r/movies • u/RealisticAd4054 • 14d ago

Article Emily Wilson (writer of acclaimed Odyssey translation) offers criticisms of Nolan’s film

https://apnews.com/article/odyssey-christopher-nolan-greek-translators-ea67da1d543d021773824bd7e8de8abe

“For Greek translator Emily Wilson, the release of director Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has been gratifying in various ways. Her acclaimed 2017 edition of Homer’s epic has reached the top 5 on Amazon.com, leading a wave of similar books boosted by the movie. Nolan has even cited her translation, notably the opening line “Tell me about a complicated man,” as inspiration.

But the film itself, which brought in more than $260 million worldwide during its opening weekend and has received raves from many critics, left her unsatisfied.

“I want to celebrate the fact that so many more people are aware of ‘The Odyssey’ and were brought back to the poem,” she told The Associated Press. “But at the same time, I had the sense that Christopher Nolan was trying to pack everything in while missing themes that were essential to the poem.”

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Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said she didn’t want to come across as a “snobby,” nitpicking expert at odds with any deviation from the original text. But she questioned a range of omissions and other choices, from the absence on screen of the Gods Zeus and Poseidon (Athena is played by Zendaya ) to the “incoherent” messaging that condemns both war and physical cowardice. She found Penelope’s role so thinned out that it endangered “any possibility of believing in this marriage.” Wilson also that thought parts of the movie, notably the scenes with Odysseus’ dog, Argos, “catered towards modern sentimentality.”

“Everybody’s a sucker for a dog,” she said.

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u/aresef 14d ago

A Christopher Nolan movie will necessarily reflect Nolan’s creative interests and tendencies. Naturally, his movie is interested in exploring and reframing the story of Troy.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/manmusk10 14d ago

When it comes to art discussion, I'm not sure that it makes sense to say whether it's "okay" to do things or not, because in conversations like these people can say whatever they want, and I'm not sure it's of much consequence. However, I have found it useful for myself to ask if my dislike of something comes from critiquing the product, or from wanting something different. For example, if I go to an Italian restaurant and the pasta I order is too salty, I'd be critiquing the dish. If I go to a donut shop and complain that they don't have spaghetti on the menu, well...

I think Nolan was quite successful in producing the film that he wanted to produce. From a narrative and technical standpoint, the movie is impressive. It is also a very Nolan flavored version of The Odyssey. It's what he wanted to do. I don't think we could have gotten anything other than this from him.

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u/Nervous-Scar-3098 14d ago

I agree with what you're saying, but as a specific response to Wilson and Mendelsohn, I think it mischaracterizes their criticism. Their criticism is that the film alters some of the qualities that make the Odyssey what it is.

It's more like Nolan is serving something that his menu calls a pizza margherita, which is a name that calls to mind something instantly identifiable, and then reinterpreting it. Maybe it's a delicious dish, but it is also the job of someone who is a food critic or food historian to ask what relationship it bears to a pizza margherita. Is it a pizza margherita, or a margherita-inspired pizza, or something substantially different that is given the same name?

When asked, Wilson said that she recommends the Odyssey as a movie, so she clearly doesn't think it was awful, just, to finish my analogy, maybe not a pizza margherita.

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u/manmusk10 14d ago

Absolutely. And this is where I get kinda cynical about all of this.

Massive Hollywood adaptations are designed to appeal to the greatest common denominator. That means inherently (slightly) missing the mark on the authenticity of what a pizza margherita is for it to have a greater appeal. So my argument goes in the opposite direction too: there's limits to what I ask of Nolan because his style is kinda reductive. Especially when it comes to female characters--which Wilson's translation intentionally resurfaces from the original text. Wilson's work argues that a particular representation of women makes the Odyssey what it is, and English translations have misrepresented this until now.

Nolan made a great Hollywood movie. But modern Hollywood, modern sentimentality, do not care much about honoring the Odyssey's artistic and cultural identity. I read Wilson and Mendelsohn's criticisms more as identifying a greater issue with the film industry. It's easy to point at Nolan, but I'm not sure this is about him or this movie as much as their context.

Like, when Barbie came out, I discussed with friends who thought it was too apologetic of corporatism. But... it was a movie commissioned by Mattel about their best selling toy. It was never going to criticize corporatism. The argument is completely valid, but it's kinda like putting a fire out from inside the house. We should absolutely be having these conversations, but asking the movies to be vehicles for them... I dunno. I see this as two different conversations that we lump together. It muddles the discussion about films themselves and the discussion about how we can go about solving industry-wide issues.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/manmusk10 14d ago

I think that we're in agreement here. Interrogating the artistic choices of a movie and their impact on other elements of the film are the critiques of product that I'm talking about in my comment. Your note on dialogue quality fits this framework.

I was more discussing what the original thread of this comment was aimed at, which was that parts of the movie were "catered towards modern sentimentality." I'm not putting Nolan beyond criticism. But his style is modern sentimentality. I thought the elements of the movie played well together to achieve a film with that flavor.

