Scholars praise and critique Nolan's "The Odyssey" adaptation
Classics translators acknowledge Christopher Nolan's new film for boosting interest in Homer, but they note several departures from the original epic.
Director Christopher Nolan's film "The Odyssey" has sparked both commercial success and scholarly debate. The movie, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland, opened to strong box-office numbers and positive reviews that highlighted its IMAX cinematography and narrative momentum.
Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation of Homer’s epic has surged into Amazon’s top five following the film’s release, said the adaptation has helped many new readers discover the poem. > "I want to celebrate the fact that so many more people are aware of ‘The Odyssey’ and were brought back to the poem," she told the Associated Press.
Wilson also expressed disappointment with the film’s handling of key themes. She noted the omission of several gods, the reduced role of Penelope, and scenes that she felt catered to contemporary sentimentality, such as the portrayal of Odysseus’s dog, Argos. > "Everybody’s a sucker for a dog," she added.
Fellow translator and critic Daniel Mendelsohn praised Nolan’s visual ambition but argued that the director reshaped Odysseus into a tormented figure more typical of his earlier works. > "This tormented, guilt-ridden Odysseus, stripped of humor and wit, is a sibling of Memento’s anguished amnesiac, of Batman, of Oppenheimer," he wrote in The New York Review of Books.
Both scholars acknowledged the film’s ability to draw audiences to ancient literature while questioning artistic choices that, in their view, altered essential aspects of the source material. A Nolan spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Wilson recommended seeing the movie in a theater but declined to assign it a formal rating.