Ignorance is Part of the Product

We all recall President Obama's speech guy explaining to a noted journalist that, unlike when they got started, journalists now are all 27 year olds who "know nothing." Apparently, at the Washington Post that now qualifies you to write a review of The Odyssey. [Long quotes because it is paywalled, and you shouldn't pay for what follows.]

We can discuss later whether my education was merely eclectic or an utter catastrophe, but somehow, having successfully avoided the spoilers for nearly 3,000 years, I went into an early screening of “The Odyssey” with no idea of what it was about.

I mean, ok, everybody's upbringing is different... but wasn't there someone at the Post who could have taken this assignment who wasn't completely ignorant of the subject? 

But hey, sure. Let's have a review by the girl who literally does know nothing. It'll be objective, or something. 

But first: what even is “The Odyssey”?

“The Odyssey” is a massively long poem.

Look, probably the rest of the audience actually does know a little bit about the Odyssey. You might be able to skip some of the preamble. She did skip part of it; she says she wrote and deleted 'several paragraphs' about disputed concepts of authorship among scholars, which I assume she found out about middle-school style five minutes before her deadline but thought she was qualified to discuss at length.

“The Odyssey” is a thing you can buy tickets to, and we’re going to talk about the movie, I promise; this is the journey part of the story.

You know, this does read like a middle school book report. The research is similarly exacting throughout. 

Some of Nolan’s casting choices immediately became controversial. He cast Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong’o, one of the most beautiful women alive, as Helen of Troy, one of the most beautiful women alive... He cast Elliot Page, a transgender man, as one of about a hundred Greek soldiers, and this also ticked off a horde of commentators because, I don’t know, they are weird cashews.

I didn't think much of their complaints either. They probably knew who Odysseus was, though.

“The Odyssey” is a meditation on aging, Amy Poehler suggested to Matt Damon in a recent episode of her podcast, “Good Hang.” “The Odyssey” is a meditation on PTSD, Matt Damon suggested back, while also informing her that “The Odyssey” made him go gluten-free. “The Odyssey” is about “the urgent desire to get home and to belong somewhere,” according to scholar and translator Daniel Mendelsohn; it is about “what it means to survive violence, and what it means to come home,” according to scholar and translator Emily Wilson; it is, said Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy, “a journey of the soul.”

So now we are gathering celebrity opinions about the meaning of the poem because they were available on podcasts? Somehow a couple of actual scholars made their way into her field of attention, and thus the book report. 

“The Odyssey” is — and let’s be serious movie people for a moment — absolutely astonishing.

Yes, by all means. If this is what 'serious movie people' look like, we can surely all be one if we choose. Maybe I'll be one tomorrow. Why not? "To hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

After sitting in the theater, gobsmacked as the credits rolled, I felt strongly that I had come into the story in exactly the right way: completely ignorant.

Can I tell you whether the screenplay diverted from the original text in matters of importance? I cannot. If it did, it wouldn’t have bothered me. A colleague revealed that her 12-year-old was irritated by the absence of a scene involving the God of Wind which is, apparently, quite important in the original text, and that girl definitely went to a better middle school than I did.

You should have had her write the review. We'd have all been better informed if you had. Child labor laws, I guess.