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

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

#121

Post by archagon »

radu_floricica wrote: post #15
zooweemama wrote: post #13

I haven't seen it yet, but how do people feel it compares to Lord of the Rings as an adaptation?

I don't think it does? Nor is it trying to. LotR was something that happens once every 50 years - a movie series that's as good as the source material and holds quality over 3 movies (wonder why they didn't do the Hobbit as well). The Oddyssey is a summer blockbuster. A good one, I definitely recommend it, but far from memorable.

“a movie series that's as good as the source material”

Is it? I loved LOTR during my first watch, then many years later actually read the books and tried watching it again. Many of the changes that Jackson made in service of commercial, mass-market appeal were downright silly, if not cringe-worthy, to the point where I actually had to stop my rewatch after the first film.

The films don’t hold a candle to the books, though I appreciate that they got me into LOTR in the first place.

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

#122

Post by JsonDemWitOster »

ks2048 wrote: post #59

[spoiler alert] > The Trojans are dehumanised by their masks; we know none of them by name or face. Did she miss the most important scene in the burning of Troy that showed a Trojan victim's face that plays an important role the film?

Reminds me of when Oppenheimer released, a bunch of people criticized it for not actually featuring any Japanese characters, instead being relegated to mere dream-shadows that Oppenheimer sees once.

It's almost as if a work entitled "Oppenheimer" is not supposed to be a character study of this American scientist during the war named Oppenheimer.

Juuusttt maaayyybeee, an adaptation of The Odyssey is mostly gonna be about Odysseus and his side of the war, and that's when Troy gets narratively involved. TFA justifies this criticism with a polemic about what a "serious depiction of violence" is supposed to include but doesn't pause to consider that maybe that is not the film's point. Even the source material isn't about the Trojan War---there's another epic prequel for that! Not to mention Virgil's sequel.

She also says, in the same paragraph, that the "Homeric poems easily clear the bar". Sure! The other Homeric poem---the one not the subject of this adaptation---did that.

I'm not saying these are not themes worth exploring just that maybe it is not a mistake that it wasn't included here. Not an oversight, but intentional. Maybe a work of fiction is supposed to have biases (gasp!) and that is just fine.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Had Nolan involved the Trojans beyond Zendaya's character we'd be hearing criticism along the lines of the film being "thematically incoherent", "could've had a more focused treatment, easily shaving off twenty minutes to its already unforgiving runtime".

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

#123

Post by ButlerianJihad »

throwaway3060 wrote: post #19

I am not an expert in this space, so hopefully an actual expert will come by and clarify, but I am pretty sure that "The current consensus [...] is that there was no such thing as ‘the sea peoples’" is just flat out untrue. (IIUC, what is the current consensus is that they did not "cause" the late bronze age collapse). That colors how I read the rest of the review. Edit: Personally, I enjoyed that particular addition…

This may blow your mind, but what if the "People From the Sea" are Odysseus, his family, and his crew?

* It was Penelope herself who voiced her fear of the People From the Sea. Did anyone outside of this group mention the People From the Sea? Was anyone outside of the group anticipating, terrified, or already terrorized by some other group?

* Ithaca is an island kingdom; anyone who lives there is a sailor by experience, and all of Greece is a region of islands and archipelagos

* Odysseus and his crew had not seen them or found them, because they are not sufficiently self-aware or spiritual

* They violated the Law of Zeus. All of them.

* That's why the Trojan Horse didn't have wheels. It was terrible to drag across dry land, but it was made of buoyant wood. It was a seahorse.

* Everyone they met, from the Trojans to Circe to Calypso and the Cyclopes, obesrved them to approach from the sea, land on the shore, and leave the same way

* They (Odysseus and his family) ultimately attacked Ithaca (the suitors)

* Odysseus, his wife and son go into exile by boat, and sail west, [beyond Gibraltar], thus permanently becoming People Of The Sea

* The Odyssey is a myth, fiction, legendary, and none of its characters actually existed

* The People From the Sea are not mentioned in Homer's text. They're extra-canonical. They were hypothesized, starting in the 19th century.

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

#124

Post by archagon »

keiferski wrote: post #120
archagon wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much anyone worth listening to agrees that Wilson’s translation is excellent.

Do you have an opinion yourself? Because "anyone worth listening to" is not a comment with content. Furthermore, it's simply not true. Lattimore is generally considered to be the most authentic translation. There are plenty of criticisms of the Wilson translation that aren't culture war complaints. You seem to have the impression that they are, which is factually wrong. If you don't care about authenticity, well, the…

Wilson wrote in great and excruciating detail about why she chose “complicated” as the translation, yet you dismiss it as if if was some sort of casual, thoughtless decision: https://emily613.substack.com/p/on-complicated

Rest assured that she’s given more thought to every single word in that poem than almost anyone else alive.

