‘The film presents an Odysseus who feels very bad about things that he's done in war, and is struggling to process them in a very modern, psychiatrised way – and needs drugs to do so! He seems to feel bad about being a warrior, and we never actually see him get to do much warrioring ... Nolan makes the protagonist a likeable, all-American hero; Homer's Odysseus wants glory, and he wants to get spoils from the sack of a city! I kept looking in vain for a sense that this was a film about glory. This is a film that has an interest in shame, but I don't think it has any interest in glory.’
It's very funny that all the rightoids blame Emily Wilson for what's wrong with Nolan's Odyssey and at the same time she's presenting the smartest and most articulate version of their critique of the movie.
Yeah as far as I know she didn't have any hand in it, except that Nolan read her translation (among others). Not at all surprised that she didn't love the film.
Almost all of the “right wing” commentary you criticize at the start of the piece, stuff about the armor, etc. wasn’t just criticizing the armor itself. I could care less about movie armor if the movie is great (Eomer’s helmet doesn’t fit! Oh the horror! Nobody cares.) It’s just that we could see the directors focus through his choices. The Bronze Age should be a feast for the eyes to a modern person. Crazy armor with designs literally no living person has seen for thousands of years should be something a highly visual director could milk with little effort. But we got the same plastic with black metallic paint that so many other slop “epics” have used lately.
It was a red flag; the director doesn’t actually care about the source material. The source material is a vessel for the director, a skinsuit to remake the movie he’s been remaking several times (Inception, Interstellar, Regretful man tries to get home and atone for his mistakes - the movie) with different aesthetics to disguise the blandness of the repetition. Except this time the skinsuit is one of the greatest works in human history, one of the oldest pieces of literature surviving from any culture, and a story so engrossing and fascinating that cultures totally alien to Homer have been keeping it alive at great effort for literally millennia. It’s a shame, because this will prevent any real effort at adapting Homer for decades.
I basically agree but I'm not sure about the last part. I wonder if Nolan having this huge smash hit will actually make studios much more likely to greenlight stuff in this genre, including maybe some more faithful or arthouse stories.
Nolan made a movie that I think works on its own terms, as a summer action movie with a modern political point to make. It’s simply another riff on The Odyssey, like “O Brother, Where Art Thou” or “Ulysses” (both of which are much better), it’s not in any way a definitive take. Nor do we need one, Homer’s poem exists. And if Nolan gets more people to return the source material, good for him.
Tony Soprano is actually a poor comparison for Odysseus. Tony is not clever. When you rewatch the show, you realize Tony is actually kind of a loser. His crew are mostly sad sacks and drug addicts. The New York families don’t respect him. “Real” Italian gangsters like Furio also see him as kind of a joke. The FBI manipulates him. Tony has managed to bully his way to a certain level of respectability but it’s all destined to end badly for him.
Ian Fleming’s Bond is a better modern take on Odysseus. Dr No is an explicit take on the Cyclops episode. In the Daniel Craig films, where M is made female, the Athena theme is resurfaced, whether consciously or not. Craig, when younger, would have made a much better Odysseus than Damon. The latter was brilliant as Jason Bourne because he is so open and honest, precisely the qualities that undermine his Greek hero.
yeah that interpretation seems pretty good. I still don't enjoy how everything has to be twisted into a commentary on the current political moment, but the film is definitely smarter than I gave it credit for while I was watching it.
Regret for the sacking of Troy still doesn’t make any sense in this context:
Trojans were not Greeks.
Trojans instigated the war by violating the sanctity of “Zeus’s law” in the first place.
If someone defiled your household, (especially in a pre-modern context!) you would have no qualms about desecrating theirs.
Why does Odysseus frame his actions in Troy around “Zeus’s law”? It is completely incoherent. Like shooting someone who broke into your house and is attacking your wife, and then thinking “man, why did I treat my guest this way?” Totally nonsensical. This isn’t rocket science, and yet they fumbled these central themes very badly.
Heavily agree with all of this. I went in with such high expectations and suddenly got gut punched with lightning fast edits and scenes that never gave us a chance to breathe. Ludwig’s score is amazing but at times it swelled for moments that felt totally unearned (Odysseus pitifully floating on a raft after leaving Calypso, what was that?) or the semi-techno beats that came through at certain points.
Also not sure if it was just the writing, directing, acting, or a mix of all three, but there were some SHOCKINGLY bad performances. I had to turn to my wife at one point and ask if it was just me.
This is my favorite review I’ve read so far; I had a similar spasm afterwards I couldn’t put into words so well. It was a thrilling ride but left me feeling uncomfortably unfed emotionally. I do think that this is connected to your point that in the end, we’re dealing with something that has formed our collective unconscious and cultural reference points for thousands of years and so it sets a higher bar for storytelling. Like, if you’re going to dance with the grownups, come having done your work.
