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An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

lrb.co.uk

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Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#71

Post by rbanffy »

antonvs wrote: post #47
nickcw wrote: post #39

[after a pretty scathing review which I mostly agree with] > Despite all this, the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities’, translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves. Some of those who buy the book…

> "doing his best to get the general public reading again" This seems very detached from reality. I very much doubt that many people seeing a movie like this will think "oh, I should read The Odyssey", or "I should read more." And most people who try the former are unlikely to get very far.

That was never to be the majority of the audience, but enough to keep the flame alive.

A lot of them will criticise the movie from departing from a text they never read, that they never understood the historical context. They’ll criticise it from being based on a relatively recent adaptation by a female author, which, BTW, is the author of the article. They will criticise not because they see a flaw in something, but because that’s their nature: in order to see themselves as sufficient, they need to see all others as lacking.

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#72

Post by phoronixrly »

antonvs wrote: post #47
nickcw wrote: post #39

[after a pretty scathing review which I mostly agree with] > Despite all this, the release of The Odyssey is still an event to celebrate. In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities’, translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves. Some of those who buy the book…

> "doing his best to get the general public reading again" This seems very detached from reality. I very much doubt that many people seeing a movie like this will think "oh, I should read The Odyssey", or "I should read more." And most people who try the former are unlikely to get very far.

I did. In fact I am reading it right now before seeing the movie.

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#73

Post by oliculipolicula »

izacus wrote: post #55
beloch wrote: post #32

"But the representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world. We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it – a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar – but Nolan doesn’t. The T…

> Were Odysseus played as written, modern audiences would have a very hard time empathizing with him. That's the real challenge to successfully adapting the Odyssey. When reading the original, you have abundant time to get into the mental space of the bronze age Achaeans. In a three hour movie that's a lot harder to do. And this is the strongest criticism of this movie - Nolan took the easy way out of just shoving th…

>three hour movie

>transporting us into the world of different values and beliefs

I regret to inform you that Mel Gibson has been a better director

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypto

Might have been (more) loyal to the original had Nolan dubbed it into Greek or went with Victorian dialogue?

Note: Emily Wilson (TFA) wrote the "modern prose" cover that Nolan adapted. Maybe she's feeling responsible..

Apocalypto was all Mayan so Gibson's job was a bit easier

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#74

Post by wahern »

throw310822 wrote: post #40
fasterik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that Nolan is no more grandiose and superficial than Kubrick. Their films aren't about characters and plot, they're about images and sound.

Not at all. Most Kubrick's movies are illustrations of specific, well defined theses (for example about human ambition and violence) and the plots are tightly fit to that purpose. Nolan makes adventure movies where the plot is a succession of action scenes- any other sequence or choice of situations would work the same.

Memento, Inception, and Tenet are just action movies? It's interesting you use the word, succession, because all three of those movies explore the thematic, cinematic, and psychological meaning of that word.

The abstract ideas he explores may seem pretentious or maybe even boring. To each their own. But he also puts alot of effort into the practical process of movie making. For example, he puts in alot of effort to avoid CGI. Anybody who creates things for a living, including code, should at least be able to appreciate Nolan on that level; that is, setting constraints for yourself and seeing how far you can take things.

I wouldn't place him in the pantheon of the greatest movie makers. He's a strongly systemizing thinker, obsessed with impersonal themes. That can make his movies feel a little hollow, like someone on the autism spectrum making a movie about trains. But he's otherwise definitely way above average. And on a technical level maybe he does belong at the top of some lists. I don't know enough about movie making to fully appreciate his work, though I can recognize the skill the same way I can recognize a really good chef or any other professional, including recognizing that beneath the surface (which may be too cloying for some) there's more there than I can fully appreciate.

