These Are The Best Cars From Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’

Last night, I saw Christopher Nolan’s three-hour long adaptation of O Brother Where Art Thou, set in the Bronze Age Greek world and titled The Odyssey. Christopher Nolan is, of course, a very good director and takes great care to insure that everything seen in the movie matches his vision perfectly. The entire film is a testimony to one man’s very specific vision of a particular part of the world at a particular time and place, which means that everything that shows up on that screen can be understood to be very carefully chosen.

And, of course, that includes the cars.

Like every other bit of scenery, prop, environment, and the overall mise-en-scène, Nolan has clearly very carefully curated the cars that appear in the movie, and I think he (and, of course, his team of some of the very best car-casters in Hollywood) have done a brilliant job. The cars chosen were absolutely not chosen at random; there is always some deeper meaning behind them.

One of the simpler ones is what you see up top there, where a Heinkel Trojan was used in a scene that takes place near the end of the Trojan War that kicks off the events of the whole movie. Maybe the use of a Trojan in this context feels obvious, but I think it’s a clever nod to the overall themes of the movie.

Similarly, the long panning shot of a battlefield’s aftermath and impromptu graveyard, showing the devastating human toll of the war, is deftly balanced out by the inclusion of that rare and wonderful Citroën 2CV Sahara, one of the dual-engined four-wheel drive 2CVs.

The car is very much at home in that arid, rugged environment, and its militaristic simplicity heightens the tone of the scene and establishes the context further. It just fits, and is masterful car casting on Nolan’s part.

At first I was a little taken aback by the use of an Oldsmobile Toronado in the scenes where the Trojan Horse, secretly packed full of Greeks (is this a spoiler? Do I need to do spoiler alerts for stories almost three millennia old?) is being dragged into the gates of Troy.

But, the more I thought about it, the more sense it made: there’s a power to the big V8 Toronado, one that reflects the power of Troy at that moment, during the actions that lead to their destruction. And, like the Trojan Horse, the Toronado holds a sort of secret, at least it did when it was first introduced, in the form of its front-wheel drive layout. I think that’s what Nolan is getting at here, and, as a gearhead, I appreciate it.

Nolan’s films are generally quite dark, something he has been criticized for in the past, and while I tend, generally, to agree that often his scenes feel too underlit and desaturated, sometimes there’s a Caravaggio-like chiaroscuro that these dramatically lit scenes take on that works phenomenally well.

Here we see a Volvo 240 with additional driving lights used to great effect in such a dark scene; you never really get to see the car clearly, and I think that just makes its use all the more powerful.

There’s a powerful scene of Odysseus finally making it back to the shores of Ithaca, where he is visited once again by the presence of the goddess Athena. The scene is one of finally getting a glimmer of hope after an incredibly long and torturous journey, and I love how Nolan emphasized this flickering spark of hope by having a yellow Amphicar swim by in the background, unmentioned but a potent reminder that this beleaguered man’s fortunes have, at least, the possibility of change, if he can live up to this long-sought outcome.

While I’d hesitate to say The Odyssey is a car movie, or even really about cars, I do respect the car casting and how appropriate and careful it all seemed to be. It would be really easy to make the cars feel like just some tacked-on afterthought in a movie like this, but Nolan managed to pull it off with an artful grace and an unexpected gravity.

Fantastic work. I definitely recommend you go see it, and if there are other cars that you think deserve special mention, let me know in the comments!

The Odyssey images: Universal Pictures