One of the foundational stories of the Western canon has a grand, sweeping, meticulously diligent new version in writer/director Christopher Nolan’s epic film, bristling with Oscar-winning talent and impressive seriousness of purpose. It is, with a few significant exceptions, true to Homer’s story dating back to 700-800 BC. But there are also vestigial reflections of Nolan’s previous film, “Oppenheimer,” both stories of men who must grapple with the consquences of their destructive, even ruthless, acts during wartime.

Matt Damon plays one of history’s most complex heroes, Odysseus, whose name and story still define journeys of adventure thousands of years later. The Odyssey follows Odysseus on his long voyage home after the victory of the Greeks, led by Agamemnon, with Achilles, Ajax, and Odysseus, in the Trojan War. Paris, a Trojan prince, had been asked to decide which of three goddesses was the most beautiful. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, bribed him by saying that if he picked her, she would give him the most beautiful human woman in the world. That woman was Helen (Lupita Nyong’o). She was the wife of the Greek king, Menelaus of Sparta (Jon Bernthal). But she is known throughout history as Helen of Troy, because she was kidnapped (or ran away with) Paris, leading to the war that made her known as “the face that launched a thousand ships.”

That war lasted ten years. It was Odysseus, known for his trickery, who came up with the idea of getting the soliders inside the Trojan’s impenetrable city by hiding in a gigantic statue of a horse, with a soldier named Sinon (Elliot Page) left behind to lie that the Greeks had retreated, leaving the horse as a tribute to the goddess Athena (Zendaya). When the Trojans drag it into the city, the Greek soldiers come out to win a decisive battle and end the war. This story is told in Virgil’s Anead, and in Nolan’s film we see parts of it more than once in flashbacks, part of elliptical, non-linear story-telling that may be confusing to those not familiar with Homer’s tale. (To refresh your memory or just get a quick recap, try this.)

But really, all you need to know is that Odysseus is on his way home, leading his men in (to start with) three boats, hoping to make it back before Agamemnon reaches his home just to be competitive. (Agamemnon will get home first but then be murdered by his wife, Helen’s sister (also Nyong’o).

It will take Odysseus a decade, with many stops along the way as the crew tries to replenish their provisions. The most well-known of their adventures are all brought to screen in unprecedented splendor by Nolan, and his “Oppenheimer” team, editor Jennifer Lame, production designer Ruth De Jong, and Oscar-winning cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, filming in Greece, Italy, Iceland, Morocco, and Scotland. This is the first-ever feature movie filmed entirely with IMAX cameras (in tribute, you can even get an IMAX camera popcorn bucket) and shown in 70 mm. The visuals are never less than spectacular. Odysseus and his men are traveling by boat and the sky and “the wine-dark sea” Homer described is filmed with a power and grandeur of a true epic. We get a visceral feeling of just how alone these men are, not just before GPS but before maps and navigation, entrusting to the gods to guide them home but knowing that the gods may be even more devious tricksters than Odysseus himself.

Odysseus tries to follow the “laws of Zeus,” particularly with regard to hospitable treatment of strangers, and killing even animals with honor, plucking his bow string to give them a chance to escape. When lives are at stake, though, he will do what is expedient. On their first stop, he leads his men onto an island where a cave is set up as a home, with a cozy fire. According to his beliefs about what the laws of Zeus require and assuming that the inhabitant of the cave will believe the same, he orders his men to stoke the fire to welcome their host. But the inhabitant is not a man. He is a gigantic cyclops, and in a genuinely terrifying moment, as soon as he enters the cave, he grabs one of the men and bites his head off. It is hard to understand why Nolan chose to omit one of the key elements of the story, Odysseus refusing to give the cyclops his name, instead saying he was called “Noman.” This is a very significant part of the story that is parallel to his not using his own name when he returns home, both relating to his sense of himself and his identity.

After a few more deaths, Odysseus is able to lead his men to an escape. But he violates his obligation to give the murdered men a decent burial. The conflict between his obligations under the law of Zeus and the choices to save as many lives as possible are a theme.

This conflict is presented in the immediate consequences of killing the cyclops. Odysseus learns that the monster was the son of the god Poseiden, who will now express his grief and anger by keeping them from reaching home. As in Homer’s original story, it explores the theme of human agency and the interference of the gods. We often see Odysseus near the goddess Athena.

Other adventures include two enchantresses. Calypso ( Charlize Theron) feeds Odysseus lotus flowers that make him forget the PTSD of his agonizing choices but also the fact that he has a family. Circe (Samatha Morton) turns his famished men into pigs (an extraordinary scene of transformation and body horror), and we see how clever Odysseus is in figuring out what she has done and forcing her to reverse the spell and help him get home. He travels to Hades where he meets the ghost of Sinon. He straps himself to the mast of his ship while his men have their ears blocked with wax to pass through the jagged rocks where the sirens sing men to their deaths.

Meanwhile, his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) are back in Ithaca, with dozens of suitors eating their food, drinking their wine, and trying to get Penelope to marry one of them so he can take over the kingdom. The most odious of the suitors is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), a maniuplative schemer who got Sinon to take his place in the war. Telemachus leaves Ithaca to see if he can find any news of his father from Menelaus.

It will take all of Odysseus’ craftiness and strength to defeat the suitors and reunite with his wife and son. Damon’s performance shows us all of the complexity that makes Odysseus an eternally enthralling hero. Pattinson continues to impress as he subverts his considerable looks and charisma to create a despicable, cowardly character. John Leguizamo is superb as the loyal Eumaeus. Even the three-hour run time cannot find enough time for Theron, Zendaya, and Morton, but each of those encounters could be an entire movie.

Nolan’s screenplay veers into colloquialisms that take us out of the movie now and then. But he has an unsurpassed gift for the language of cinema. The scenes of exploration, combat, and in Penelope’s castle in Ithaca are striking and narratively clear. Penelope fends off the suitors by telling them she cannot move forward until she finishes weaving a burial shroud for her late father-in-law. She weaves during the day and then unravels it at night. She appears modestly behind a screen as the suitors crowd the dining hall.

Nolan’s style is chilly and cerebral, with the female characters thinly sketched and too often just creating problems for or taking power away from men. That may be one reason that draws him to a story where a military hero has encounters with literal enchantresses who impede his progress. His exploration here of the conflicts even successful warriors feel about what they have done and what they have seen is moving. He made very significant changes to Homer’s concluding scenes (admittedly, contested by some scholars as added by others later). But the ending he chose has the same problems as the disputed version and it undermines the weight of what he has presented so compellingly throughout the story.

Parents should know that this film is extremely violence with many characters injured and killed, many with throats slit, monsters, ghosts, and graphic and disturbing images. Odysseus is drugged and characters drink wine. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: Why is this one of the most enduring stories in history? What does Odysseus regret the most? What decisions did he make that you think were wrong?

If you like this, try: the book (Fagles or Wilson translation) and a modern re-imagining from the Coen brothers, “O Brother Where Art Thou.”