1
Rome, 24 December – The next film by Christopher Nolanoutgoing at July 2026will be The Odyssey. The news arrived suddenly this morning, like a bolt from the blue that shook us from the morning torpor of the day before, almost like an unexpected gift found under the tree. Until now there had been the utmost secrecy about the new project of the versatile British director, who had already demonstrated several times that he knew how to keep the subjects and plots of his films in the most silent mystery.
The Odyssey returns to the cinema, finally
There had been talk of vampire films, family sagas, remakes of old TV series like The Prisoner, but obviously they were only false rumors or launched to distance oneself from the truth, which no one really expected anyway. Because if you really had to find the biggest difference between cinema “western” and the Asian one, more than the cinematographic techniques, the acting schools and the way of interpreting direction, is that in the East, in India above all but also in China and Japan, every year a film is released that recalls or is inspired by local mythology and sacred rootswhile here for over fifty years there has been a total absence of film versions of the epic sagas of our roots. The latest versions of the Odyssey date back to the miniseries Rai of the 1968 con Bekim Fehmiu e Irene Papas and before that at the blockbuster of 1954 Of Mario Camerini with Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn and Silvana Mangano. Too long, for what we can almost define the founding work of European Civilization. No trace of Aeneid or even, if we don't look for independent or local television projects with a minimum budget, of films or series on the Norse Sigurd or on the Celtic sagas of the Túatha Dé Danann or the Ulster Cycle. A separate discussion for the Iliad, of which in the total void one can only notice the sheepish and noisy sound Troy with Brad Pitt, also discreet as an action peplum, but which had totally stripped Homer's work of any epic and above all of any sacred and divine element. This element now seems almost a sine qua non for talking about certain topics that are evidently very scary. Okay, handling old myths, as long as they are demystified, seems to be the diktat. A fate that had also happened to Arthurian cyclewhere if we exclude the absolute masterpiece Excalibur from 1981 we only have role-playing campaign fantasy discarded by Wizard of the Coast, medieval tales of courtly love or terrible attempts to historicize the myth by bringing together unlikely lost legions and Sarmatian mercenaries far from home. Now the wait seems to be over the myth seems to want to forcefully return through the main door.
All roads lead to Nolan
It is a strange coincidence that in recent days another film version of the Odyssey has been announced: The Return, an Italian-British co-production with actors of the caliber of Ralph Fiennes e Juliette Binoche and directed by Umberto Pasolini. From the trailer it also seems to be devoid of any divine intervention and there seems to hover that devastating authorialism that seems to want to weaken the Greek world by passing it off as the cradle of rationalist secularism, but we hope to be wrong and to be pleasantly contradicted. But the wait is now all for Nolan. We are all curious to see how the man who can probably be considered the best director of the moment will tackle the Homeric saga. The British director has repeatedly demonstrated that he knows how to handle the epic and a vision of the world and of man that transcends the sensitive, even if until now he has never handled the sphere of the sacred and the divine. What is certain is that we could hardly think of a different director to whom we could entrust such a project. On the relationship with the sacred we could think of Refn, who however is guilty of too much authorialism and who almost seems to hate the idea of films that can appeal to a non-restricted audience; we could have thought of Villeneuve as a scenic and grandiose rendering, but he has serious problems with the rhythm and has already shown dangerous yielding to political correctness; as a master of epic and mythology we could think of Zack Snyder, but the risk of making it too action and excessively rock for the general public was almost certain. Nolan, somehow, seems to hold all the cards. And it will be curious, in addition to seeing how he will handle the myth and the divine sphere, also how he will render the entire mythological bestiary ranging from the Cyclops to Scylla and Charybdis without the use of CGI, rejected in all his previous films. Meanwhile, the cast is highly respectable: Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, a couple of divine actresses – at least them – like Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron, young actors on the rise like Tom Holland and Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o (also see how these two actresses will be used, clearly a “necessary” fee to be paid to the politically correct, it will be a sign). The expectation is enormous, almost unsustainable and the risk of being disappointed and finding the dream of a lifetime destroyed by our favorite director is very high. But in the meantime let's enjoy these two years of waiting. And let us hope that the time has truly come for the rediscovery of our sacred, epic and eternal roots and for the awakening to a bright future.
Carlomanno Adinolfi
