Christopher Nolan spent the press cycle for The Odyssey hyping up Emily Wilson’s translation, and when she finally saw the film, she absolutely hated it.
“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 in the London Review of Books. “But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality.”
To understand why people like Wilson’s more “modern” version, just compare her opening line to Robert Fagles’. Fagles wrote, “Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.” Wilson’s version opens, “Tell me about a complicated man.” Nolan apparently loves that line and quoted “Tell me about a complicated man” on The Odyssey publicity trail.
Welp, Wilson’s review is titled “An Uncomplicated Man.” “I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey,” she said. “But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”
Her article gives Nolan a pass for removing most of the Gods, but takes him to task for whittling Odysseus down, mostly to make him more likable to modern audiences. To be fair, some of her complaints are true for pretty much every film adaptation — I mean, nobody is showing the episode where Odysseus hangs every maidservant in his house who slept with (was raped by?) the suitors. In many episodes, Odysseus’ behavior might strike movie goers as cruel, bloodthirsty, or unforgivably evil. As Wilson wrote in the LRB, “Nolan’s vision of the world is not quite big enough to include either real gods or real people who might be different from us.”
Apart from some exciting battle scenes, the translator and poet didn’t find too much to love. She saved her most biting criticism for near the end:
“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.”
For more, check out my colleague Liz Shannon Miller on what makes Emily Wilson’s translation so good.
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