‘Odyssey’ translator Emily Wilson: Nolan should've hired a screenwriter

Classics professor Emily Wilson, whose translation of the Odyssey has been cited by Christopher Nolan, called his new $250 million film “abysmally written” and “lacking in psychological, emotional, political, and ethical depth.” Yet she still recommends seeing it — as “a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.” The real problem, she argues, is that Nolan stripped Odysseus of the very qualities that make him interesting in the first place.

What the film misses about Odysseus

Wilson’s critique centers on motivation. In the poem, Odysseus is defined by the rare Greek epithet polytropos — “of many turns” or, as Wilson translates it, “complicated.” He is layered, deceptive, curious, and driven by multiple desires: for home, for knowledge, for glory, for survival. Nolan’s version, played by Matt Damon, is reduced to “constantly troubled by anxiety about his role in the Trojan horse.” Wilson points out that the film strips Odysseus of desire for food or sex — two of the most basic human drives. “If we have a quest narrative,” she says, “we need to have a protagonist with detailed, believable motivation. He needs to want something.” Nolan’s Odysseus wants only to assuage his guilt, which Wilson calls “a rather thin motivation, especially compared to the rich layered ch