Elliot Page

 

Elliot Page's performance in Christopher Nolan's highy stylized retelling of Homer's The Odyssey is, yes, quite good and, yes, a bit of stunt casting, but in the best way, I think.

Critics have been assessing the picture as "monumental this" and "spectacular that" -- whether talking about achievement or disappointment. They have been responding to the planned or genuine outrage over Nolan's casting choices -- mainly Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy / Clytemnestra and Page as Achilles, which actually is not the role, but why let accuracy stand in the way of rage?

It was apparent to me that Nolan is up to much "good trouble" in his latest impressive work. This is not new for the heralded British director, whose films always leave me with the impression he has much more on his mind than he was able to put on the screen -- witness Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Oppenheimer (2023), for example. He leaves much for us to chew on and to ponder about what was left out.

I think Nolan's films are about big, human ideas but also about the meaning of the motion picture experience. How "truth" is created with light and sound and motion. What the face on the screen is saying about the fiction in the frame and the real world. (Nolan LOVES big vistas AND faces).

This brings me back to Elliot Page, who as the young Greek soldier Sinon is a small figure set against an enormous backdrop and, not incidentally, a giant wooden horse resting in the surf, the gift of the gods that the Trojans will carry into their city.

At the end of this scene, Nolan sets a close-up of Page's face in the viewer's mind, and those who know of the actor's FTM transition might join me in seeing this as an important statement about the off-screen world the audience lives in.

Page has fewer than a handful of scenes in Nolan's marvelous, sprawling -- and, frankly, exhausting -- picture, but his appearances are pivotal to this timeless narrative about loss and restoration and its new spin about overcoming disastrous choices, pushing through misdirection and deceit, shaking off menace to find truth and peace.