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Sunday morning, after finally shaking off the effects of a two-day migraine attack that lasted from Thursday through Friday, my sweetie-wife and I caught an early morning screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I wish I could tell you how I really feel about this film, but I cannot because of its presentation.

First, a little background on my sweetie-wife’s and my moviegoing habits. Her hearing is fairly sensitive and as such she finds modern movies are played too loudly for her comfort. To combat this she brings a set of cushioned headphones to wear to cut down on the sounds of the film. Most of the time I do not, but the last movie we went to together, Supergirl, I too found the volume overly loud and uncomfortable. Due to that experience and knowing that Nolan has a penchant for making his sound mix loud, I brought along a pair for myself, just in case.

It was not enough.

Universal Pictures

The Odyssey was far, far too loud and in particular the bass which played frequently and with such intensity that it obliterated from my mind and perception everything else in existence. My mind was too concerned with the discomfort of the soundtrack to ever slip away into that dream-like state where the characters and events on the screen took on their own form of reality. I was much more concerned about my seating than I was about any machinations or palace intrigue that took place in Ithaca. Thoughts of dealing with the bass that sliced through me like a phaser pushed from my attention any feelings I might have had for the character lost at sea or the poor doomed Trojans slaughtered in the night. I was present when The Odyssey was screened but I cannot truly say that I actually watched it with any real attention. In the film’s penultimate act, when a terrible storm batters Odysseus, I had to physically cover my eyes because the pounding the audience had suffered at the hands of the audio mixer pushed me once again toward a migraine and the flashes of lightning were simply unendurable.

I can report that The Odyssey does not drag, even during its nearly three-hour runtime; Nolan is too talented a filmmaker to let that happen, but his devotion to an overpowering soundtrack undermines what might have been an enjoyable feature.