Warning: Contains spoilers for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
When Christopher Nolan assembles a movie cast, fans immediately scramble to figure out who’s playing who. That’s because his last two ensembles – on Oppenheimer, and The Odyssey – have been mind-blowing rosters of some of Hollywood’s biggest talent. In his epic retelling of Homer’s Ancient Greek poem, he has A-listers and legends – Charlize Theron, Zendaya, John Leguizamo, Lupita Nyong’o – in relative bit-parts. But while The Odyssey is stacked with astonishing performances across the board, one emerges as the unexpected, unforgettable soul of the movie: Elliot Page.
Rumour online had it that Page – in his second Nolan collaboration, 16 years after starring in Inception as Ariadne, notably a name of mythological Greek origin – would play Achilles. But instead he appears as Sinon, one of Odysseus’ men (notably not from Homer’s Odyssey, but from Vigil’s The Aeneid) who has a different fate in the Trojan War. It’s a small role, accounting for a mere handful of The Odyssey’s 173 minutes. In fact, Sinon is absent for the actual odyssey itself. But it’s an incredibly powerful performance that looms large over the whole movie, framing Odysseus’ journey – and personal failings – across the runtime.
Page’s face is one of the first we see in the film: he’s left alone on the beach to be the messenger to the Trojans that the warring Greeks have left them a gift – a large wooden horse. Who could refuse? And in the Trojans’ (as it turns out, highly-warranted) suspicion, Sinon is killed for his trouble, punctured with arrows before the Siege Of Troy has even begun. It’s an unceremonious end, a tragedy in its own right. His body isn’t even properly laid to rest.
Page’s performance is rageful and righteous, but tragic and touching.
But over the film, Sinon re-emerges to become the embodiment of Odysseus’ guilt, as the Siege eventually becomes recontextualised, and we come to understand our supposed hero’s shame and remorse. On the dark sands of Hades, the Greek underworld, Odysseus comes face-to-face with Page’s Sinon once more in the middle of his journey; the soldier’s spirit (or, ‘shade’) appears and delivers a crushing hidden truth to the audience. In chiding Odysseus for his shortcomings – and outright deceptions – we learn that Sinon, too, was deceived. Unlike in The Aeneid, this version of Sinon didn’t know that his fellow men were nestled in the Trojan Horse; he truly believed it to be a gift in the name of the goddess Athena. He died for that belief. He is yet another victim of Odysseus’ lie.
It’s already compounded by the fact that Sinon never should have been there in the first place. He was drafted as a young boy in the place of Antinous, Robert Pattinson’s deliciously slippery suitor, who now vies for the affection of Odysseus’ wife Penelope back in Ithaca. The young Antinous’ short-straw was swapped for Sinon’s, sending Page’s character off to fight in the war instead – another ruse in which Odysseus is complicit, agreeing that Antinous should stay home to be a companion to his son, Telemachus (Tom Holland).
This pile-up of lies all comes crashing upon Odysseus in Sinon’s form. Page plays it perfectly. He is rageful and righteous, but tragic and touching, a vision of wasted life smeared in the black ash of Hades. It’s truly haunting; no wonder that Odysseus himself is literally haunted by Sinon’s spectre. Among the heft of the Cyclops setpiece, the lure of the Sirens, and the body-horror terror of the Circe sequence (another major standout), it’s the Hades sequence that truly chills the blood – largely thanks to Page’s performance.
Sinon begins the movie, and re-appears during Odysseus’ journey. But he’s also present thematically in its final chapter. When Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, disguised as a beggar, he takes on a name of great significance: ‘Sinon’. “The greatest soldier who ever lived,” in Odysseus’ words. And as we come to learn, he doesn’t come home in swaggering victory; he returns to reckon with his complicity in devaluing the sacred codes of the world. He has lied, and those lies have cost many, many lives – in Troy and beyond, Sinon’s included. He assumes the mantle of the thing that has haunted him; much as Bruce Wayne internalises the Bat when he returns to Wayne Manor in Batman Begins. And when Odysseus finally takes down Antinous, he returns Sinon’s swapped straw to him too – an item that has become as totemic as his Athena brooch. It is some small measure towards making things right.
It’s been a long time since Elliot Page appeared in a blockbuster movie – his last was perhaps X-Men: Days Of Future Past in 2014. But seeing him back on the big screen, and working back with Nolan again, was a reminder of his talent and gravitas. With a small role, he remains present of mind in The Odyssey from beginning to end – and long to linger after the credits roll too. Encore, please!
The Odyssey is out now in cinemas
