Hamilton’s new Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey Limited Edition arrives with a problem most film watches never face: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is set in a world that predates mechanical timekeeping. Unfazed by the challenge, Hamilton turned the problem on its head and made a watch that behaves like an artefact after the event, a modern object imagining what myth might leave behind.
The starting point is the Khaki Field Auto, here recast in a 42mm bronze case with a brushed black dial, sword-shaped hands and a caseback showing Odysseus’s helmet beside Nolan’s signature. The use of bronze is, of course, a direct nod to the Bronze Age world of armour, blades and seafaring warfare. Interestengly, as this meta darkens and patinates with wear, the watch will end up with a private archaeology of its own.
The strongest details are the least literal. The dial pattern is drawn from the hero’s helmet; the 12 o’clock index refers to a rivet on his sword scabbard; the central seconds hand has the line of a spear. The brown grained leather strap, with its emphatic central stitch, reinforces the martial language without tipping into costume. There is also a replica of Athena’s pin, worn in the film as a talisman and presented with the watch. Nice touch. In Homer, Athena is not simply divine protection, but intelligence, strategy and disguise – the qualities that make Odysseus more than a strong man with a sword.
There is a neat tension in Nolan staging this archaic, pre-clock world with new IMAX film technology. His cinema has always been fascinated by time: memory, delay, loops, countdowns, history bearing down on the present. The Odyssey gives him the oldest version of that obsession: a journey measured not by clocks but by longing, recognition and return.
At £1,190 and limited to 2,112 pieces, the Hamilton Odissey At £1,190 and limited to 2,112 pieces, the Hamilton Khaki Field Auto The Odyssey is a watch with collector appeal, but it also has enough substance to be worn every day: H-10 automatic movement, 80-hour power reserve, Nivachron balance spring, sapphire crystal and 100-metre water resistance.
Author: Julia Pasarón
Other affordable luxury watches recently reviewed by I-M Inquisitive Minds include the BALL Engineer Master II Snoopy Flying Ace, the Raymond Weil A.R.T. Collection, and the Furlan Marri Mechaquartz Meteorite.
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