THE COLLAPSE OF OUR WORLD, ACCORDING TO CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

If your perhaps negative opinion of Christopher Nolan's latest oeuvre is based solely on the diversity of the cast, think again. For in The Odyssey we have a film where casting decisions feel poetically rather than politically correct. Yes, even the fact that Lupita Nyong'o plays Helen of Troy.

Here is why.

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has drawn the action, characters, and monsters from the ancient epic poem composed in the 8th century BC to retell events that historians place around the still mysterious collapse of Bronze Age civilisation in the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 13th century BC.

The story is familiar and Nolan keeps rather close to it. Seven years after the fall of Troy, Odysseus (Matt Damon) is still not home. No one knows if he is alive or dead: no one has seen him or his soldiers after they sailed from Troy for Ithaca. His faithful wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), is trying to fend off the increasingly aggressive suitors who dine, and drink, and disturb everything and everyone in her palace. His young son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), is trying to preserve his throne even as he is learning how to be a grown man.

But then, after years eating the sweet lotus leaves of amnesia fed to him by the beautiful Calypso (Charlize Theron), Odysseus begins to remember. Everything. His war victories. His cunning. His men. Their deaths. His family. Broken but determined, the lost king of Ithaca leaves the heaven of oblivion and returns to the dangers of the world to reclaims his throne and family.

Nolan has taken all the key plot elements from the source material – the Trojan Horse, Odysseus's long journey home, the long wait of his faithful Penelope and their revenge on the suitors – and has created a story that speaks directly to our times. A story about the collapse of our globalised civilisation.

Like the diverse crew on Odysseus's ships, we are in this boat together – a gathering of human beings left to the mercy of elements, nature and gods, while power–hungry leaders destroy the foundation of our civilisation by breaking every rule, law and principle that has held us together as a community. King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) had broken the blood bonds of fatherhood, sacrificing his own daughter to secure safe passage for his ships to Troy. Odysseus has broken the sacred custom of hospitality by presenting a deadly gift – the famous horse – to the Trojans. Antinous (Robert Pattison), a young noble who is wooing Penelope, is violating the rules of hospitality too.

The analogies with our own world, where national and international law – and the very principles on which they are based – are violated on a regular basis, while leaders send men to die and kill and burn homes and cities to the ground only to justify political gain, are quite obvious. Christopher Nolan has hardly hidden his intention – to tell about our present and our future through a story that is three millennia old.

Notwithstanding some heavy handed dialogue (my only issue with historical inaccuracies in the film is Penelope bemoaning the death of her "civilisation", when the notion of civilisation belongs to a much later age) Christopher Nolan has outdone himself. He has created a compelling narrative and a visually striking story that ticks all the boxes for a blockbuster yet leaves you devastated after leaving the theatre.

The Odyssey has it all: the savagery of war, the darkness of PTSD caused by the violence you have unleashed upon the world and upon your own friends, the horror of being a woman without protection in a male world, the labyrinthine wanderings of humans between fate and free will. Plus the disturbing monsters, horrifying witches and hair raising battle scenes.

In short, Nolan has created a three–hour–long wild ride across an imagined past towards an uncertain future. By the end, you stop counting who is meant to look like whom, or which detail a Bronze Age specialist would dispute. All that matters is whether Odysseus – and us, the viewers – can find the power to recognise our mistakes and fix the bonds that have been broken.

The Odyssey hits the screens on 17 July