Why Matt Damon says this Odyssey scene was the toughest to shoot

"The Odyssey" is 3000 years old, but still — stop reading now if you want to avoid spoilers for Christopher Nolan's film adaptation.

Christopher Nolan, the universally acclaimed British filmmaker who won his first Academy Award as a director for "Oppenheimer," puts his actors through tough shooting experiences. This isn't a negative, per se; despite rampant rumors about a "no chairs" rule (and confirmation that Nolan does not allow cell phones on set), he gets truly phenomenal performances out of his actors, and he does so against a backdrop of largely practical effects to boot. So, what was the most technically difficult scene in "The Odyssey" according to its star Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus? You might be surprised.

In a Vulture interview with the outlet's critic Bilge Ebiri, Damon was asked about the hardest scene to shoot in the massive, nearly three-hour epic (which earned a rave review from Chris Evangelista here at /Film). Considering that Nolan and Damon shot in the elements, including on real oceans and cliff sides, Damon pointed to an emotional moment: the one in which Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, is finally reunited with his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway).

"None of it's easy, it's 'The Odyssey,'" Damon joked. "But the return is the emotional center of the movie, that sequence with Anne. You can't copy Chris's scripts because they're in red, but I wrote that final monologue into my phone."

Remember the no phones thing? Damon continued, "And we didn't have phones on set, but just in my spare time, whenever I had 20 minutes, I would do that monologue and work on it. And if I had any questions, I was asking him months in advance about them — a line here or a line there, or 'What do you think about this?'"

Read more: 15 Greatest Best Picture Oscar Nominees That Didn't Win

Matt Damon paid particular attention to this climactic scene in The Odyssey, and it paid off

As the third and final act of Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" begins, Odysseus finally returns to his castle in Ithaca alongside his son Telemachus (Tom Holland), disguising himself as a beggar so that his long-lost wife Penelope doesn't immediately recognize him. With a screen between them (a screen that Penelope wields against her numerous drunken suitors throughout the rest of the film), Odysseus gets raw and honest about the sacking and destruction of Troy ... which won the Trojan War for him and his Greek allies but came at a massive human cost. The monologue, delivered by Matt Damon, is a searing indictment of his own actions and critique of his hubris, and I can absolutely understand why it was really tough to perform.

"[...] When we got to [that monologue], it was completely seamless and exactly what we wanted," Damon said of Nolan's guidance throughout the process. "So, that was the one that I probably focused on in my spare time more than any of the others, just because if you can get that piece right, then the whole movie really works, because the audience has been on the whole journey with him. The reveal is that he is what he's carrying, and it still chokes me up thinking about it — that he couldn't face her, because he knew that when he did, he was going to have to tell her what he'd done."

Damon is, of course, referring to the literal object Odysseus is carrying (a figure of Athena gifted to him by Penelope that will prove his identity), but he's also referring to the massive weight of his own war crimes. 

According to Matt Damon, Christopher Nolan makes even the most daunting scenes easier for his actors

Again, I don't think I can stress this enough: Almost every scene in Christopher Nolan's movie was shot practically, which makes the entire process inherently difficult. Matt Damon did say, though, that the way Nolan gets everyone ready — and runs his set in general — prepared him for difficult sequences, like the one where Odysseus and his men pass by an island full of sirens. Odysseus, always arrogant, insists that his crew tie him to the mast as they stuff their ears with wax so that he can be the only man alive to survive the sound of the sirens' song, and Damon told Bilge Ebiri that originally, Odysseus' monologue about the song was supposed to be largely in voiceover. According to Damon, however, Nolan pivoted and filmed the entire thing in a close-up for maximum emotional impact. It worked because of how Nolan sets his proverbial stage and puts his actors into real, tactile environments.

"So, now I know I have an hour to get my mind right for this sequence, and I know that the second I step off the boat onto the picture boat, I'm getting tied to a mast and we're doing this. And if you give any actor in the Screen Actors Guild an hour to prepare, and you say, 'In one hour we're going to shoot this scene of you,' and then you lash them into an actual mast and you pass a real island with people on it, you've basically given that actor every possible advantage," Damon noted. "Any professional actor can do that. So, [Nolan] took what is a difficult scene and made it as easy as possible for me."

"The Odyssey" is in theaters now.

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Read the original article on SlashFilm.