When I have a free day, I sometimes look up the low tide on Montrose Beach, when the sand almost reaches the horizon, pocket a flask of green tea, and mosey up to the River North Esk estuary. The round trip takes two and a half hours; the most company I get is a few dozen hovering gulls. I have never seen a beach in a movie finer than the one right here. A camera shows us the same longitudinal view of a beach: it’s empty too but for one oil-rig-sized metallic horse whose head points to the sky and whose hindquarters are submerged in the sand. “Did you ever hear the story of the horse?” Menelaus, a Greek “veteran of the Trojan War,” asks. “Did you hear it from the inside?”
The Playhouse’s three massive screens were stretched last week just in time for the release of “The Odyssey” (Universal), a movie which reaches deep into human myth. The war isn’t sold as a fable from which to build future films. It is shown to us from the point of view of Odysseus and his soldiers sealed and suffering inside the horse. During “the first two tides, men died right in front of us” and their bodies rotted alongside the living. Dozens of extras pull the horse out of the sand and ramp it into the watertight city. Terror, urgency, and the opening of the gates of Troy are the Greeks’ imperatives; the music speeds rather than blasts as they flood in. But “then something happened” during the voyage home. Odysseus floundered and his army perished on drafty beaches as they killed time when it was too rough or foggy to go out on the sea. Two things are responsible for the film’s crashing success: the characters who live in, under, and around the story are put first (why we behave as we do and how our beliefs shape us); and the grit of the story is filtered using several long flashbacks.
Odysseus, played by Matt Damon, who doesn’t smile once, lies on a beach with a beautiful woman who is not his wife. “You washed up on my shore with half your boat and none of your men,” Calypso, played by Charlize Theron, says. “Tell me what you remember after Troy.” “Troy?” Odysseus says, “We won the war.” “And then what?” The flashback begins. “‘We’re Greeks,’” his men say, continuing as they please from island to island, “begging, borrowing, plundering.” They don’t understand why the conquered don’t respect the conquerors: “Ask them why they abandoned their village instead of welcoming us.”
One island-episode stands out. Odysseus’s hungry army pursues a flock of sheep into a wide-mouthed cave, expecting an easy dinner. When the Cyclops appears the audience gasps: the one-eyed legend is god-like and beautiful and awful; it grabs a soldier and bites into him as if he were an unwrapped Flake bar. “It can talk,” one of the soldiers says. “Why didn’t it talk before?” “Do you talk to ants?” Odysseus asks. “Shall we reason with it?” the soldier says. “I think we’re past that,” Odysseus says. “That thing was a monster,” Odysseus says to Calypso, back on their beach, returning the tale to the present. “Every rough sea or headwind told the crew they were cursed. The men became more and more convinced that I had offended Poseidon. We were hit by storm after storm, all pushing us off course, until we were truly lost.”
Meanwhile in Ithaca “the song of how he won the war” is the old handed-down secret. “Is that what you’re interested in?” Menelaus says, rumours coming down to him, “Gossip?” “Anyone want to spin a story about Odysseus?” Pundits snag stories about Odysseus’s whereabouts. Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway, is the least hurried character; their teen-age son, Telemachus, played by Tom Holland, is the most impotent. A hodgepodge of horny “suitors,” a riffraff fancying their chances with the queen, grumble while trying to out-peacock each other. “The suitors mean you harm,” Telemachus says. “You think I don’t know that?” Penelope replies. Telemachus didn’t inherit his father’s warrior genes. “You’re not always going to be the strongest or the fastest,” his fencing teacher says, “so always be the smartest.” His mother is even more plainspoken. “You think you’re ready to take your father’s place?” she says. “You’re a child.”
But Telemachus needs to prove he is “a man who needs to control his fate,” like his dad. He tries to shoo the suitors away. “You’ve been welcome here for three years,” he says. “Odysseus is dead,” a suitor says. “What do you know about my dad?” “I know he never came home.” “Not yet.” The suitor sneers. “You can’t blame me for looking [at your mother]!” I was reminded of the nineteen-sixties “Batman” series; Mr Holland has the build of Burt Ward’s Robin and, like him, is the kind of man who needs someone tougher to fight his battles. “Next time think twice before you offer up your life for an animal,” his salvager says.
“Promise me by the time Telemachus comes of age you’ll take another husband,” Odysseus says. “Promise me you’ll come back,” Penelope replies. “What if I can’t?” “Athena will bring you home.” The medicine of laughter doesn’t much concern the movie. But there is one light moment. “Perhaps you’ve heard of Helen?” Menelaus asks during the crucial scene with clueless Telemachus. “‘The face that launched a thousand ships?’…maybe not…maybe just five hundred!”
“Nobody sails into hell and comes back,” Odysseus says. “You will,” Circe the witch says. “Head north into the twilight until a river of fire makes a river of ice. There you must dig a trench and fill it with the blood of sacrifice. Gather the dead and learn how you go home. You. Not your men.” “You curse them?” Odysseus asks. “Not a curse, a truth,” Circe says. “The gods say only you make it home.”
Adam Poole
18th July 2026
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
