A classicist argues Emily Wilson's widely shared London Review of Books takedown misreads Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey," saying her review attacks deviations from Homer rather than engaging the film on its own terms.
Wilson's essay called the script "abysmal" and said the film lacked psychological and ethical depth, but the response says she overlooks central choices such as portraying the gods as elemental forces rather than absent figures.
The rebuttal says Wilson also flattens key characters and symbols, from Anne Hathaway's Penelope to Agamemnon's armor, and misses the film's core idea that the Trojan Horse violates xenia and triggers the collapse of divine order.
Wilson's 2017 verse translation of the "Odyssey" has sold more than 1 million copies, and the writer defends that work while arguing Nolan's adaptation deserves the same latitude as another interpretation of Homer.
The dispute lands amid broader ideological fights around both Wilson's translation and Nolan's film, with the essay urging classicists to judge the movie as cinema rather than as a failed recitation of a 12,000-line poem.