It’s Official: my review of C. Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY is now online. You can now read it in its entirety on KungFuMagazine.com – this review could’ve been twice as long, but I didn’t want to write a spoiler-filled review… 🤔 How does one spoil a 2500 year old tale anyway?
This was the first piece of prose I read, having learned to read English (and draw rudimentarily) thanks to Silver & Bronze Age comics borrowed from my older brothers. A life long interest in Martial Arts was born watching them spar, and fending off their ire after having practiced inking and drawing directly on those same comics… JK!
As brother #1 is nearly a decade older than me, by the time I’d entered school he’d moved beyond the classic paper-route to an after-school part-time job at the public Library. Something I remain deeply appreciative of was his habit of brining home extra books he thought I’d like: Barlow’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, How To Draw The Marvel Way, Marvel Secret Origins and Marvel Son of Origins were just a few memorable titles.
When I discovered his high school English class reader on greek mythology and his copy of a translation of The Odyssey I could not put them down. I remember getting in trouble with my English teacher for doing a book report on that rather than using the recommended reading list. Maybe it was because of the drawings that she almost rejected my submission, but by the end of the week she returned it with a written apology and the offer to be moved into an advanced reading class. The report was graded A++ and included access to English teachers’ book closet – I was free to read as much mythology as I desired; and I did!
But The Odyssey remained close to my heart. A love sustained by a steady diet of Ray Harryhausen movies and that one time I saw Mario Camerini’s 1954 Italian film Ulysses, staring Krik Douglas & Silvana Mangano. There were other factors which I went into detail about not so long ago: The Return of Swords & Sandels.
Not The Ship of Theseus
One of the great feats of this film is the work done to build this story in a real world. A quick look online will reveal details on their giant puppet. But it’s the long-ship that bares Odysseus and his crew throughout much of this movie which deserved a not as best supporting set-piece/prop/original creation(?).
The odyssey is ongoing for that vessel. The Draken Harald Hårfagre is the 115-foot Viking longship that carries Matt Damon’s Odysseus throughout the film, built using traditional Norwegian boatbuilding methods, and crewed by the actual sailors, dressed as extras and worked directly into the shoot.
“[The ship] became a character in the movie.”
Christopher Nolan
She’s now docked in Oslo and open to the public through July 31, guided tours daily, 10 am-6 pm, at Langkaia 1. She’s made American headlines before, too, sailing into New York Harbor as part of a 2016 transatlantic crossing that won her crew the Leif Erikson Exploration History Award. Her current crew is a third American, several women among them, documenting the journey on Instagram.
Through some press contacts, I was invited to tour the ship. Unfortunately I would have to make it to Oslo to do so. Not this year. Fortunately, this would not be the first traditionally build Viking longship I would tour. I did so several decades ago when the first modern day transatlantic voyage was made by such a ship which docked at Montauk Point Long Island; New York’s eastern most port.
A tale for another day…
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