The perennial motif of homecoming and temporal reversion has long underpinned Christopher Nolan’s oeuvre.

The astronauts of “Interstellar” meticulously forfeit twenty-three years to interstellar travel, a duration commensurate with Odysseus’s absence from Ithaca in “The Odyssey”: a decade waging the Trojan War, and another decade endeavoring to return.

To a remarkable degree, Nolan’s “The Odyssey” — despite its fidelity to Homer’s epic poem — feels, down to its nonlinear DNA, unequivocally like a Nolan film.

The authorship of the epic poem, dated to the 7th or 8th century BC, is complex.

Yet no one could question the maker of this “Odyssey,” an earthy, existential epic that ravishingly melds the storytelling of antiquity with contemporary IMAX-sized bravado.

As a narrative concerning a man whose cunning incurs the wrath of the gods, “The Odyssey” presents itself as a natural counterpart, if not an outright successor, to “Oppenheimer.”

Odysseus (Matt Damon, in the performance of a lifetime) is progressively consumed by remorse for the violence and mortality he has inflicted, following the deployment of his ingenuity that culminated in the sacking of Troy.

The advent of any new Nolan spectacle invariably precipitates its own form of onslaught, accompanied by an avalanche of proclamations hailing it as a "masterpiece."

(I am not exempt from this.)

Yet, while "The Odyssey," Nolan's inaugural feature shot entirely with IMAX cameras, does not eschew grandiosity, it functions with surprising efficacy as a more restrained, human-scale narrative.

The journey — you may have heard, it is about the journey — is occasionally somewhat cumbersome, and the sheer Nolan-esque quality of the production, not to mention the historical significance of the narrative, inevitably divests it of a degree of novelty.

One could plausibly argue that Nolan has already crafted a film concerning a man endeavoring to reunite with his family through successive layers of mind-bending illusion, and that film is titled “Inception.”

Such is the predicament inherent to urtexts.

While "The Odyssey" seldom fails to captivate, it also functions as a riveting adventure narrative.

At a minimum, it constitutes the definitive cinematic adaptation of one of antiquity's most venerable literary works—a commendable achievement for a filmmaker of unrelenting ambition.

It is not until Book 5 that Odysseus makes his entrance into Homer’s epic, and Nolan, who also authored the screenplay, similarly commences his narrative on Ithaca.

There, Odysseus’s household is besieged by a host of suitors feasting in pursuit of his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway).

Preeminent among them is Antinous, portrayed with impeccably sleazy finesse by Robert Pattinson.

For an actor who is often, and pleasingly, at variance with the cinematic milieu surrounding him, Pattinson has never insinuated himself into a role with such seamless alacrity.

Telemachus (Tom Holland, also impeccably cast), the youthful progeny of Penelope and Odysseus, resolves to embark upon a quest for his father.

Concurrently, we reacquaint ourselves with Odysseus, weather-beaten and white-bearded, in the aftermath of Troy's fall.

His forced conscription by Agamemnon is rendered in flashbacks.

Agamemnon is portrayed with an imposing, Darth Vader-like presence and enacted by Benny Safdie, yet the true standout is his colossal, mohawked helmet.

Such vivid details proliferate throughout Nolan’s richly textured film.

The gentle undulation of Odysseus’ longship off the Mediterranean coast is nothing short of sublime.

Some of Nolan’s and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s most formidable work has emerged when they contend with the elements, as in “Dunkirk.”

And “The Odyssey” is replete with tempestuous seas and enchanted isles.

If anything, the film could have ventured further; I was promised rosy-fingered dawns.

The opening line of Homer’s epic, as rendered by Emily Wilson in the translation upon which Nolan relied, characterizes Odysseus as “a complicated man.”

James Joyce, whose “Ulysses” draws its structural foundation from “The Odyssey,” once observed that whereas Hamlet is merely a son, Ulysses—or Odysseus—embodies the roles of father, husband, lover, and warrior.

In essence, he constitutes an Everyman, albeit one of exceptional intellect.

And Damon, the most congenial of Everymen, proves particularly attuned to the multifarious dimensions of this archetypal hero.

Our initial encounter with him is as a soldier, commanding a modest flotilla that has broken away from Agamemnon’s armada, charting a southerly trajectory alongside his lieutenant Eurylochus (a superb Himesh Patel).

Their voyage unfolds as a sequence of discrete, episodic ordeals: a confrontation with the Cyclops Polyphemus within his cavernous lair; an assault in a pine forest by the anthropophagous Laestrygonian giants; a repast with the enchantress Circe (Samantha Morton); and Odysseus’ seven-year sojourn with the sea nymph Calypso (a disarming and sincere Charlize Theron).

One could contend that the film occasionally resembles a series of loosely concatenated set pieces, yet what set pieces they are!

Among them is the episode of the Trojan horse—a mere fleeting allusion in the epic poem, yet here elevated to a central spectacle.

It is evident that Nolan, who nearly helmed a production of "Troy" over two decades ago, has long harboured this sequence—commencing with the Trojan horse half-buried in the sand and culminating in the conflagration of Troy—in his mind for years.

Each stage of Odysseus’s peregrination affords Nolan a mythopoeic arena in which to explore imagery verging on the macabre.

I found myself most captivated by “The Odyssey” during its most surreal passages: the apparition of a colossal hand emerging from the penumbra, the encounter with the “shades” of Odysseus’s deceased army, rising from the obsidian earth of Hades.

The film is introduced as “a time of apparent magic,” and Nolan has judiciously elected to relegate the deities to the periphery.

Though their powers are undeniably authentic, the gods themselves remain conspicuously off-screen, with the sole exception of Zendaya’s Athena, who materializes as a confidante to Odysseus.

That choice draws Nolan’s “Odyssey,” and its themes of sacrifice, fidelity and honor, closer to reality.

And it renders Nolan’s decision to cast his film broadly all the more indispensable.

This is a narrative, transmitted across millennia by bards and raconteurs, that belongs to all of humanity.

Casting the film with a heterogeneous ensemble of actors, including Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, is not merely permissible for a purely mythological tale but imbues the film with a contemporary vitality.

Witnessing actors such as Elliot Page (indelible as a fallen soldier), John Leguizamo (as the loyal servant Eumaeus), and Damon in this archaic context constitutes a compelling reason to view “The Odyssey,” and why Homer’s oft-recounted epic warrants revisiting at all.

If the present holds no relevance, what is the purpose?

They possessed no cameras in 700 B.C., either.

Nolan’s “Odyssey,” despite its nearly three-hour runtime, never languishes.

The film is propelled as much by the friction between past and present as by Odysseus’s meandering trajectory.

Gender roles are interrogated even as traditional masculinity is reaffirmed.

The poem’s denouement, problematic for its depiction of mass slaughter, is rendered as a more palatable action-movie melee.

Yet the essence of “The Odyssey” remains intact, and Odysseus’s quest to atone for his transgressions while adhering to his principles feels resurgently vital.

Nolan, one might say, is entirely in his element.

"The Odyssey," a Universal Pictures release arriving in theaters on Thursday, has been classified R by the Motion Picture Association due to its depiction of violence and some language.

The film's runtime is 172 minutes.

It has been awarded three and a half stars out of four.