The Odyssey criticism: Why Emily Wilson’s pan won’t sink Oscar fortunes

There were two major news stories following in the wake of The Odyssey‘s second weekend in theaters. One about how it continued to make a boatload of money, and the second about how the author of translation that most inspired Christopher Nolan‘s take didn’t like the movie very much.

Emily Wilson’s scathing review of Nolan’s The Odyssey, published in the London Review of Books, was its own sort of blockbuster, partly responsible for temporarily crippling the website under the weight of the traffic it drew. As a piece of criticism, the write-up took no prisoners. Wilson didn’t even offer Nolan the hospitality due to a stranger visiting her field of expertise. Zeus’ law be damned!

“Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great,” Wilson writes. “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 neighbours. 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.”

While the astroturfed outrage from the right about the casting of Elliot Page and Lupita Nyong’o (transphobia and racism masquerading as defenses of “historical accuracy”) wasn’t enough to scuttled The Odyssey ahead of its release, could Wilson’s takedown turn the tides on the cultural consensus — and thus its Oscar chances?

Like anyone who approaches a piece of art, Wilson is entitled to her opinion, and as a venerable authority on the source material, she offers a perspective that’s unique and expresses it in a way that’s engaging to read, even for fans of the film. True, those same readers may attempt to poke holes in some of Wilson’s arguments, which can arguably verge on pedantic. (See: “Travis Scott doesn’t play the lyre” and “The Trojan horse doesn’t have wheels.”) But Wilson, just as any critic would, is simply offering her honest perspective on the film. That perspective just happens to belong to someone who has dedicated much of her life’s work to conveying Homer’s tales to modern audiences in a way that is true to the poet’s original meaning.

That perspective also may limit the impact Wilson’s take could have on the broader cultural conversation. Similar to how most moviegoers — and Academy members, for that matter — aren’t billionaires with weird, antisocial opinions about race and gender, most of them also aren’t classicists. The Odyssey has made more than $650 million worldwide in just over two weeks, has an A CinemaScore, and wide acclaim from the critics. None of that is to say that criticisms of Nolan’s film aren’t valid. (Wilson, for instance, makes several salient points, in my opinion as someone who loved the film.) It’s only to suggest that as the director of a mainstream adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, Nolan has been broadly successful by the metrics at our disposal.

And that’s what the Oscars are ultimately going to reward. Even Wilson gets that, writing “The exuberantly villainous Antinous — Pattinson is the only person on set who seems to be having any fun — clearly deserves to be stabbed to death with the dagger of Sinon, but he also deserves one of the Oscars that will shower down on this movie like the golden rain of Zeus.”

To which I say: Emily Wilson, update your Gold Derby predictions. Leguizamo is pulling ahead!

Best PictureBest DirectorBest ActressBest ActorBest Supporting ActressBest Supporting ActorBest Adapted ScreenplayBest Original Screenplay

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