In the immediate aftermath of The Odyssey from Christopher Nolan, Emily Wilson, famous for her progressive but highly controversial translation of Homer’s epic poem, said that she had some issues with the adaptation but largely enjoyed her time at the theater and felt it was not “pulling teeth” to engage with, even as someone who is so close to the source material. She encouraged audiences to go see the movie.

Now, she seems to have completely soured on the movie. She’s published an utterly scathing review of Nolan’s latest, which is perhaps shocking since the auteur used her translation as a basis for his version and praised her left and right on the promotional trail before the film’s release.

Emily Wilson Hates Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey

Art is subjective. In quality, it is subjective, so while the masses (4.4 on Letterboxd, 8.5 on IMDb, and 94% on Rotten Tomatoes) are enjoying The Odyssey, it is not being met with totally universal praise. Some believe it’s an excellent film and adaptation of the source, while others are highly frustrated with it.

Art is also subjective in interpretation. Most works of art are not explicitly sounded out and explained for the audience, as it would require extra, unnecessary work by the artist and detract from the quality. It is very possible for two people to read/watch/play/see a piece of art and derive totally different meanings from it. It happens all the time.

So while the world is enthralled by Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, Emily Wilson is not. It is probably a little unfair for her, of all people, to be so harsh towards it given the vitriol toward her own version of the story. She is one of the perhaps 100 people in the world who are more intimate with the source material than anyone else, so it’s understandable that an adaptation that changes some things would not be viewed positively by Wilson.

Wilson is, however, taking that to an intense level. She believes Nolan’s movie lacks “psychological, emotional, political, and ethical depth,” according to her own published review for the London Review of Books. She claims it has nothing convincing to say.

As an aside here, it’s hard to have watched Nolan’s The Odyssey and come away with that take, since the movie depicts war and the wily, clever conclusion to it as the reason for societal downfall. Nolan has traced today’s societal problems all the way back to Odysseus’ decision to build the Trojan horse, which is certainly, if nothing else, saying something.

Wilson continued, “The film’s vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped, to deliver what it half-promises in terms of big ideas.” The elements that make Homer’s original work so “great” are apparently completely missing from Nolan’s ideas, Wilson claimed.

She also took aim at the lack of sex scenes when the book sees Odysseus sleeping with many women and goddesses on his way back to Penelope. For what it’s worth, Nolan has explained some of his changes, and he undoubtedly referenced the lack of sex and other changes to the relationships in the movie in an interview with Time, saying the poem is “so grim and so misogynistic, I had to exclude some of that material.”

She concluded with scathing, painful, and perhaps ironic words: “I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.” Plenty have been critical of her own translation of the poem from 2017, and there are undoubtedly many authors and translators who felt the same about her work.

Such is the beauty and perhaps frustrating part of art. It’s not universal, and it’s not objective. The Odyssey is as close to a universally beloved movie as we’ve had in a little while, and yet, there are some who are clearly unenthused by it.