Mumbai, Jul 14: He is quite happy to keep getting lost, says Matt Damon who has done so in several earlier films and now again in a cinematic and personal journey that has been epic in every which way – playing Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s ambitious retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey”.
“It was fantastic. It was the experience of a lifetime,” the Hollywood superstar told PTI in an interview here.
Getting lost has been quite the running theme in his films. And now comes “The Odyssey” about the Greek mythological hero on a journey back to Ithaca.
“The movies where I get to come home so far are ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Interstellar’, ‘The Martian’ and this one. So I’m happy to keep getting lost,” Damon said.
“The Odyssey”, Nolan’s first film to have a gala premiere in India, somehow tops all his earlier experiences.
Damon said he is just happy he got to embody the character of Odysseus, a story that is almost 3,000 years old and has inspired countless poems, stories, paintings, movies and other art for centuries now, in Nolan’s big screen adaptation.
He gets to distil his experience of almost four decades in cinema and many blockbusters in playing the battle-weary hero haunted by his choices and desperate to go home to his wife and son in Ithaca. During the decade-long journey after the Trojan War, he confronts vengeful gods, mythical creatures and much more.
The actor, who won the Academy award with friend Ben Affleck for writing “Good Will Hunting”, went on to build an enviable body of work in the “Bourne” and “Ocean’s franchise as well as movies such as “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, “The Rainmaker” and “The Departed”. The filmography also includes Nolan’s “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer”.
Graduating to Nolan’s leading man has been great.
“I love working with Chris. I love his approach. I love his crew. And it’s always such a pure work experience. I mean, he just elevates the project and puts it in the centre and everybody just checks their ego and focuses on this project.
“And so to finally, you know, get this huge role in what is as ambitious a movie as I’d ever seen. It was really the thrill of a lifetime.”
“The Odyssey” is the most challenging film of his career, the 55-year-old said. “Some days started with a hike up a mountain and then a hike down altogether at the end of the day. And the beauty of it was that every single person was in it. There was no special treatment. And everyone was there for the love of cinema. And we knew what we were doing was really challenging. And that was the joy,” he said.
Asked whether he could recall the toughest moment from the movie, Damon shook his head.
“Impossible to say. I mean, we were on a boat. The rule number one in Hollywood is never go on a boat. We were on a boat for months,” he said, referencing the popular Hollywood sentiment that films set in water pose a huge logistical challenge.
“We were at the top of mountains. We were in a cave that you had to hike up to get to and then shot inside a cave for two weeks. It’s just that every location presented a different challenge. And they were equally difficult, but in completely different ways.” Damon can almost be ranked an India regular.
The star, who has been to India to shoot for “The Bourne Supremacy” and for a charity project once, said he just loved the reaction of fans to “The Odyssey”. He got to witness it firsthand during one of the two screenings of the movie ahead of its release this weekend.
“It was very emotional because it was the first real audience… We’d seen it at premieres but that’s your family and friends and which is wonderful. But to see a pure audience, it was the first time we got the chance to engage with them right after they’d seen it. And it was really exciting,” he said.
He stayed in Goa for more than a month in 2003 for “The Bourne Supremacy”.
“I have wonderful memories about being here and interacting with Indian cinema culture from the other side, from the crew side. We had a local crew. They were awesome. And that sequence in that movie really set up the rest of that franchise. It’s the first act of the second film. And it was a critical act to get right.”
In “The Odyssey”, Damon leads an ensemble cast that also includes Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Samantha Morton, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie and John Leguizamo. The movie, the first to be shot fully on IMAX cameras, has a dazzling scale that rivals Nolan’s past works. According to Damon, “The Odyssey” is a film to be experienced on the big screen. “I think he’s (Nolan) has put all of the skill that he’s built over his incredible career and he brought it all on this project because this project is like six movies in one. And you are seeing everything he has in his toolkit in this movie. And it’s all been captured on the largest format that’s ever been done on. So it’s definitely one to see at the cinema,” the actor said.
“The Odyssey” is the first film to be shot entirely on IMAX film camera.
“They invented a system that could quiet the camera, which when it was on the camera, weighed over 300 pounds. So imagine these grips (camera technicians) carrying this stuff around like up mountains. And I mean, I would get to locations and just shake my head and go, who thought we should shoot a movie here? This is crazy,” he said.
Produced by Universal Pictures and Syncopy, “The Odyssey” will be released in theatres on July 17. (PTI)