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#75

Post by [deleted] »

jrimbault wrote: post #62
jf wrote: post #49

When I read a critique that could roughly be summarized as "I could have done better" my response generally falls somewhere between "you should" and "I'd like to see you try". Not everyone understands just how hard it is to create something from nothing, so I can excuse a certain level of ignorance in a critic. But I find it very disappointing when a critic does understand how hard it is in their domain, but isn't ab…

How do you get 'roughly be summarized as "I could have done better"' from this critique? Nowhere does she say something vaguely like that.

[deleted]

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#76

Post by gabriel666smith »

dsign wrote: post #42

It's a movie for theaters and not a flashback edgy post; the success of the work is about pleasing the audience. That is already a thing in Homer's original Odyssey, at least as I read it in high school. But now with a few more decades on my ribs, I can quickly find out that the text that I read came from oral traditions that spanned from 1200 to 600 BCE, and after finding its way to written form, a cultural chain of…

I’d agree, but would argue that Nolan has a unique (almost Delphic) talent - for better or worse - amongst contemporary Hollywood directors for capturing and reflecting contemporary and near-future textures and preoccupations, and this alone makes his work more interesting, and worthy of critical attention, than your comment seems to imply if I have interpreted it correctly.

I think that’s just as true of his lesser films (Tenet capturing COVID’s barely comprehensible, antiseptic-psychedelic temporality, for example) as in his stronger work, and makes him - to me, at least - a very interesting artist within the Hollywood structure.

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#77

Post by miek »

beloch wrote: post #32

"But the representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world. We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it – a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar – but Nolan doesn’t. The T…

This is insightful but entirely tangential to the heart of the quote you posted.

"... the Homeric poems easily clear the bar [of showing the perspectives of both victims and perpatrators]"

Homer's writing was very empathetic to Odysseus's victims. The movie sanitized the tragedy.

This quote is also easily misinterpreted: "But the representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world."

A warlord from those times would not be reluctant. War was central to life, considered a duty of a leader in those times, but not in the sense of piracy as you put it. To grow and increase wealth was to protect your kingdom and increase odds of surviving not only war but downturns of all types.

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#78

Post by ks2048 »

> This muddled subplot is foisted on the film in order to make Nolan’s relentlessly didactic point about the contemporary Anglophone world: that the lies and xenophobia of the war on terror and Brexit began a cultural decline that is now destroying the values ‘we’ hold most dear.

After just seeing the film, I've got say, "Nolan trying to make a point about Brexit" did not cross my mind. I guess she is relating the "be nice to beggers" narrative to being pro-immigration?

A number of her critiques come down doing things that make the "good guys" likable and the "bad guys" unlikable to modern audiences. That's reasonable, but it's also pretty understandable that Nolan didn't want to add "cruelty to animals" and "abusing women".

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#79

Post by izacus »

keiferski wrote: post #61
izacus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the person who created one of the translations this movie is based on (arguably THE translation Nolan based it on), so they - literally as it goes - indeed have tried and done better.

Except the translation is not very good and dumbs down a lot of the language to fit the translator’s worldview. I’d say Wilson did “try to do it herself,” and it’s not much better than the film. Hence this critical review is a bit unnecessary, frankly. I say this as a subscriber to the LRB, which has at least one snarky put down review every issue.

There's no such thing as an "unnecessary" review, especially from people that are familiar with topics in a given media.

People are allowed to have opinions. Yes, you too.

Re: An Uncomplicated Man – A review of The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan

#80

Post by bragh »

wzdd wrote: post #9
GlobalFrog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are no sex scene in the original tale. Sex is slightly evocated by two mentions of Ulysses sharing the bed or Circe and Calypso, but without any depiction of sex.

Wilson didn’t write “sex scene”, she wrote “sex”. In the story there is plenty of implied sex. In the movie there is none. It’s not a major issue in itself, it’s part of a broader point about movie Odysseus being “uncomplicated” versus the story— both morally, and when it comes to passions (sex, food, revenge).

It was a direct quote from the review. Yes, she did use "sex scenes".
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