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.
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.
8 comments:
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?
Well, when I was in school in the dark ages of the last century, my class read the Iliad in high school--a full translation, not any Cliff Notes version--and in college, we read the Odysseus in the original Attic Greek (our professor chanted excerpts for us; the thing is quite musical when done right), followed by Virgil's Aeneid, though not in Latin. I guess times have changed.
From the cited "article:" “The Odyssey” is a thing you can buy tickets to....
In fact, nothing new here, the Greeks generally had to offer up something for Homer's presentations--which he spread out over three-four days, so nobody got...rump sprung...on those stone theater seats--that being how Homer made his living. I supposed this WaPo "writer" has no clue about that.
And finally, a question for Grim, since he suffered through the piece so we wouldn't have to: could this have been written by ChatGPT's free version, and the child-woman simply copy-pasted? It is about that puerile a piece. And you're being generous regarding her: it seems written as a What I Did Over Summer assignment, due the first week of 5th or 6th grade.
Eric Hines
BA Bryn Mawr. MA Johns Hopkins.
You illustrate my point beautifully. I appreciate the assist.
Oh, and she's in her 40s and "focuses" on "gender and its impact on society." The latter which demonstrates how far out of her wading pool's depth she is.
Eric Hines
Graduate of elite colleges and has never read Homer. Not to mention high school. I had a STEM major, and due to bad experience in high school English classes, did not read Homer in college in the two English classes I took in college. But did read Homer in high school. And also The Aeneid.
Her dearth of exposure to the classics does not give me the impression that elite colleges educate their graduates. But she knows all about gender stuff, which is merely the academic gobbletygook de jour.
Grim's referring to the Ben Rhodes comment about journalists knowing nothing is more than appropriate.
A while back, I started reading The Illiad while simultaneously listening to its being spoken. Older Fire tablets have text-to-speech for anything, but more recent Fire tablets have speech-to-text for only books you have purchased. Need to resume reading it.
Gringo
It would have been helpful if the reviewer had actually been smacked by a gob of anything so we would at least be spared that hackneyed phrase.
She has the authentic candor of Graham Platner
Actually saw it. Wife wanted to see if it was that bad. Sold out show, believe it or not. Hate the production design, Script was barely adequate, and the controversial casting choices were meh. Scary cyclops. I guess it is going to make it's money back, but It will have no lasting effect. Pattison and Hathaway were good. Damon tried.
“The Odyssey” is a massively long poem.
You might even say it was "epic," dude.
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