Since it released worldwide a couple of weeks ago, Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey has inspired plenty of conversation. Generally, the critical consensus has been overwhelmingly positive. In his review of the film, Esquire’s Anthony Breznican wrote, “This film represents a team of masters, all working at the peak of their powers to breathe impressive new life into this 2,800-year-old tale.” It’s almost as if Elon Musk’s desperate attempts to spark an anti-woke backlash were all for naught.
However, one critic arguably has the opinion that trumps all others: Emily Wilson, the academic whose 2017 translation of the text took the literary world by storm (and caused some controversy along the way). She not only the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English, but her work was heralded in academic circles for capturing the poem’s musicality through her choice of meter, and for undoing centuries of Christianization, misogyny, and euphemism that had been projected onto translations of the text. Her version has been flying off the shelves since then, and some would argue that it’s the definitive modern version of the text. Nolan himself even referenced Wilson’s translation as a key inspiration for his take on the film.
So you can imagine why fans of the story eagerly waited for Wilson’s review of Nolan’s adaptation. It’s finally here, in an article for the upcoming issue of London Review of Books, which has been published early online. Safe to say: She is not a fan.
In the opening paragraph of her review (titled “An Uncomplicated Man,” which is a riff on the first line of her translation), Wilson offers some backhanded praise. She says Nolan’s film is “not boring,” deeming it “a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display—and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.” Yikes.
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English, wrote a blunt review of Christopher Nolan’s film: “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script,” wrote Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English.”
Throughout her piece, the scholar notes that no adaptation should necessarily follow an original exactly. (In fact, she praises some radically reinterpretations of The Odyssey, including Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad, Madeline Miller’s Circe, and other literary classics that riff off the text, including those of Euripides, John Milton, and James Joyce.)
Wilson does, however, criticize the film’s lack of “restraint” (the defining emotion of Odysseus’ journey), the underdevelopment of the rich female characters from the poem, the inadvertently regressive tropes that Nolan’s “race-neutral casting” falls into, and the ethically controversial irony of filming it all in an occupied territory. Some context: Part of the movie was shot in Western Sahara, where there is an ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi population. Wilson points out that using it as a beautiful backdrop for a film redeeming the hero of a territorial war seems to be a major oversight.
Elsewhere, in one particularly cutting moment, she notes that Nolan cited the first line of her translation, responding: “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”
read esquire’s interview with emily wilson
The crux of Wilson’s criticism, however, is the characterization of Odysseus. In her view, turning the conniving character into a “reluctant warlord” simply doesn’t make sense. “We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it—a very different point,” she explains.
Wilson concludes by writing that Nolan’s The Odyssey “lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth,” that “its narrative structure is gimmicky,” and the writing is “abysmal.” In a slight caveat, she points out that, in the grand scheme of things, a film that serves as a literary adaptation bringing people back into cinemas during the streaming era can only be a good thing.
In fairness, her criticisms align with many frequent arguments about other films in Nolan’s oeuvre. The Dark Knight Rises received some criticism for “whitewashing” the Al Ghul characters, and a number of his films (namely Inception and Oppenheimer) have been accused of placing flat female characters in male-centric narratives, to name a few.
There’s an argument to be made that few directors receive the same level of scrutiny in these areas as Nolan does. On the other hand, is there a mainstream Hollywood director who receives the same level of intellectualized praise? For every person pointing out the flaws in Nolan’s films, there are hundreds heralding him as the best thing since sliced bread. What feels so exciting and refreshing about Wilson’s take, regardless of whether you agree with her, is to see someone so high-profile with a rock-solid criticism of a filmmaker so often immune to regular critique.
If you’re curious if Nolan called Wilson while writing his script, Wilson says he didn’t. But when Breznican interviewed Wilson before the film’s premiere, he asked her what she’d like to talk to Nolan about if she had the chance. Here’s what she said:
“I would be really interested to hear more about his relationship with The Odyssey in terms of how often he’s read it and in what context. I’ll also be interested to watch out for themes that Christopher Nolan has always been interested in. His films are often about time and memory and a man on a quest to get back to a beloved woman. And then there are themes about complicated male heroes who are very often in some kind of rivalry with another man or other men. Themes of technology and cleverness and its discontents. All of those things are Odyssey themes but also Nolan themes.”
Let’s hope that Wilson and Nolan can someday enjoy an intellectual debate about their takes on Homer’s poem. It’d be epic.
