The Odyssey still has Sweden making time for three hours
People are still setting aside three hours for The Odyssey seven weeks after its Swedish premiere.
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On Tuesday, the film remained in the current line-up at Filmstaden Råsunda in Stockholm. At Elektra Folkets Bio in Västerås, the live programme listed an afternoon screening on 1 September, followed by evening shows on Wednesday and Thursday. The journey home has not disappeared from Swedish screens with the summer holidays.
The audience has not disappeared either. Filmbladet's weekly cinema chart, dated 1 September, placed The Odyssey at number two in Sweden. That position gives the late run a human shape: people are still choosing one very long shared evening when many summer releases would already be fading from view.
Christopher Nolan's film runs for two hours and 52 minutes, according to the current film page. The Swedish age rating is 15. Filmstaden also carries a warning about flashing images that may affect people with photosensitive epilepsy. Those details matter more here than they would for a quick midweek film.
Matt Damon plays Odysseus, the king trying to return home after the Trojan War. The cast also includes Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o and Robert Pattinson. Nolan wrote and directed the film, which turns one of the oldest return journeys in Western storytelling into a modern cinema spectacle.
Its staying power is easy to understand without deciding whether the film is good. The promise is unusually simple: leave the ordinary evening behind, sit in the dark with other people and follow one man across a dangerous world. The cost is time. The reward people are seeking is the feeling that a cinema visit can still be an event rather than background noise.
That choice is still available beyond one large chain. Elektra's programme gives Västerås viewers three different chances across three days, while today's national listings show that The Odyssey remains part of the wider Swedish cinema conversation. Exact times can change, so the cinema's own page is the final word before leaving home.
Seven weeks on, the most interesting part of The Odyssey is no longer the size of its opening weekend. It is the sight of people continuing to give it an entire evening. Odysseus is trying to get home. Swedish audiences are still willing to arrive home late.
DailySweden Lifestyle Desk
DailySweden Lifestyle Desk writes for DailySweden.
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