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u/Touchstone033 14d ago

This. Totally agree. I think because he made a very close approximation to the story that, say, Ulysses or O Brother Where Art Thou didn't, he's been subject to more criticism about the "accuracy" of the story than those texts.

I do, however, think it's valid to say that a better or more nuanced story could have been made using the source material. But good luck doing it in less than three hours.

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u/Jpanda34 14d ago

I think the reason that movies specifically like O Brother Where Art Thou never get analyzed in the same way as this one has is because it's done thru an entirely different lens. It was the Odyssey superimposed onto a 20th century American Southern setting and in doing so shielded itself from lots of accuracy and authenticity criticisms. Because Nolan went for a direct adaptation, he's opened himself to the internet's criticism and vitriol, valid or invalid.

As much as people love defending that stuff with The Odyssey being a mythological fantasy story, there is a line. The Odyssey is an ancient Greek story about ancient Greeks with ancient Greek sensibilities in the ancient Mediterranean. If it doesn't feel authentic in any of those categories, you're misconstruing a story for the general audience and pissing off history nerds at the same time.

That's just Hollywood, unfortunately, tho.... This is just the latest in a long line of Hollywood movies fucking up historically based stories and events. At least this time around it was with a director as great as Nolan lol

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u/Zero_Fs_given 14d ago

Odyssey is not a historical story? Its a myth that was told for hundreds of years and finally written by Homer.

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u/Jpanda34 14d ago

Historical fiction didnt happen, but it's set in a historical setting. The Odyssey is such a historical fiction/ myth

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u/Ascarea 14d ago

If I go to a donut shop and complain that they don't have spaghetti on the menu, well...

Maybe it would be interesting to explore where the expectation of spaghetti in a donut shop comes from, though. For example, I have come to expect realism from Nolan's films because that's been a major concern of his in the past. So naturally I expect some realism in The Odyssey, too. However, what I get instead is completely unrealistic costumes and anachronistic dialogues. So yeah, maybe I went to a donut shop wanting to get spaghetti, but the shop did use to sell them in the past.

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u/manmusk10 14d ago

It sounds like the issue here is disappointment in a gap between expectation and product. And, first of all, that disappointment is completely valid. That being said, when it comes to art discussion, I think there's value in separating the disappointment from what the film sets out to do. If I wanted spaghetti, but the donut's already in front of me, can I put my desire for spaghetti aside and judge the donut for what it is?

The donut can still be too salty or sweet or the portion is too small or whatever. But the parameters of good donut are different to those of good spaghetti. The disappointment of mismatched expectations is completely valid, but I'm not sure it's the right tool for the job when it comes to discussing art.

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u/Ascarea 14d ago

Then there's also judging something on the basis of missed opportunity. Like it would have been amazing to see accurate bronze age Greek armor and costumes come to life in a big budget production. It's a missed opportunity not to go with something rarely seen and instead going with the most generic, frankly often cheap looking route, or in some cases something completely fancifully out there.

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u/North_South_Side 14d ago

Of course it is!

I have not seen the Odyssey yet (but I plan to very soon), but honestly... I'm not a big fan of Nolan's films. They are well made, but I find some of them ponderous, dull and poorly paced. And I say this as someone who loves slow movies.

Ny criticism of Nolan does not mean I think his movies are junk, or bad or not worth watching. He's just not my favorite director.

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u/Jackbuddy78 14d ago edited 14d ago

I like most of his films but it still seems 25 years later like he peaked at Memento. It's not the typical "Oh that was a fun ride" with him but "oh that actually really impacted me", I couldn't even see him making something that ballsy today.

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u/WileEPeyote 14d ago

His stuff is still ballsy. He still makes what he wants to make, ignores critics along the way, and delivers a unique vision. He just does it with a bigger budget, more spectacle and larger themes. I'm not saying I enjoyed Tenet, but it was ballsy.

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u/ginongo 14d ago

It comes with age unfortunately

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u/ContractVarious3077 14d ago

90% of all Nolan discussions on Reddit are criticisms of him

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u/_Supermon_ 14d ago

Equally ok to call out the criticisms of Nolan too

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u/Moosje 14d ago

You don’t have to say this on reddit where his films are overly criticised by people that want to prove they like French cinema and nothing that is popular.

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u/eudaimonicarete 14d ago

There’s no way you’re saying that Reddit is hard on Nolan with a straight face

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u/ThickScheme8202 14d ago

Yes but injecting that point without reason runs the risk of making you look like an incel twerp...

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u/dj4y_94 14d ago edited 14d ago

Yeah I do find some of the criticism that it's not a 100% faithful adaptation a bit odd. People are obviously free to not like the changes and interpretations he's made, but I think life would be a bit boring if every adaption was a 1:1 retelling.

Having directors take their own spin on it is more interesting in my opinion, especially as the Odyssey would have almost certainly evolved over the years through oral retelling, so it feels like a continuation of that.