Wilson’s translation is in my reading queue before I see the film, but whether I like it or not is completely irrelevant to the quality of the work, which is best assessed by the folks who actually study this stuff for a living.

I see nothing tangible in your comment other than “I think it’s artless and dumb,” which is not as convincing as you seem to think.

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

#125

Post by keiferski »

archagon wrote: post #124
keiferski wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an opinion yourself? Because "anyone worth listening to" is not a comment with content. Furthermore, it's simply not true. Lattimore is generally considered to be the most authentic translation. There are plenty of criticisms of the Wilson translation that aren't culture war complaints. You seem to have the impression that they are, which is factually wrong. If you don't care about authenticity, well, the…

Wilson wrote in great and excruciating detail about why she chose “complicated” as the translation, yet you dismiss it as if if was some sort of casual, thoughtless decision: https://emily613.substack.com/p/on-complicated Rest assured that she’s given more thought to every single word in that poem than almost anyone else alive. Wilson’s translation is in my reading queue before I see the film, but whether I like it o…

Translating the Odyssey is not some new thing. There are dozens of other translations in English, and yet pretty much all of them have put just as much or more effort into questions like these...and yet few are as artless and bland as "complicated."

If you actually spend some time looking into scholarly discussion of the translation... it's seen as quite deficient and indeed cuts out a lot of meaning in the original Greek.

Just give this a cursory scroll, for example:

https://casa-kvsa.org.za/legacy/AC63-Whitaker-18DEC2019.pdf

But you don't even need to do that. Just get a PDF of Fagles or Lattimore and compare lines word for word to Wilson.

And if you don't have an opinion yourself, and I'm guessing you haven't read any other translation, or perhaps even Wilsons? Which means you're just arguing with me because what... some culture war thing? There is such a weird obsession with defending this translation, ostensibly from people that haven't even read it or other translations. So absurd.

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

#126

Post by Balgair »

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…

> > 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.

Reacting to the article and not OP here, also spoilers:

I'm sorry, I know the movie was long, but did OP miss the Bronze-age Darth Vader with bones on his head? The very classic Nolan ending twist that Athena was a PTSD hallucination of the Trojan woman they killed? The constant and obvious murdering and pillaging that Odysseus and his crew do? That the Trojans were wearing white and the Greeks were wearing black? The very obvious scene where all the people that they have killed tell Odysseus that he is a bad guy and then they all go running after him and the crew?

Like, to me, I felt that it was over-the-top obvious, almost embarrassingly so from such a director, that the Greeks were the bad guys. He could not have communicated that more or better to my eyes. He comes out and says so at the ~90% mark. It is very clear.

But, and I apologize if I am also guilty of this sin with the article, it seems that he does not even still do enough to communicate that to many viewers.

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

#127

Post by keiferski »

number6 wrote: post #90
miek wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imagin…

I did not read the odyssey yet, but I just finished the illiad and there the Warlords are measured in how much livestock they stole and Achilles gets mad about not getting his fair trophy share, which is measured in women. Hectors wife is worried about her husband, and he tells her, that there is nothing to worry about, when he is dead, because if he dies, the city is sacked and she would become a slave and this woul…

At the end of the day, if you are judging a society's moral code from 3,000 years later... it's not going to make much sense.

The only logical approach IMO is to judge it from within its own context.

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

#128

Post by runarberg »

Balgair wrote: post #126
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…

> > 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. Reacting to the article and not OP here, also spoilers: I'm sorry, I know the movie was long, but did OP mis…

I have not seen the movie (and will not because I oppose the occupation of Western Sahara), but I think OP was clear about this. She described the protagonist as someone who’s main quality is feeling bad about the stuff his done, but that’s about it.

In modern times this is a common trope, that solders and military commanders do not have to face any consequences for their crimes as long as they say they feel bad about it, and as long as they were fighting for our team (see recent episode about Graham Platner). No focus on the victims, no focus on criminal justice against the protagonist, just repent and you shall be forgiven.

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

#129

Post by boogieknite »

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…

im getting more of a "books are better than movies" feeling from the review. pretty weary take because, yeah, duh. Everyone whos read a book and then seen the adaptation figured this out when they were 9 reading Tolkien

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

#130

Post by jefurii »

Kon5ole wrote: post #96

The most surprising to me was that a movie famously shot entirely on IMAX with real practical effects looks so bad. The shots are very often close-ups, with shaky action and extremely short DOF. Nothing is in focus for long enough to discover it. When the rare wide panoramic shot appears it's flat sunlight on a featureless beach. Greece surely has great nature but it was not on display here. Overall a very weird deci…

> Nothing is in focus

IIRC there was a lot of bokeh which seemed to me like an artistic choice.

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