The Odyssey comes to an end in an interesting and satisfactory manner as the violence unleashed by the family includes the tormentors of the family, but also the relationship between the husband and wife which had been tumultuously put through a test of distance and time is beautifully restored (here romantic is a very different meaning from the flowers and candy romance which someone would give on someone’s birthday. Rather this is romantic in the sense where one would say “I’m going to get the head of your enemy in a leather sack.”)
After the end of the Trojan war, the hero Odysseus gets stuck on the Aegean with his entire crew for exactly ten years. When he finally re-appears on the island of Ithaca, he had previously been the king of. His plan was to finally reunite with his son who was now a grown man named Telemachus alongside not so growing debauchery ravaging Penelope his wife which had been the only source of conflict. He had to sneak into the house in the form of a beggar, thanks to the goddess Athena. But the twenty years of Odysseus’ lie have changed him so much that even the people he was close to were unable to recognize him.
What is to be said about this conclusion apart from it being equally the renunciation of the old regime and a just outpouring of blood, the sort of which was as ingenious and entertaining as the deeds of the hero on the high seas, although these were of a relatively narrower scope? Hearing that, director Uberto Pasolini and screenwriters Edward Bond and John Collee have managed to compress the last nine “books” of the epic to fit into a single feature, it would seem to be logical to hand the hero his else trusty longbow why not.
To make matters worse, the outcome is a crudely attempted performance that requires full set on ominous terms, and has come as a huge disappointment. Difficulties are encountered at the onset of restoring the household of Odysseus.
It seems to lack comprehension of how flat acting and filming ‘realism’ (Much of it has filmic styles looking like it is a network television series with handheld simple close ups) and overlaying of modern day psychodrama onto the myths of homers are clearly in conflict with the material in such ways that the of the films have always been unable to mend (for instance, Penelope not recognizing the man who fathered her child is easier to accept in a story that has a Cyclops, sirens, and sea monsters in it). This grimdark approach has produced beautiful versions of histroical storytelling in the past, but this is not one of them, despite the credits being full of decorated names.
From beginning to end, the movie’s narrative is a gloomy atmoshpere that entertains themes around weariness and exhaustion.
The cast is all in towards the film’s intent. Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus, Juliette Binoche as Penelope and Charlie Plummer as Telemachus embody their roles as battle-worn, deprived and agony stricken characters Fiennes body bears all of Draperian warrior’s deep hurts while the other two interpret them emotionally. The beginning of the story had Telemachus contemplating the ocean where tides were rolling. In the scene, Penelope is apparently working on her wedding dress which she promises to complete in order to select a husband (which provides no urge to set a deadline for it to be finished); likewise, she is adamant in gazing the vastness of the sea. It will pick up when we see Odysseus for the first time with his bloody and rugged skin: a lady dressed as a warrior who survived one of his crew’s last battles, was found strangled and laying face down on a shipwrecked beach.
It is quite obvious that Binoche has reunited with Fiennes. She plays the part of a woman capable of exhibiting the qualities of someone begotten a majestic castle and was imprisoned into domesticity fending off intrusive armies. More than any other actor in the cast, she seems most probable to have not been born in our millennium setting.
Among the numerous depicts and aspects in the film, my best is the gaze and focus of Penelope as she witnesses an entire nation mutilate her home and tries to come up with ways to solve this. Centering on her character, Michael Glenny once said, “is there more in Binoche’s performance than what is written for her?” Penelope’s simple dodging of suitors would have gotten a little more explanation; added emphasis on the stark contrast between these vignettes and the characters in The Odyssey, who are frankly unsympathetic and unrelatable to us, or making them seem and putting them together removing parts that define the characters to us, which completely changes the way the elegy is composed.
The ripped and compact Fiennes is every inch the aging yet still potent action hero, but never ostentatiously so. By means of film’s (not too many) fight and killing, the focus is solely on executing a sequence that a person could not perform.
Fiennes has a specific greatness in his craft because he is able to extract each subtle detail pouring into the complexities of any dialogue he is expected to deliver in a particular theatrical performance.Fiennes is seen as the character that does a lot but says very little and this is one downside of the movie because we see him project an entire character which he may have been miscast for.
But the bloom starts to wear off once you realize that movie’s asking him to do an awful lot of silent musing and thousand-yard stares that don’t so much deepen the character as restate what we already know about him. Odysseus disapproves further of the poem’s sheer magical creations, this is because the struggles that he had to go through deeply suffered because the main cause of his pain was essentially cut out from the pieces. Hecuba had approached him only as a respectable adult, but she now was clothed in the rags of a slave. All he wanted to do was intimidate the fools who had married her without permission and be reunited with his son and wife who he was confident still loved him.
The end leaves an impression, with a good uncomplicated straightforwardness, but I would recommend that you read the book or watch older adaptations, as this one only dampens the rough spots, but does still achieve a sense of realism. I can recall enjoying more how in the poem Odysseus merely slaughters the suitors by, the housekeeper identifies a plethora of wer dogs who also play part of the war.’’
Yet I would have preferred and more of this great epic developed between several films. I was really looking forward to, The Return’ But it never quite transcends the bore of being an honorable but misguided good try.
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