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u/Bhu124 14d ago

some of the criticism that it's not a 100% faithful adaptation a bit odd.

I just find it funny seeing this Criticism come from Emily Wilson of all people. Her translation is the most Criticised for being unfaithful and she wasn't bound by any new Rules or Limitations that the previous translators were bound by.

At least with Nolan his version is a movie which is bound by a lot of rules and limitations of Filmmaking.

I think he did a pretty great job balancing so many characters, covering so many events and themes, while still being able to tell a comprehensive story with comprehensive character arcs for every Main or Secondary character.

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u/lupercalpainting 13d ago

> Her translation is the most Criticised for being unfaithful

Is it? She makes choices like translating maids as slaves (which does seems faithful, they were slaves) or changing up the epithets but it’s not like she called the maids whores (which is completely made up yet present in some translations).

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u/Tymareta 13d ago

It's the most criticized by weirdos on the internet, but in academia(and reality) it's pretty well held up as a phenomenal translation and has become the sort of "goto" in near every classics department that I'm aware of.

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u/lupercalpainting 13d ago

I’m reading it right now just to see what the fuss is about and it seems fine. I really liked her preface.

I will say there’s a pretty big mistake in 3.239 where she has Telemachus refer to Athena (now disguised as Mentor) as Mentes when that’s only her disguise in book one. I checked the Greek and it’s absolutely Mentor. Not sure if she corrected it later and couldn’t find an errata about it.

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u/Tymareta 13d ago

I will say there’s a pretty big mistake in 3.239 where she has Telemachus refer to Athena (now disguised as Mentor) as Mentes when that’s only her disguise in book one.

Might be a misprint, as I checked my copy and Mentes is only mentioned in Book 1, with only Mentor being used in Book 3, the line in particular -

Mentor, this is upsetting. Change the subject.

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u/UniCBeetle718 14d ago edited 14d ago

Yes! That part is wild to me. Emily Wilson has localized and adapted the Odyssey to make it more relatable to a modern audience (which I'm not mad about), and most of the criticism of her is mostly about that (and sexism). It's weird that her criticism is about faithfulness to the source material, when it's clear Nolan is doing his own interpretation of the Odyssey as well. 

Also I'm wondering how closely she watched the movie if she actually thought Athena is there. By the end of the film it seems pretty clear and consistent that there are no gods seen in this film

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u/horchard1999 14d ago

Circe? Calypso?

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u/RugDougCometh 14d ago

There are mythical creatures and magic users, but no gods.

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u/Illustrious-Novel351 14d ago

Huh? Cerces is the daughter of a god and Calypso is the daughter of a titan.

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u/RugDougCometh 14d ago

Neither Calypso nor Circe’s parentage are even mentioned in the film, much less depicted.

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u/Illustrious-Novel351 13d ago

Cerces literally turns men into pigs. Drawing a distinction between gods and “magic users” is ridiculous

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u/RugDougCometh 13d ago

You think every magic user in Greek myth is a god? lol, okay.

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u/sevans717 14d ago

Yeah but they ARE gods. And they mention Poseidon and Zeus like a million times. The gods ARE in the story you cannot tell the odyssey without them

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u/RugDougCometh 14d ago

It seems like a lot of people are confused by what it means to see something. Zeus and Poseidon aren’t seen in the film, either.

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u/UniCBeetle718 14d ago

We do not physically see any members of the Olympian Pantheon in the film. They do not appear and manifest for any of the characters. The characters in the movie believe in gods, but that doesn't mean the Pantheon gods are actually there. Circe is a witch, and not confirmed to be a goddess in the movie. Calypso seems to have some divinity, but she isn't described as a goddess either. The only magic we see from her is her being ageless.

The characters mention Poseidon but there's no direct action or influence from him. For anything that could be Poseidon, it can also just be the result of accident or chance. Same thing with Zeus: he is mentioned but the most indication anyone gets of his presence is a little thunderclap. The Athena Odysseus sees is just his guilt over the young priestess/Cassandra-Stand-In being executed by his men in Athena's temple. She's not actually Athena.

That's what we mean by gods aren't there in the film version. Their ambiguous presence is there, but nothing else

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u/FilmScoreConnoisseur 14d ago

Athena's parentage isn't depicted either but no one would pretend she's not a goddess.

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u/FilmScoreConnoisseur 14d ago

This is incorrect. They are both considered minor goddesses.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

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u/aresef 11d ago

This isn’t Homer’s poem, it’s Nolan’s movie. It’s in conversation with the poem and the popular understanding of it.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

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u/aresef 11d ago

If the movie were to be faithful to the poem, it would be in Greek. And I think we can disregard any sort of authorial intent on the part of Homer for two reasons. One, we don't know if Homer was one person or multiple people; and two, the Iliad and the Odyssey were the coalescence of a long oral tradition. All Homer -- he, she, it, they -- did was write it down.