‘I would be ashamed to have written any part of this’: Odyssey translator Emily Wilson attacks Nolan blockbuster

Wilson, whose work on Homer’s epic was praised by Nolan, said his film was grandiose and superficial with ‘nothing convincing to say’

Emily Wilson, the classicist whose 2017 translation of Homer’s Odyssey was cited by Christopher Nolan in early publicity for his hugely successful adaptation of the poem, has roundly criticised the film, saying “it has nothing convincing to say” and that its “lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth”.

In a scathing essay for the London Review of Books, Wilson writes: “I had hoped that Nolan’s affinity with these Homeric themes might push him to new creative heights, and enable him to conjure more believable characters. But The Odyssey features his usual combination of grandiosity and superficiality … the film’s vision is too confused, its characters too underdeveloped, to deliver what it half-promises in terms of big ideas – although it is very good at conveying big bangs and big giants.”
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