Our Critics on Where All This ‘Odyssey’ Discourse Leaves Us

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There comes a time every few months when the discourse around a big movie crashes and careens like a lost ship on a wine-dark sea. Earlier this week, Emily Wilson, the classicist known for her feminist translation of The Odyssey, dropped her pan of Christopher Nolan’s mutlimillion-dollar blockbuster adaptation of the epic, momentarily breaking the London Review of Books’ website in the process. And while Wilson, no stranger herself to pushback from Homer bros, wasn’t the only hellenist to take on the film, her review — scathing at moments and certainly entertaining on the sentence level — got the most traction by far, even provoking the author-superposter Joyce Carol Oates to enter a dayslong debate on X that was then covered in major trade publications. “The writing is abysmal,” writes Wilson. “There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.” Some clamored that Wilson wasn’t allowing Nolan his own interpretation of the text. Others argued his interpretation fell short even on its own terms. I asked some of our critics to weigh in on Wilson’s review, the ensuing discourse, and whether there’s any upside to all this discord over a classic text. —Jasmine Vojdani, senior newsletter editor

The world of criticism is a wild and wildly luxurious place to be. Deadline is covering Joyce Carol Oates clapping back at Emily Wilson. Whether or not I agree with Wilson’s takes, it’s always exciting to read a particularly full-throated pan. And whether or not you feel she did her job as a critic, she has done her job as a writer, which is to be a compelling read who makes her argument unmistakably clear.

What we’re seeing actually used to be a commonplace occurrence in the ’40s and ’50s, when academics were also public intellectuals frequently writing for the same publications as critics. Readers would see multiple kinds of voices in the same place. But journalism has gotten so much smaller, and academia is also very precarious — and the idea of an academic writing in any kind of consumer-facing press is now considered a dig in your tenure file. Everyone has been stuck in separate corners.

Sorting out who is punching down here is really interesting. Because Wilson has academic authority and is writing with such vigor, it’s easy to forget that she has less power. That is also part of the pleasure of the conversation. She is not interested in softening any of it. But Nolan’s the one who walks away unscathed, no question. I think this is also good for Wilson, but she’s not punching down.

Of all the things we could watch people fight about, how someone adapted The Odyssey is such a good one. There’s a Pride and Prejudice adaptation coming out on Netflix. Let’s get some Austen scholars up in here.—Kathryn VanArendonk

Wilson is a classicist. Of course, she’s going to be super-particular and even sort of degrading toward film as a form. Did I agree with everything she said? No. But I thought the review was funny as hell. A lot of her complaints are worthwhile even if they seem a little persnickety.

I get the sense that people can’t just disagree with something and move on. It’s strange for people to say she should be grateful that Christopher Nolan name-checked her, like she’s getting paid for the success of The Odyssey. And no one’s crying in the corner about this review. If we can’t have harsh criticism of the most powerful filmmaker in Hollywood, then we’ve lost the plot. Do you think most people who care about this movie read the London Review of Books? People are acting like she has a level of power that she just does not have as a translator. We need to be proportional.

I think people have a misguided view right now on what criticism should do, in part because they are confusing commentary on commentary for actual criticism. It speaks to the fandom nature of media. If your opinion is against the grain of the predominant opinion, it’s “This person is attacking me and my taste because they disagree with me.” Criticism is meant to interrogate a feeling and then root that in context psychologically and culturally. Last I checked, while there can be readings of films that are really off base, this is opinion-based work. Even if Wilson gave Nolan not an inch, this is going to end up being one of the biggest movies of the year. Why can’t there be some intense responses to it? Were we just all expected to be Nolan fanboys or have only mild criticism of his issues?

I also don’t think he’s an unimpeachable filmmaker. Nolan’s inability to write women is pretty damning. That people look at it as a small problem ancillary to his greatness shows how little they value women’s stories. But I appreciate his existence as a filmmaker because of his level of importance and power, and I think he’s worth deeply contending with. —Angelica Jade Bastien

Emily Wilson is a very intelligent person who knows The Odyssey. I enjoy her translation. I don’t think it’s a very good review, and people would see that if they weren’t blinded by their hatred of the movie.

It reminds me a little bit of 1997, when my snob friends, most of whom I’m still very good friends with, laughed at me for liking Titanic. There is a disdain for mainstream filmmaking and that contempt comes off the page reading that review. The vibe I got from the review was that she actually enjoyed this movie but she, for whatever reason, feels the need to kind of be above it all. The criticism to me rings totally false, and she doesn’t really explain herself. “The language is relentlessly expository, humorless, and flat” — I don’t agree with that. People like to knock Nolan’s screenwriting, which is often equated with dialogue. Screenplays are also about structure and how the characters move through a story.

Nolan understands how to make popular entertainment that can appeal to and convey its ideas to millions and millions of people. He speaks at our level, but he also clearly has ideas he wants to engage with. I recently compared The Odyssey to The Dark Knight because that movie ends with Batman taking the fall for some kind of grave injustice and exiling himself. Popular entertainment needs to work in these themes in a way that’s actually satisfying and relatable and legible to contemporary audiences. I talked to Nolan for hours about this film, and he’s very conversant with all the different versions of The Odyssey. It is funny that people knock his movies for being stupid — he is one of the smarter directors you’ll ever talk to.

But it’s great that people are engaging with these ideas. We are in a resurgence of humanities in cinema. Wuthering Heights came out and everybody was suddenly talking about how faithful it was to Heathcliff. A similar thing happened with Hamnet. That’s the kind of back-and-forth we’ve been sorely lacking for a while. —Bilge Ebiri

No adaptation is one to one, and even one-to-one adaptations fail. Wilson’s review was written without much consideration for what movies do differently from their source material. I think she went in with assumptions and then framed her reactions to the movie through them. So I didn’t love the critique, but I didn’t love the movie either. There are things about it that are unsuccessful on their own terms.

I don’t think the movie goes far enough when it comes to showing us the violence that Odysseus and his men are responsible for. There is more attention paid to buildings collapsing than to the actual people being harmed. Nolan seems tentative about making us dislike Odysseus, so there is something to Wilson’s critique about how Odysseus’s characterization is structured in the film. The mystery leading up to this grand reveal of what Odysseus really feels did not hit for me. I found so much more power in Lupita Nyong’o’s performances and how these female characters are positioned.

I also don’t think Wilson’s paragraph on the “Black best friend” engages seriously with what Nolan is doing with casting. To me, he’s exploring the idea that imperialism implicates everyone, no matter your intentions, your background, or what you look like. Wilson said elsewhere that Himesh Patel should have been Odysseus — that’s a further misunderstanding of what the movie is attempting to say. Odysseus is to a certain degree a villain in this film. That would not be a win for representation.

Movies like this feel a little bit like a return to monoculture and communal experience. It’s good, actually, that famous people are arguing about it and that we’re having discourse beyond the right-wing talking points that circulated before this movie came out. I would rather the discussion be about Homer and Christopher Nolan than the latest Marvel. —Roxana Hadadi