{"id":946155,"date":"2026-07-19T21:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T21:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/946155\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T21:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T21:51:12","slug":"greek-translator-says-nolans-the-odyssey-movie-misses-key-homer-themes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/946155\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek translator says Nolan\u2019s ‘The Odyssey’ movie misses key Homer themes"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 For Greek translator Emily Wilson, the release of director Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d<\/a> has been gratifying in various ways. Her acclaimed 2017 edition of Homer\u2019s epic has reached the top 5 on Amazon.com, leading a wave of similar books boosted by the movie. Nolan has even cited her translation, notably the opening line \u201cTell me about a complicated man,\u201d as inspiration.<\/p>\n

But the film itself, which brought in more than $260 million worldwide<\/a> during its opening weekend and has received raves from many critics, left her unsatisfied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to celebrate the fact that so many more people are aware of \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 and were brought back to the poem,\u201d she told The Associated Press. \u201cBut at the same time, I had the sense that Christopher Nolan was trying to pack everything in while missing themes that were essential to the poem.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the year\u2019s most anticipated releases, \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d stars Matt Damon<\/a> as the returning warrior Odysseus, Anne Hathaway<\/a> as his wife, Penelope, and Tom Holland<\/a> as their son, Telemachus. Reviewers have praised the acting and the narrative drive, the grand scale of a movie shot entirely on IMAX film and how it weds the sensibilities of ancient Greece and the modern world, at least as Nolan perceives it.<\/p>\n

The divide between scholars and critics seems in part a matter of whether the balance should tilt toward Nolan or Homer. Wilson and fellow translator Daniel Mendelsohn both expressed admiration for Nolan\u2019s cinematic flair and ambition, what Mendelsohn calls his \u201cgreat visual panache.\u201d Both speculated that his desire to make a \u201cChristopher Nolan\u201d movie led to unfortunate decisions.<\/p>\n

Mendelsohn is an author, critic and translator and his assessment appeared Friday in The New York Review of Books, where he is an editor-at-large. <\/p>\n

Mendelsohn had previously defended Nolan\u2019s controversial decision to cast a Black actor, Lupita Nyong\u2019o, as Helen of Troy, calling it a worthy way to \u201cprovoke, challenge and discomfit how we think about beauty and identity.\u201d But he faulted the director for giving us an Odysseus with \u201cno cleverness, no humor, no wily charm.\u201d One of the Western canon\u2019s formative tricksters has been transformed, he contended, into the kind of haunted protagonist featured in such previous Nolan movies as \u201cOppenheimer\u201d and \u201cMemento.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tormented, guilt-ridden Odysseus, stripped of humor and wit, seductiveness and cleverness, is a sibling of Memento\u2019s anguished amnesiac, of Batman, of Oppenheimer, men tormented by pasts they wrestle with in different ways,\u201d wrote Mendelsohn, whose \u201cOdyssey\u201d translation came out in 2025. \u201cNolan has merely remade Homer\u2019s hero in his own image.\u201d<\/p>\n

Author Gareth Hinds, whose graphic novel adaptation of \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d has also received a sales bump from the movie, had a response similar to Mendelsohn\u2019s about Nolan\u2019s interpretation of Odysseus. The \u201cwily trickster and smooth talker\u201d is now an \u201ceveryman who appears to be honorable, except in select situations which then continue to haunt him.\u201d For Hinds, Nolan\u2019s film raises the question of how much you can change a story\u2019s main character before the story itself is changed entirely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one of many interesting things Nolan has left us to ponder,\u201d says Hinds, who credits the director for creating a \u201cpowerful film.\u201d <\/p>\n

Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said she didn\u2019t want to come across as a \u201csnobby,\u201d nitpicking expert at odds with any deviation from the original text. But she questioned a range of omissions and other choices, from the absence on screen of the Gods Zeus and Poseidon (Athena is played by Zendaya<\/a> ) to the \u201cincoherent\u201d messaging that condemns both war and physical cowardice. She found Penelope\u2019s role so thinned out that it endangered \u201cany possibility of believing in this marriage.\u201d Wilson also that thought parts of the movie, notably the scenes with Odysseus\u2019 dog, Argos, \u201ccatered towards modern sentimentality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s a sucker for a dog,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Nolan did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wilson declined to offer a grade or ranking for the movie, but said she would recommend it for others, as long as they see it in a theater.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fun to be there with my kids. I didn\u2019t feel it was pulling teeth to engage with it,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you can see it on a big screen you should absolutely go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 For Greek translator Emily Wilson, the release of director Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":946156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[25375,26299,380931,360134,171,380932,57,203645,49069,53,405,403,1748,61,67,132,68,32773],"class_list":["post-946155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-anne-hathaway","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-daniel-mendelsohn","tag-emily-wilson","tag-entertainment","tag-gareth-hinds","tag-general-news","tag-lupita-nyongo","tag-matt-damon","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-tom-holland","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-zendaya"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116948859885210257","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}