Instead all the energy went into the toys and some physical texture (which I certainly enjoyed on their own merits — the Greeks strapped into the horse, the snapping sails, Penelope’s screen). Then he completely ruins the delicate suspension of disbelief built so expensively by casting familiar faces (inevitable I know, but at that point let’s just do Harryhausen in a tank). And there’s no engagement on any meaningful adult level with the wild edges of the story. Totally his prerogative as someone able to raise millions of dollars for his vision; it’s just disappointing to put all that money into something so vacuous.
I did, however, enjoy the music, but yes, Nolan effectively outsources his entire directorial responsibility for emotional impact to his soundtrack composers.
I was certainly struck by the Cronenberg body horror aspect of the Circe episode but there were a number of scenes that referenced well known horror/ science fiction movies. The cyclops has a look of the creatures that run amok over NYC in Cloverfield; the giant Laestragonian soldiers resemble huge powerful robots impervious to human weapons; Circe is a witch who casts spells to transform the crew into pigs in a scene that is startling in its use of body horror tropes; the monster Scylla, although appearing only briefly, is a fantastical creature familiar from countless Japanese kaiju films; there is a huge army of the living dead that rise from their graves; and, for me, there was a clear visual reference to Tombs of the Blind Dead at the end of the film as Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, waits to reveal himself and begin the final massacre. These scenes were played for shock effect and elicited quite a few jump scares.
Thank you! This gets to what I most hated about Nolan's film. The rapport between Athena and Odysseus is nowhere to be found. In Homer, Odysseus" cunning is exactly what Athena loves about him. She outright says as much when they meet on the shore of Ithaca.
I love that it’s generating so much conversation, though! I felt strongly about it for the same reasons as you - so much so I made my first proper Substack post about it, with the same sense of urgency. And we agree on just about everything. Excellent point about the sows btw
Before it was released, I wanted to post a note asking. 'Is anyone else out there dreading the upcoming Nolan Odyssey?' But I decided against it, not wanting to condemn what had not yet been seen. I did, however, decide not to see the film, fearing Imaxxing and Homer-maxxing a la Marvel--which seems to be exactly what you got. My reasons for not seeing the film have to do with safeguarding the unbeatable Odyssey that Homer fed my imagination as I read it.
I do think it's prob a fine movie in its own right. Just have to go in with the mindset that you're watching a different story that happens to borrow the setting and characters.
You asked for help. Why would you expect Nolan to deliver what you wanted and then criticize him for not meeting that standard? I think Nolan’s most sophisticated work was Memento, produced long before his big summer blockbusters. Did you really think he was going to take 250 million dollars from a studio and produce a summer blockbuster about an action hero (however much we elites might want to complain, Odysseus is an action hero even if he is much more than that) that wasn’t a summer blockbuster? You need to scale back your expectations.
You speak of Odysseus as the character in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus is complicated in Homer’s version, even more so when you consider other versions.
Nolan almost explicitly tells you in the movie that he’s telling a different story (the story from within the Trojan horse, a story you won’t find in Homer). And I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss a story about the damage of PTSD. It’s one that many contemporary families are familiar with.
Also, you contradict yourself when you criticize him for not humanizing the monsters and acknowledge that Nolan’s Odysseus is traumatized because he didn’t humanize the monsters. I thought that Nolan was pretty clear that Odysseus wreaked havoc and destruction, became the feared “people from the sea,” on those who didn’t deserve it.
It was a blockbuster. It could not be a blockbuster and a story about a distant culture that we have so little in common with. That might have made a fantastic movie, but like Memento, it would never make a blockbuster.
Odysseus is supposed to be the stereotypical Slytherin. An Odyssey adaptation in which he is not a cunning and crafty jerk is not an adaptation at all — it’s a different story altogether.
They should have given this movie to Robert Eggers and Aeneid to Nolan.
Emily Wilson after watching the Odyssey:
‘The film presents an Odysseus who feels very bad about things that he's done in war, and is struggling to process them in a very modern, psychiatrised way – and needs drugs to do so! He seems to feel bad about being a warrior, and we never actually see him get to do much warrioring ... Nolan makes the protagonist a likeable, all-American hero; Homer's Odysseus wants glory, and he wants to get spoils from the sack of a city! I kept looking in vain for a sense that this was a film about glory. This is a film that has an interest in shame, but I don't think it has any interest in glory.’
https://x.com/OptimoPrincipi/status/2079887117618946245?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Interesting thanks. Sounds like we're on the same page there.
It's very funny that all the rightoids blame Emily Wilson for what's wrong with Nolan's Odyssey and at the same time she's presenting the smartest and most articulate version of their critique of the movie.
Yeah as far as I know she didn't have any hand in it, except that Nolan read her translation (among others). Not at all surprised that she didn't love the film.
