![]() ![]() Their tree bed is somewhat vague and disappointingly etherial, but the room where the suitor are slaughtered is real as real, part of an actual house. You get a real sense of place, with well-beloved specific trees and blades of grass, and you can feel how much it feels like the entire small world to Odysseus and Penelope. I almost wept when Odysseus, still in disguise, first tastes the long-remembered cheese of home. The Island of Circe is stunning and otherworldly but Ithaca itself is the real island of a real person. The household gods, for instance, somehow look both sacred and naive, and you can see both that the characters are praying to them sincerely, and that they have built them themselves. This movie also doesn’t hold back, and sometimes bites off more than it can chew but here, the alien distance of ages is made coherent through dozens of details, the sounds, the fabrics, the hairpins, the utensils. DeMille-style stab at vaguely barbaric grandeur, with everything pillared and gilded and exotically alluring. Viewers are very familiar with movies that take a Cecil B. ![]() Some of the scenes (the show was filmed in Malta, Turkey, England, and the Mediterranean) are clumsy and corny - there’s lots of churning water filmed to look like giant waves when it’s clearly not - but others are inspired. They have an awesome story to tell, and here it is: The secret is that they’re enjoying the hell out of it, and that comes through from start to finish. When Odysseus leaves his men at the door to the underworld, for instance, he mentions “the land of the dead” and they all make a reflexive ritual gesture of some kind that may or may not be ancient, but it sure looks both authentic and heartfelt.īut the real secret of this movie is not that they get everything right. The show is full of stuff like this: Big, balls-out, broad strokes and spectacle, peppered with startling touches of authenticity that must have come from a scholar or at least a deeply invested amateur. But then many scenes include people playing actual instruments, and are full of real music - tunes and sounds you can respond to as a human, but which also convey a thoroughly other time and place. The incidental music is devastatingly synthetic and cheap sounding, like something from a video game. It is incredibly terrible, and some scenes may actually have been recorded inside a tin can. But it’s charmingly, enthusiastically hokey, and every minute of it is made with great love. ![]() Much of the movie, sets, effects, and acting, is hokey to the max. It’s now available for streaming on Amazon Prime and on the Roku channel, and everyone I know who loves The Odyssey loves this production.ĭon’t get me wrong. Need a little pick-me-up? The 1997 two part miniseries of The Odyssey is the most entertaining thing I’ve seen in ages. ![]()
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