Let’s Talk About My Two Favourite Performances in The Odyssey

Hot take: The Odyssey was very good. I cannot help but be fascinated by Christopher Nolan's ability to earn a blank cheque and 100% creative control and turn it into commercial gold. He might be the only person working in Hollywood today who can do it. Of course he decided to follow up his Oscar-winning Oppenheimer with a true epic that is equal parts Lawrence of Arabia, Kurosawa's Ran, and top-shelf dad movie. There are moments in The Odyssey that represent some of Nolan’s finest filmmaking: The claustrophobic inside of the Trojan horse, the Cyclops in the cave, the attack by the Laestrygonians, and, of course, Circe and her pigs. Say what you want about Nolan and his many issues, but wow, when he’s on top, it’s dazzling. And he had one hell of a cast to help him achieve his vision.

Like Oppenheimer, The Odyssey is an absolute murderer’s row of acting talent. You could make a case for pretty much every performance in the movie being one of its best. I’m a Matt Damon sceptic but thought he was ideally cast as Odysseus at his most tortured. How exciting to see John Leguizamo get a role, even a minor one, with some real meat on its bones. Himesh Patel shines as Eurylochus, both loyal and bitter. And hell yeah to Elliot Page. But let me zero in on my two favourite performances in the ensemble: Robert Pattinson and Samantha Morton.

True cinema is when RPattz gets to be a weird little guy. The one-time sparkly vampire took no time at all to evolve from stoic romantic leading man to feral goblin, and I have loved every second of it. All I want in life is for this man to be allowed to play an increasing succession of abject weirdos and creeps, preferably with an unexpected accent. While he sticks to a pretty normal American accent for The Odyssey, he goes all in on being a slimeball, and it’s glorious.

As Antinous, the pushiest and most calculating of Penelope's many unwanted suitors, Pattinson is part failed pick-up artist, part jock bully in a 1980s high school comedy. He may be a handsome dude, but he's never before emanated a more off-putting aura. You can understand why someone might, at least at first, be taken in by it. But then he tries to up the sexual charm towards Penelope, and you want to run off and take a bath. Pattinson said he took inspiration from James Woods’ character in Casino, but I couldn’t help but think of every time in The Simpsons when Moe tries to hit on Marge. He wants to maintain the image of strength and leadership, but the moment danger enters the scene, he squirms like a piglet. He scrambles to hide away from the action but still yell orders at his most gormless goons. Every time he claims that he would have 100% followed Odysseus into battle, he sounds like Bradley Whitford saying he would have voted for Obama a third time if he could in Get Out.

What makes Pattinson so good at these roles? I’m always a sucker for when a conventionally hot guy decides to play oddballs, and Pattinson is currently the king of that process (sorry Sebastian Stan, but at least you’re second!) He has such a keen understanding of how pretty privilege works and what happens when you sour that process. "I find it fascinating when people make bad decisions," he told The Guardian last year. His best performances show him chasing the adrenaline rush of being a loser in freefall: Good Time, Cosmopolis, Mickey 17, The Lighthouse, even The Boy and the Heron. He finds the humour in being befuddled, the weird eccentricities of men who think they've got their shit together and 100% don't. In The Odyssey, he’s the ultimate incel whose allure is undone the moment a guy who isn’t a total loser challenges him. It’s a total blast to watch. Bring on his Chris Hansen movie (yes, that’s a thing that’s actually happening.)

And then there’s Samantha Morton, who plays Circe. I had no idea that Nolan had a Cronenbergian streak deep in his psyche, but wow, the practical effects and sly camera work showing Odysseus’s men transforming into pigs was genuinely disturbing. What made it all the more powerful was Morton’s performance. Despite being a two-time Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner, one who has worked for decades in some of the biggest films and TV shows of our time, Morton feels like a perennially underrated performer. Often, it feels as though the industry has no idea what to do with her. Circe isn't a big role, but it's a rare opportunity for her to reveal her force. It left me shaken.

Circe makes herself seem small before Odysseus’s men, not just as a ruse but for protection. She is the only woman in the area for miles, and she knows what men like this do, and what these men in particular have done. She does not choose to turn them into pigs. That is simply the animal that lurks beneath their human disguises. Watching Morton tear and pull at their skins to mould them anew is a moment of true physical intensity. She enjoys it, sort of. It is justice, and someone has to dish it out if the gods won’t. Men certainly won’t do it.

Odysseus knows what Circe is when they first meet. Circe’s aware of this, and Morton brings a lilt to her voice while she toys with her reluctant guest. As she berates Odysseus for sending his soldiers to her home, she calls out, clearly from experience, how men like them hurt women like her. The perennial threat of such harm is all too familiar to half of the planet’s populace, and Morton embodies all of that, past and yet to come.

After she turns the men back into humans, she sits at her table, her hands grasping one another, deep in thought. Odysseus doesn't stay with her for a year as he does in the epic. Instead, she lets him know that his fate lies within the Underworld. Morton delivers the news with the sureness of a woman cursed to know the truth. There is no Cassandra in this film (I do totally want a film of The Oresteia, which is my favourite Greek play), but Circe is the prophet whose curse is a partly mundane one. You do not need the gift of foresight to know that men harm, but the weight of that remains smothering. Morton’s Circe is clearly crushed by it, left alone with only her animals for company, forever aware that the worst is yet to come. I could have watched an entire film of this Circe. Madeline Miller, do you need a star for the adaptation of your book?

Who was your favourite performance in The Odyssey? Let me know!