Christopher Nolan interview: On defying the gods with ‘The Odyssey’ and protecting movie magic

You don’t have any Active Subscription.

Your active subscription(s)

Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription

Products you've access to

Additional Subscription Benefits

Need help with your subscription?

Speaking at the Indian premiere of ‘The Odyssey‘ in Mumbai, Christopher Nolan reflects on finding destiny in Homer’s immortal epic, adapting a foundational classic, the mysteries of cultural permanence, and remaining faithful to the moviegoer who first fell in love with cinema

Updated - July 15, 2026 03:22 pm IST

L to R: Christopher Nolan with Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, on set of 'The Odyssey’ | Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

As if finding yourself in the same room as one of the most venerated filmmakers of the 21st Century was not daunting enough, no amount of mentally preparing to interview the Academy Award-winning mind behind Oppenheimer, Interstellar, Inception and several other contemporary cinematic landmarks could possibly brace you for how mesmerising Christopher Nolan’s steely blue eyes are up close.

Once I finally snapped myself free from the spell of that impossible blue, it took a considerable amount of steadying the nerves to fully process the fact that I was sitting across from a childhood idol. My mind instinctively raced through the catalogue of wide-eyed cinematic wonder, every memory of witnessing his brand of movie magic on the biggest screen possible rushing back as though I were Cooper stumbling through the Tesseract itself. If only I could reach across that proverbial five-dimensional bookshelf and knock a single book loose, just enough to tell my teenage self that one day I’d be sitting across from the architect of those extraordinary worlds...

But whatever improbable wrinkle in the space-time continuum finally indulged my early cinephilic fantasies, call it fate or qismat if you like, the acclaimed British-American filmmaker too seems to be wrestling with a similar sense of destiny through his long-awaited adaptation of Homer’s immortal homecoming epic, The Odyssey. The follow-up to his 2023 Best Picture winner Oppenheimer sees frequent collaborator Matt Damon stepping into the sandals of the battle-scarred Odysseus as he struggles to return home in the aftermath of the Trojan War, supported by a formidable ensemble that includes Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Himesh Patel and several of contemporary Hollywood’s most recognisable faces.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker was in Mumbai for his first-ever film premiere in India, along with Damon, Holland, and producer Emma Thomas, drawing droves of fans across the city during the Indian leg of the film’s global promotional tour last weekend.

View this post on InstagramA post shared by The Hindu (@the_hindu)

Ahead of The Odyssey‘s worldwide theatrical release this Friday, we discussed the formative influences that shaped his latest film, why the story felt like a culmination of his filmmaking journey, and how he continues to protect that first spark of cinephilic wonder while carrying the expectations of millions who now look to his work for that very same feeling.

Welcome back to Mumbai. It’s been a minute since ‘Tenet’. Has your time here in the city so far brought back any memories since your last here?

Christopher Nolan: Oh, very much. Just driving into the hotel from the airport, seeing some of the locations we shot at... the city’s changed a lot, but there’s so much that’s familiar. It’s such an amazing, vibrant place. It’s wonderful to be back here.

‘The Odyssey’ is perhaps the most epic homecoming story ever told, and after finally getting to watch it yesterday, I was struck by how often your protagonists seem to be torn between this idea of a sense of duty and a yearning for home. Did finally getting to make it ever feel like this is what the Fates had in mind for you?

Christopher Nolan: I mean, at the risk of sounding pompous, I think what you’re trying to get to as a filmmaker when you choose a project, you want to feel that there’s some kind of sense of destiny with that. You want to feel that your past and your past work has led you to the film you’re making. I think I felt that more on The Odyssey than any film I’ve made, partly because the story is a foundational literary epic of Western literature, and so in adapting it, I found all of my previous films. I found the homecoming narrative from Inception and Interstellar. I found the hero’s journey from the Dark Knight trilogy, the war story from Dunkirk. So much of what I’ve been doing in movies, in some way, comes from this story. So yeah, it did feel... It felt comfortable to me. It gave me confidence that I knew how to tell this story.