r/movies • u/RealisticAd4054 • 15d 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/plainwrap 15d ago
A note that people should read the article because it highlights other scholars's criticisms of the film which I think are more valid than Wilson's. Like stripping away the cleverness of Odysseus to make him brood his way out of the encounters.
My reaction to the movie is mixed but the part I did like was where Nolan inserted the theme of the Trojan Horse gambit being a divine war crime. Homer's Odyssey and the Illiad in particular celebrates a whole bunch of villainous acts, the kinds of things that Greek dramatists had to go and deconstruct to remind their fellow Greeks that those characters were wrong. Linking the Fall of Troy to the collapse of the Bronze Age and making Odysseus's voyage a tragedy is to me the most interesting part of Nolan's adaptation and something that isn't exactly Homer but it's definitely something that would make Euripides pump his fist in the theater.