Christopher Nolan is in a tight spot: The Odyssey, which opened at $264.1 million, will be pelted with Oscars come March 2027. Best director, best picture, best actor (Matt Damon) at a conservative minimum. And the critics – bar one contrary view in the London Review of Books – can’t get enough. So what’s the problem?

Nolan has been increasing the scale and ambition of his projects throughout his career – naturally, I suppose. From the story of an insurance investigator with memory loss in Memento, to the sprawling but still technically confined Gotham City in The Dark Knight trilogy, and then into the infinite layers of the human psyche in Inception. By the time we get to Interstellar the universe is boundless.

Not content with expanding just the physical ambitions of his films, Nolan turned to stories and people of a much grander scale. Oppenheimer is about one of the most consequential – perhaps the most consequential – men in history. And finally he turns his attention to the Odyssey – it is hard to think of a single bigger, more famous, more recognised, more vaunted story than that. So where does he go from here? By my calculations, to maintain the pace and trajectory of his career, he can only do the Bible next.

It will suit this conservative director, whose rendition of the Odyssey is already biblical propaganda. Homer’s version of........

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