FILM REVIEW24 JUL 2026In Christopher Nolan’s‘The Odyssey’, civilisation’s greatest threat comes from withinChristopher Nolan’s latest film, ‘The Odyssey’, transforms an ancient myth into a timely exploration of war,…Kibo Ngowi8 min read

Christopher Nolan is one of the most fascinating filmmakers of our time. I mean that in both bad and good ways. He has a rare ability to make movies that are simultaneously crowd-pleasing cinema fare and thought-provoking feats of storytelling that explore the most challenging aspects of the human condition.

He’s also prone to getting so wrapped up in the exploration of ideas and intricate narrative structuring that he neglects to give his characters any interiority, especially if they happen to be women. That’s why the same filmmaker who made such endlessly rewatchable films asInception,The Dark KnightandThe Prestigealso made such confounding and frustrating, if at times also captivating, films asDunkirkandTenet. Nonetheless, a new Nolan film is always an event andThe Odysseyis no exception.

Before it was released, it became the subject of heated debate and culture war trolling that will continue as it dominates the box office. But my interest was always in how Nolan would use an ancient text to explore the themes that have been the staples of his oeuvre: memory, guilt, identity, sacrifice and the consequences of human ambition. Having watched the film, I can say that Nolan’s adaptation ofThe Odysseymight be the purest expression yet of his recurring obsessions.

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He’s made a three-hour swords-and-sandals epic filled with monsters, gods, witches, warriors and battles but beneath the surface of the Aegean seas is a film that uses ancient mythology to deliver a timely and timeless message. The Odysseyis about the tendency of right-wing political movements to blame foreigners for the decay of their societies when the source of that decay is coming from within. The threat, throughout the film, comes from the sea.

We repeatedly hear about “the people from the sea” causing trouble across the region. They are spoken about as an external threat, a destabilising force arriving from elsewhere. But eventually we understand that the people from the sea are actually Odysseus and the Greek soldiers who went to fight the Trojan War themselves.

The people who claim to be defending civilisation are also responsible for violently disrupting it. This is where the film’s ancient setting begins to feel remarkably modern. In Britain, refugees who arrive by boat have often been reduced to the dehumanising phrase “boat people”, becoming a convenient symbol for a society’s anxieties about immigration and national decline.

The stranger becomes the threat. The foreigner becomes the explanation for everything that has gone wrong. ButThe Odysseyturns the logic inside out.

The danger doesn’t come from somewhere else. The supposedly civilised Greeks have invaded Troy, destroyed a city through deception and violence and then returned home carrying the consequences of their actions with them. Odysseus is the defender of civilisation and one of the men responsible for destabilising it.

There is an additional layer to this in the film’s treatment of Zeus’s Law, orxenia, the ancient Greek principle of hospitality toward strangers and guests. The word shares its Greek root withxenos, meaning a stranger or foreigner, from which we also get the modern word “xenophobia”. The connection creates a fascinating tension at the heart of the film.Xeniademands hospitality towards the stranger.

Xenophobia turns the stranger into an object of fear. The question is what happens when a society abandons the former and embraces the latter. Nolan has always been fascinated by the consequences of actions that initially appear heroic or necessary.

He is less interested in the achievement of greatness than in what that greatness ultimately costs. What does it cost Bruce Wayne to become Batman? What does it cost Alfred Borden and Robert Angier to pursue the perfect illusion inThe Prestige?

What does it cost J Robert Oppenheimer to become the so-called “father of the atomic bomb”? In each case, the achievement is only the beginning of the story. The real drama comes afterwards.

Odysseus is the perfect Nolan protagonist because he’s achieved something extraordinary and is then forced to live with the consequences. His idea for the Trojan Horse helps the Greeks win the war but the victory is achieved through a violation of the customs of civility that had governed the world before. The deception leads to untold bloodshed. Odysseus comes to believe that this one act has planted a seed that will eventually lead to the collapse of civilisation under Zeus’s law.

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