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The opening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey establishes the stakes. Ithaca’s king has been gone twenty years, his son is a boy learning to be a man, his queen is besieged by suitors who want to claim her and the throne…

Meanwhile, Odysseus is stranded on an island with a beautiful woman, with no memory of how he got there.

The film unfolds from this point, roughly at the end of the second act, and then, in true Nolan style, weaves its way back and forth in time. That sound you hear in the background is the combination of longtime Nolan fans rubbing their hands in glee while the others groan.

There’s an interesting line early on in the film, when Penelope says “Structure is nothing without people’s respect for its meaning.” My biggest problem with Nolan’s filmography over the years has been that he has given us beautiful structures but the meaning – the emotional core – hasn’t quite worked. The central idea of a man trying to go home isn’t new, but he takes his time to establish the emotional pull much more strongly, especially by raising the stakes back home. Could I have done with a few more scenes in Ithaca and a few less on the journey? Sure, but this is solid work.

The Odyssey would’ve been a pretty good film if this was it, but it’s not content with being that simple, thematically.

For instance, while a simplistic reading of the story could be that the suitors are the bad guys and Odysseus and his men are the good guys, the parallels between the two are too obvious to ignore. Often, the behavior of the suitors is reflected in the behavior of the soldiers on their return journey.

There are other symmetries in evidence as well. A line about the power of a sacrifice originally seems to refer to Agamemnon sacrificing his own child, but is he the only one sacrificing someone else for his cause?

Also, at various points, different characters get an opportunity to put forth how they saw the world, and what unfolded. For instance Penelope wonders, justifiably, why Ithaca couldn’t be just as well served by a queen. Odysseus has doubts about his leadership. Even the dead get their say.

This is not just empathetic writing. A lot of the great stories get passed on through word of mouth (there’s a fantastically delivered line by Elliot Page that underscores this), and take on the hue of whoever is telling the story as well as what/who appealed to them. That is their beauty.

And so it is that a modern retelling of this ancient epic also has some contemporary hues. And this is one place where Nolan’s writing falters. There are multiple mentions of Zeus’ law (treat your guests well lest they turn out to be Zeus in disguise), and good faith is implicit in the contract between guest and host. This faith is eroded multiple times. But the idea isn’t left to stand on its own as a lament of a dying age. Not only is it overused, the word civilization enters the conversation as well. So now it’s maybe become about either immigration or imperialism depending on your politics. Which would’ve still been fine if he hadn’t overplayed this hand. Outside of this misstep, this is solid writing though.

The other important aspect is the acting. Anne Hathaway does some of the best work of her career here. Robert Pattinson radiates sliminess, Tom Holland impotent rage, and John Leguizamo sadness. What invests us in the journey home is what these four people do.

What should work is the performances of those actually making that journey. The only one in Odysseus’ crew we see anything of is Eurylochus, played by Himesh Patel. He is adequate but doesn’t actually have much to do except give cues to the leading man. I’m sure he had his own reasons to go home but honestly, I got a lot more out of him singing Long and Winding Road in Yesterday than in this entire film.

Which brings us to Odysseus. This it’s a wonderfully fleshed out character, haunted by a multitude of demons, as evidenced by some key conversations with Penelope, Sinon, Circe, Calypso, Athena and Eurylochus. Here’s a treatment that has taken everything that the journey entails and turned it on its head, so that it now becomes about what the destination means to the eponymous hero. For a man who has made a mini career out of trying to get home, this is as perfect a setup as you could ever hope to get.

And he flubs it. We see the physicality, the tactical nous, the occasional impulsiveness, even the rage. But the torment? It’s there in the lines, but if the face is the map of the soul, this Odysseus is still lost.