the point where we had to also go during weekday matinees were there would be a few people in the theatre to bother him. And eventually, we just tended to stop seeing movies together.
I just enjoy sitting closer to the screen, and I love being immersed in a crowd watching a movie, and he didn’t. So that was that.

Adapting a 600 page epic into a 2 hour movie will require major compromises in the storytelling focus. It will never ever be the same, it will be streamlined. It is about one page per minute in a movie script. 600 page aka minutes (the oddysey) is 10 hours. Not sure anyone would watch anything as "authentic".

 

[Grimoire]

I find this so sad.

I guess because I’m such a longtime movie fanatic who is always loved the movie theatre experience. And I have a fairly high tolerance for my fellow moviegoers.

But the idea of seeing something like the Odyssey shop for IMAX “ on the telly” as if it’s impossible to go see the movie in IMAX without it being ruined by somebody.
Seems a bit extreme. There are countless people who go to movies, and there will be countless reports of people who see this movie in IMAX, who were thrilled and managed not to not have it ruined.

But people vary in their sensitivities.

I grew up with a close friend of mine, who is a movie fanatic, and we went to movies together constantly. But he was always a little bit of a curmudgeon to begin with, and he became ever more sensitive to people and sounds at movies. I’d be watching a movie and ghosted and the next minute I know I’m jumping on my seat as my friend has turned around to yell at some guy three rows back opening a candy wrapper.

It got to the point where he would insist we always sat at the back of the theatre so nobody could be behind him eating or whispering or chatting or bothering him.

And then it came to the point where we had to also go during weekday matinees were there would be a few people in the theatre to bother him. And eventually, we just tended to stop seeing movies together.
I just enjoy sitting closer to the screen, and I love being immersed in a crowd watching a movie, and he didn’t. So that was that.

I think that you are victim blaming. It's the arseholes that should be driven out, because they clearly aren't interested in the film, not those who want the full uninterrupted experience.

 

[Grimoire]

Adapting a 600 page epic into a 2 hour movie will require major compromises in the storytelling focus. It will never ever be the same, it will be streamlined. It is about one page per minute in a movie script. 600 page aka minutes (the oddysey) is 10 hours. Not sure anyone would watch anything as "authentic".

It's almost 3 hours long.

 

[Chrispy]

Haven't read the Odyssey since high school and that was in Latin as well as English and never really desired to return to it since. I'll see the movie when it comes more easily available, definitely wouldn't drive the 90 mile round trip for a theatrical presentation.

 

[MattHooper]

Adapting a 600 page epic into a 2 hour movie will require major compromises in the storytelling focus. It will never ever be the same, it will be streamlined. It is about one page per minute in a movie script. 600 page aka minutes (the oddysey) is 10 hours. Not sure anyone would watch anything as "authentic".

I think maybe you meant this reply for somebody else ?

 

[MattHooper]

I think that you are victim blaming. It's the arseholes that should be driven out, because they clearly aren't interested in the film, not those who want the full uninterrupted experience.

Yet somehow enormous numbers of people seem to find the experience worthwhile (as I’m sure we will see from the box office performance).

Again, I know people’s sensitivity is vary on this.

In fact, one of my big surprises was when I got heavily involved in design, designing my own home theatre, in which I hung out on the AVSforum for many years.

I had always assumed that most people there building home theatres were doing so because they loved the cinema going experience, love seeing movies in the cinema like me, and we’re trying to replicate some of the experience at home.

But in any number of polls on the subject, I was surprised to see how many people we’re not motivated by the love of cinema going, but motivated by the hate of cinema going!
They were in the “ my fellow man ruins cinema going for me, so I want to build my own big screen at home where I don’t have to mingle with them and have the experience ruined.”

We were all going to movies at the same time, but they were having apparently fun fundamentally different experiences.

But as I say clearly countless people around the world seem to get enjoyment out of getting out to the movie theatres. It’s certainly not like it used to be now that everybody can watch stuff at home in great quality as well. But still a lot of people going especially for big events like The Odyssey.

I would absolutely love to see it in the theatre (though I’m not able to).

 

[TimF]

It is more like The Usual Suspects than the Odyssey since it is entirely the usual Hollywood gang dressing up and pretending. It will be much like The Royal Family dressing up and playing pretend in a make-believe world. How can you watch these swashbucklers year after year after year? It is zero percent Greek one hundred percent southern California. After they blow up the village with helicopters there is scene where a soldier goes surfing amidst bullets flying. You've seen (scene) this sooooo many times before.

 

[pderousse]

Haven't read the Odyssey since high school and that was in Latin as well as English and never really desired to return to it since. I'll see the movie when it comes more easily available, definitely wouldn't drive the 90 mile round trip for a theatrical presentation.

You read about the Odyssey from Latin adaptations. Homer is in Greek.

 

[MattHooper]

It is more like The Usual Suspects than the Odyssey since it is entirely the usual Hollywood gang dressing up and pretending. It will be much like The Royal Family dressing up and playing pretend in a make-believe world. How can you watch these swashbucklers year after year after year? It is zero percent Greek one hundred percent southern California. After they blow up the village with helicopters there is scene where a soldier goes surfing amidst bullets flying. You've seen (scene) this sooooo many times before.

So… Movie stars dressing up and pretending. A Hollywood movie then.

That’s quite a critique ;-)

Have the cultural wars arrived at ASR?

 

[pderousse]

I’m going tomorrow. The pre-controversies are amusing. It is not history. Say it again. It is not even literature, really. It does not need to be faithful to an 'original'. The original was an oral Greek tradition passed on from generation to generation for 10 centuries throughout the Greek speaking diaspora before it was ever written down around 750 B.C. and our earliest surviving manuscript comes five centuries after that. This means at least three things: 1) Homer has been text-less almost as long as it has been text. Myth is amorphous, non-doctrinaire and to some degree whatever you see in it and however you choose to tell it; 2) There is no fixed text to be faithful to. Every generation reinterpreted Homer as their own, as they should, as does Nolan; 3) It was an international epic told in a dizzying pastiche of Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot topped with Attic ‘intrusions’. So pick your dialect of English for this 'translation', it's all good. I should have liked Bronx, Cajun, Cockney and Queen’s English; 4) A black actress playing Helen seems entirely appropriate for a pre-racial Greek speaking culture that spanned three continents including Africa. This is the story of a shell-shocked veteran just trying to return home from a war no one ever wanted any part of and which brought ruin upon all of the victors. The monster stories are told by the ‘much-turning’ story teller (Odysseus) to entertain his audience in the court of the Phaeacians and his ‘much-wandering’ quite possibly extended metaphors for his PTSD and guilt, cf. Shay, Achilles in Vietnam (1995) for a compelling thesis that drama and mythos was this culture’s way of processing PTSD from wars. The only thing that matters: Is it a good movie? Does it make me think after the film? Does it reflect our times?

 

[xanalog]

I have never been a nonfiction guy in reading because of my dyslexia, but The Odyssey would be an huge exception and a love. I will have hold back my critical eye.

Why use your 'tricky' eyes, when you can do the audiobook version?
Not that our ears are not tricksters themselves!
A beach chair, some SPF and IEMs would be optional.

 

[Sokel]

This thread is doomed, going between Scylla and Charybdis

 

[Redacted]

This thread is doomed, going between Scylla and Charybdis

You'll be eaten alive on ASR!