Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey has won over critics and audiences while breaking box office records for Universal.
But Emily Wilson is decidedly not impressed.
Wilson is an acclaimed translator of Homer’s epic poemsThe Iliad and The Odyssey, and her opening sentence to the latter (“Tell me about a complicated man”) was previously cited by Nolan.
But her review of the film for the London Review of Books was so scathing that it’s going viral, and the publication’s website appeared to go down early on Monday.
“I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters,” Wilson wrote. “But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.”
Wilson continued: “The film’s vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped, to deliver what it half-promises in terms of big ideas — although it is very good at conveying big bangs and big giants.”
Then comes the real banger paragraph: “Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbors. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”
Wilson then added, “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”
To be fair, successfully adapting The Odyssey to the screen was an extraordinarily difficult task and Nolan clearly erred on the side of making the film as accessible as possible for a modern audience. As a result, Nolan has introduced a 2,800-year-old poem to new generations.
Wilson acknowledges this, noting that “translations of Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves” and expressing hope that “the film will persuade a few college administrators not to cut their literature, language and history departments.” She added “Nolan is doing his best to get the general public reading again, and I am grateful.”
Ironically, Wilson herself previously drew criticism from some Odyssey readers for making her translation more accessible. According to Vulture, Wilson “was the first woman to have a translation of The Odyssey published in English and immediately scored acclaim and backlash for what some saw as overly simplistic wording.” In her forthcoming U.S. book, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, she writes, “I didn’t want to produce a translation that was longer, wordier, or that risked being flabbier than the original.”
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