While, like everyone else my age, I grew up watching Christopher Nolan film's, I’ve always had a bit of a complicated relationship with his work. To date, I’ve seen 7 of his films and for a while I felt an admiration for his craft but a lack of emotional depth to really hook me as a viewer and bring me back to his work. Obviously, work like The Dark Knight has resonated so deeply within the culture, and even I can’t deny its magnetic performance by Heath Ledger or the general efficiency Nolan displays in delivering what is an all-time Super Hero film. However, my general thought and investment in his work as a whole had been relatively limited, especially considering my love for plenty of other contemporary directors. 

I say all of that to say, Oppenheimer changed my mind on Nolan in a pretty drastic way. When I first saw Oppenheimer in theaters, I truly was blown away by the scale of the accomplishment on display. As a long-time fan of Cillian Murphy, watching him deliver his best performance as a deeply melancholic and self-absorbed man with so much gravity and dread made every moment of the film vibrate with this intensity I had previously been missing. On top of the incredible score, cinematography, other performances and layers of depth, what really pulls this film together is a staggering edit by editor Jennifer Lame. What could have been a boring pseudo biopic transforms into a living and breathing pace that craters towards an inevitable conclusion. Weaving together periods of time, conversations and different textures entirely, Lame is able to re-contextualize the entire film with every new scene, building layer after layer until the full picture weaves a tapestry of complex characters, motivations and results. 

When Nolan won best picture and received the metaphorical and likely literal blank check, I was shocked to hear he would be adapting the Odyssey with Lame back on in the edit bay. While I marveled at the possibilities, I wondered how he would adapt the more fantastical elements of a story featuring gods and monsters. I was even more curious when they announced the cast and Matt Damon would play Odysseus and Tom Holland would play Telemachus. While Damon is a great actor, I didn’t necessarily see the trickster and complicated person that Odysseus is in the poem. Tom Holland, on the other hand, I am still a bit skeptical of outside the role of Spider-Man. He is a capable actor and has showcased that, but his pivotal role in the film was a bit worrying. To start, I really liked the film. Nolan decided to make some bold creative choices here and that results in some of the best scenes of his entire catalog. There are certain stops along the journey that hum with anticipation and terror and there are some that feel a bit monotonous.