New Delhi, July 18 -- Christopher Nolan has spent nearly two decades asking audiences to trust cinema. Not streaming, not phones, not compressed digital life - but theatres. With The Odyssey, he has made perhaps his strongest argument yet. The tragedy is that, despite their enthusiasm, Indian audiences cannot watch as he intended.

That thought lingered with me long after the credits rolled.

Nolan reimagines Homer's epic as a man haunted more by memories than by monsters. That emotional weight is what stayed with me most. Matt Damon's Odysseus is less than a mythical warrior, but a broken king trying to find his way back home after years of war. Nolan strips away the romanticism of mythology and instead fills the screen with grief, regre...