If you are grown adult and use language such as “rightoids”, then you ought to be unequivocally dismissed. Lock in.
Welcome to the dark side.
Almost all of the “right wing” commentary you criticize at the start of the piece, stuff about the armor, etc. wasn’t just criticizing the armor itself. I could care less about movie armor if the movie is great (Eomer’s helmet doesn’t fit! Oh the horror! Nobody cares.) It’s just that we could see the directors focus through his choices. The Bronze Age should be a feast for the eyes to a modern person. Crazy armor with designs literally no living person has seen for thousands of years should be something a highly visual director could milk with little effort. But we got the same plastic with black metallic paint that so many other slop “epics” have used lately.
It was a red flag; the director doesn’t actually care about the source material. The source material is a vessel for the director, a skinsuit to remake the movie he’s been remaking several times (Inception, Interstellar, Regretful man tries to get home and atone for his mistakes - the movie) with different aesthetics to disguise the blandness of the repetition. Except this time the skinsuit is one of the greatest works in human history, one of the oldest pieces of literature surviving from any culture, and a story so engrossing and fascinating that cultures totally alien to Homer have been keeping it alive at great effort for literally millennia. It’s a shame, because this will prevent any real effort at adapting Homer for decades.
I basically agree but I'm not sure about the last part. I wonder if Nolan having this huge smash hit will actually make studios much more likely to greenlight stuff in this genre, including maybe some more faithful or arthouse stories.
Nolan made a movie that I think works on its own terms, as a summer action movie with a modern political point to make. It’s simply another riff on The Odyssey, like “O Brother, Where Art Thou” or “Ulysses” (both of which are much better), it’s not in any way a definitive take. Nor do we need one, Homer’s poem exists. And if Nolan gets more people to return the source material, good for him.
Tony Soprano is actually a poor comparison for Odysseus. Tony is not clever. When you rewatch the show, you realize Tony is actually kind of a loser. His crew are mostly sad sacks and drug addicts. The New York families don’t respect him. “Real” Italian gangsters like Furio also see him as kind of a joke. The FBI manipulates him. Tony has managed to bully his way to a certain level of respectability but it’s all destined to end badly for him.
Yeah you're right it's not a perfect comparison, altho Tony does have some cunning and plenty of charisma.
Ian Fleming’s Bond is a better modern take on Odysseus. Dr No is an explicit take on the Cyclops episode. In the Daniel Craig films, where M is made female, the Athena theme is resurfaced, whether consciously or not. Craig, when younger, would have made a much better Odysseus than Damon. The latter was brilliant as Jason Bourne because he is so open and honest, precisely the qualities that undermine his Greek hero.
I wonder what you make of the argument, floating around various dark corners of substack, that Nolan recasts the epic around "Zeus's law" in conversation with the rapid collapse of shared norms in our own time? (I have no take on this of my own, just trying to track the discourse around this movie by various people thinking about it...) https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-and-the-odyssey-the-ancient-495. https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/the-news-bronze-age-invert
yeah that interpretation seems pretty good. I still don't enjoy how everything has to be twisted into a commentary on the current political moment, but the film is definitely smarter than I gave it credit for while I was watching it.
Regret for the sacking of Troy still doesn’t make any sense in this context:
Trojans were not Greeks.
Trojans instigated the war by violating the sanctity of “Zeus’s law” in the first place.
If someone defiled your household, (especially in a pre-modern context!) you would have no qualms about desecrating theirs.
Why does Odysseus frame his actions in Troy around “Zeus’s law”? It is completely incoherent. Like shooting someone who broke into your house and is attacking your wife, and then thinking “man, why did I treat my guest this way?” Totally nonsensical. This isn’t rocket science, and yet they fumbled these central themes very badly.
In this paper Richard Whitaker says Wilson's Odysseus is none too nuanced, either.
https://casa-kvsa.org.za/legacy/AC63-Whitaker-18DEC2019.pdf
Thanks, will give it a read.
It's a good critique. The translation has a number of issues. Interestingly, Nolan's adaptation seems to be something else entirely.
Elsewhere you'll find Emily Wilson's criticism of Nolan's film as "anachronistic." Pot, meet kettle.
I wish Sergio Leone had adapted the odyssey
For me it’s Radu Jude. And on a budget of about $1 million US.
Heavily agree with all of this. I went in with such high expectations and suddenly got gut punched with lightning fast edits and scenes that never gave us a chance to breathe. Ludwig’s score is amazing but at times it swelled for moments that felt totally unearned (Odysseus pitifully floating on a raft after leaving Calypso, what was that?) or the semi-techno beats that came through at certain points.
Also not sure if it was just the writing, directing, acting, or a mix of all three, but there were some SHOCKINGLY bad performances. I had to turn to my wife at one point and ask if it was just me.
