Source: Entertainment Weekly
Odysseus’ long journey home took a toll on every member of The Odyssey‘s cast and crew — including director Christopher Nolan.
As the sweeping adaptation of Homer’s epic poem approaches its release date, the cast is opening up about what it felt like to be pushed to their limit on the Nolan film, from trekking an hour uphill for on-location shoots to being tossed around on a boat. But for what it’s worth, star Matt Damon believes no one suffered as much as the film’s fearless captain.
“Directing is by far the hardest job on set,” Damon told Willie Geist during a Sunday broadcast of Today. “When you’re out there kind of in the middle of a storm and you’re soaked and you’re cold and you’re like, ‘Man, I’m in discomfort right now,’ it is helpful to turn and see the person with the harder job … looking like a drowned rat, just as cold, just as wet, and never complaining.”
It also helped that even before Damon climbed aboard the film, Nolan was candid about what the production would entail.
“He was like, ‘This movie’s gonna be hard.’ And I looked at him like, ‘I’ve made, I don’t know 80 movies,’” Damon recounted. “And he goes, ‘No… This movie’s gonna be really hard.’ He, to his credit, was not lying.”
Taking its story from the ancient Greek poem, the film follows Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, on a grueling 10-year journey to return home after the Trojan War. The trek sees him battle mythical monsters, weather the wrath of the gods, and turn away from temptation in an effort to make it home to his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland).
Nolan, as usual, took an old-school approach to the challenge of bringing the story to fruition: he avoided green screens and VFX wherever possible, instead opting to shoot on location in six different countries and employ practical effects. Not to mention that it was all being done on IMAX cameras, which can only capture about two-and-a-half minutes of footage at a time, forcing the actors to pause and wait for the cameras to be reloaded whenever a scene runs longer.
Damon said that while everyone was “pushed to kind of the limit of what they could do,” there was something equalizing about seeing that in action.
“The beauty of it is you look around and everyone is going through it with you,” he explained.
Nolan previously illustrated his commitment to capturing the grueling experience during a chat with The Telegraph, recounting a particularly difficult sequence while capturing a section of Odysseus’ journey across the seas. The scene was filmed on a 115-foot wooden longship on which cast and crew were tossed around on waves. Within an hour, people started heaving up their breakfasts.
Undeterred, Nolan asked, “Excuse me. But would you mind if we get the vomiting on camera?”
Reflecting on it in the interview, the director said, “Credit to them, they said, ‘Absolutely, bring it on.’ They were really game for it. And that day ended up being fabulous as well as miserable; it yielded some of my favorite shots in the film.”
Moviegoers will get to witness what had Nolan shivering and extras puking when The Odyssey hits theaters later this week, on July 17.
