What is missing from Nolan’s film is the “rare excitement” that “stirs your spirit and your body.” Nolan’s film, by contrast, ends with Odysseus, also in beggar’s rags, pouring out a monologue of self-loathing to Penelope (Anne Hathaway), who has summoned him to her chambers. All this is spoken to the accompaniment of a horrifying flashback that is the visual and emotional centrepiece of Nolan’s film. This is not to say that The Odyssey doesn’t have admirable aspects, mostly in regard to its special effects. But the structures in Nolan’s movie, modelled after the Palace of Mycenae on the Peloponnesus and similar ruins, look already faded and decrepit.