This is my favorite review I’ve read so far; I had a similar spasm afterwards I couldn’t put into words so well. It was a thrilling ride but left me feeling uncomfortably unfed emotionally. I do think that this is connected to your point that in the end, we’re dealing with something that has formed our collective unconscious and cultural reference points for thousands of years and so it sets a higher bar for storytelling. Like, if you’re going to dance with the grownups, come having done your work.
Instead all the energy went into the toys and some physical texture (which I certainly enjoyed on their own merits — the Greeks strapped into the horse, the snapping sails, Penelope’s screen). Then he completely ruins the delicate suspension of disbelief built so expensively by casting familiar faces (inevitable I know, but at that point let’s just do Harryhausen in a tank). And there’s no engagement on any meaningful adult level with the wild edges of the story. Totally his prerogative as someone able to raise millions of dollars for his vision; it’s just disappointing to put all that money into something so vacuous.
I did, however, enjoy the music, but yes, Nolan effectively outsources his entire directorial responsibility for emotional impact to his soundtrack composers.
I was certainly struck by the Cronenberg body horror aspect of the Circe episode but there were a number of scenes that referenced well known horror/ science fiction movies. The cyclops has a look of the creatures that run amok over NYC in Cloverfield; the giant Laestragonian soldiers resemble huge powerful robots impervious to human weapons; Circe is a witch who casts spells to transform the crew into pigs in a scene that is startling in its use of body horror tropes; the monster Scylla, although appearing only briefly, is a fantastical creature familiar from countless Japanese kaiju films; there is a huge army of the living dead that rise from their graves; and, for me, there was a clear visual reference to Tombs of the Blind Dead at the end of the film as Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, waits to reveal himself and begin the final massacre. These scenes were played for shock effect and elicited quite a few jump scares.
Thank you! This gets to what I most hated about Nolan's film. The rapport between Athena and Odysseus is nowhere to be found. In Homer, Odysseus" cunning is exactly what Athena loves about him. She outright says as much when they meet on the shore of Ithaca.
I love that it’s generating so much conversation, though! I felt strongly about it for the same reasons as you - so much so I made my first proper Substack post about it, with the same sense of urgency. And we agree on just about everything. Excellent point about the sows btw
Great review! Very funny that you had the same reaction. I think yours is the closest to my take that I've come across so far.
Before it was released, I wanted to post a note asking. 'Is anyone else out there dreading the upcoming Nolan Odyssey?' But I decided against it, not wanting to condemn what had not yet been seen. I did, however, decide not to see the film, fearing Imaxxing and Homer-maxxing a la Marvel--which seems to be exactly what you got. My reasons for not seeing the film have to do with safeguarding the unbeatable Odyssey that Homer fed my imagination as I read it.
I do think it's prob a fine movie in its own right. Just have to go in with the mindset that you're watching a different story that happens to borrow the setting and characters.
Trust takes years to slowly build,
And just a second to be killed.
A marriage lasts ten thousand days,
Then breaks when one lie takes its place.
I wonder if whole nations, too,
Are built to fall the very same:
When centuries of trust undo,
Because one choice rewrites the game.
You asked for help. Why would you expect Nolan to deliver what you wanted and then criticize him for not meeting that standard? I think Nolan’s most sophisticated work was Memento, produced long before his big summer blockbusters. Did you really think he was going to take 250 million dollars from a studio and produce a summer blockbuster about an action hero (however much we elites might want to complain, Odysseus is an action hero even if he is much more than that) that wasn’t a summer blockbuster? You need to scale back your expectations.
You speak of Odysseus as the character in Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus is complicated in Homer’s version, even more so when you consider other versions.
Nolan almost explicitly tells you in the movie that he’s telling a different story (the story from within the Trojan horse, a story you won’t find in Homer). And I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss a story about the damage of PTSD. It’s one that many contemporary families are familiar with.
Also, you contradict yourself when you criticize him for not humanizing the monsters and acknowledge that Nolan’s Odysseus is traumatized because he didn’t humanize the monsters. I thought that Nolan was pretty clear that Odysseus wreaked havoc and destruction, became the feared “people from the sea,” on those who didn’t deserve it.
It was a blockbuster. It could not be a blockbuster and a story about a distant culture that we have so little in common with. That might have made a fantastic movie, but like Memento, it would never make a blockbuster.
Decent review. But Wilson's translation should not be defended. Read the below:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://casa-kvsa.org.za/legacy/AC63-Whitaker-18DEC2019.pdf
Odysseus is supposed to be the stereotypical Slytherin. An Odyssey adaptation in which he is not a cunning and crafty jerk is not an adaptation at all — it’s a different story altogether.
They should have given this movie to Robert Eggers and Aeneid to Nolan.