welcome to my πολύτροπος mind

when he says he went for a "more domestic, more intimate" tone and language in the odyssey than in the iliad except for a few key moments of great heroic action that harkened back to the iliad, i'm like yesss i felt that! the moment odysseus notched that arrow and killed the first suitor i was instantly transported back to the war of troy, and that made me think how odysseus probably felt that way too as he did it (how could he not! unlike nestor and menelaus he hasn't had ten years of peace and domesticity to process the war)

and what also strikes me about that moment is that up until then the violence in the odyssey has been so... clean and indirect. the actual deaths have been mostly stuff like... men swallowed by monsters in one big gulp or "and then they drowned" (or the one dolt who got drunk and fell of a roof). but when odysseus' anger and humiliation finally comes to a head, i mean -- christ:

[...] Odysseus aimed and shot Antinous square in the throat and the point went stabbing clean through the soft neck and out [...] The shaft sank home, and the man's life-blood came spurting from his nostrils -- thick red jets -- a sudden thrust of his foot --

Early concept work from @wolfythewitch for Penelope & Her Guest

Athena Ergane

．．．．bright-eyed Athena.

For she takes no pleasure in the things done by golden Aphrodite.

What does please her is wars and what is done by Ares,

battles and fighting, as well as the preparation of splendid pieces of craftsmanship.

For she was the first to teach mortal humans to be craftsmen

in making war-chariots and other things on wheels, decorated with bronze.

And she it is who teaches maidens, tender of skin, inside the palaces,

the skill of making splendid pieces of craftsmanship, putting it

firmly into each one’s mind.

I mean if you just want to take, "There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible." This line makes me laugh every time I see it, it rules. And it has nothing to do with Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (2026).

Presumably it's coming from the same complaint well as the majority of Wilson's piece: that while the Homeric poem is a celebration of fucking around and feasting, this movie is not. But in just saying, "it's not this" and nothing more, she's not discussing or even acknowledging how sex and food are actually used in this retelling. Both are tied together in what has been widely praised among audiences as one of the most indelible sequences: Samantha Morton's scene as the witch Circe. In it, the threat of sexual violence and act of eating are linked in a commentary on warmongering rapaciousness writ large, as a part of Nolan's intently laid out thesis of the Trojan horse as a kind of atomic bomb xenia violation whose nuclear winter the whole Mediterranean is now living under. And yes the food does look horrible, because it's horror food! It's difficult to describe in words, but it's like the stew Odysseus's men are eating is turning into gristly tentacles in their mouths, the sounds of their eating ghastly and so disgusting, while Morton transforms them through....something I will not even try to describe, I've just never seen anything quite like it onscreen. Largely practical effects too, astonishing.

Not a bit of that is in that line, of course. Great line, but isn't about the movie, it's about the author.

And honestly, the author is a bit out on a limb with much of how she has actually interpreted The Odyssey (film) itself, must also be said! And not just by me, or by film critics naturally, but also other classics scholars:

I mean when early on she summarily defined the work of cinema as "light and noise" and moved on, it was pretty clear that Wilson just doesn't have a ton of respect or feeling for epic scale movies in general. Which is fine! Everyone has types of art that they don't jibe with. But you don't go to the person who's not keen on dance for a good assessment of the new ballet, negative or positive.

If you want just like, One Neat Trick to having much more fun and interesting conversations about art with your friends, I'd say a great thing is to try to avoid value judgments without reasoning. That's what that same oft-quoted section of Emily Wilson's piece is doing, where after non-specifically mentioning "Nolan's trademark jumps and twists" in the opening paragraph, the only other comment she makes on The Odyssey's structure in 4000 words, and again, for a Christopher Nolan movie, is “its narrative structure is gimmicky.” Okay! What is the narrative structure that you found gimmicky? And gimmicky how, or why? Actually getting into what the structure is and what you thought the effect of that was on the story and the viewer is going to be so much more rewarding for everyone, because the people who felt the same way (including the person making the argument!) are gaining insights into why this element didn't work for them, and the people who did not feel the same way can now see where you're coming from, and identify where they're responding to the same filmmaking choices differently.

Because value judgement without reasoning is pretty prescriptivist at the end of the day. Good criticism shouldn’t be telling you what to think, it should be giving you more to think about.