For all the jokes that any timepiece released in collaboration with Christopher Nolan's epic The Odyssey should have really been a sundial, I’d even go so far as to argue that the all-new Hamilton Khaki Field Auto manages to do one better: creating something as timeless as a myth told thousands and thousands of times.
Sung by bards, staged by playwrights, and adapted by everyone from James Joyce to the Coen Brothers, Homer's poem about Odysseus and his now-cinematic quest home has continued to capture humanity’s imagination for more than 2,800 years. And now, rather improbably, engraved onto the caseback of a Swiss-American field watch.
The Hamilton Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey Limited Edition is the latest in a series of collaborations with the Oscar-winning director. But unlike everything else the brand has built with Nolan, this one has no business existing in the world it's inspired by.
Interstellar gave us the Murph, a prop so beloved by die-hard collectors that Hamilton was determined to resurrect it for retail five years after the credits rolled. In the film, of course, it was an invaluable narrative prop as it kept ticking across galaxies to save a planet. To have a watch go interstellar does a lot for a brand’s reputation for accuracy, let me tell you.
Of course, Tenet had a Khaki BeLOWZERO running backwards and Oppenheimer, rather fittingly, ditched props altogether. Instead, the costume designers went above and beyond to source six genuine vintage Hamiltons from private collectors, worn by leading stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Matt Damon to nail 1940s authenticity down to the crown.
RELATED: Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Has An Official Trailer
In every one of those cases, the watch lived on a wrist, on screen, earning its keep as part of the plot. And in true Nolan fashion, the esteemed filmmaker has returned to a trusted storytelling method for his latest (and arguably most anticipated) movie release The Odyssey – though he has a slight problem. Watches weren’t yet invented in the Bronze Age.
The Hamilton Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey Limited Edition is the first Nolan collab designed as a tribute to the director’s truly immersive worlds, taking one of Hamilton's most dependable and best-loved field watches and completely updating the look and feel.
Stainless steel gives way to the same warm bronze seen across the armour on screen, which, as well as being consistent with the armoury of the time, gives the watch – each watch – a unique profile and, over time, will develop its own patina. No two of the 2,112 limited edition pieces will be the same, adding to the release’s timeless allure and appeal.
Even the dial tells its own mythical story: the hands are cast as swords and the seconds hand even resembles an arrow; ticking across an all-black dial that borrows its texture from Odysseus' helmet. Even the index at 12 o'clock is modelled on a rivet lifted from the hero's scabbard.
Powered by the brand's in-house H-10 automatic movement, and its generous 80-hour reserve, the numbers that will truly get collectors talking are 2,112.
It's, of course, the size of the limited run by Hamilton, and a deliberate wink at the number 12's grip on the poem itself. Homer's original Odyssey runs to some 12,000 lines. Twelve ships sailed for Troy. Odysseus spends ten of his twenty years away trapped between gods and monsters, and to prove his identity upon return (no spoilers), fires a single arrow clean through twelve axe-heads lined in a row. Someone at Hamilton clearly has a good memory.
Because that's really the trick The Odyssey has always pulled off. It's outlasted almost everything else from the ancient world by adapting and reacting to the generation whose turn it is to tell it. Nolan's version, shot on IMAX and starring half of Hollywood's leading men and women in various states of shipwreck, is just the latest of those vessels. Hamilton's watch, quite possibly, is the strangest one yet.
