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<blockquote data-quote="Angela Channing" data-source="post: 442560" data-attributes="member: 33">I found Emily Wilson&#039;s comments bizarre, to be honest. They seem to reflect the mindset of someone who doesn&#039;t know the difference between reviewing a literary text and adapting a massive piece of source material to turn it into a commercially successful film for a modern audience.The Odyssey&nbsp; is a film entertainment, not a filmed edition of Homer&#039;s poem. Christopher Nolan isn&#039;t required to produce a six-hour, line-by-line recreation of the original text simply to satisfy literary purists. Film and literature are two completely different forms of storytelling and a good adaptation should be judged on how well it works as a piece of cinema and not on how closely it reproduces every detail of the source material.Had Nolan followed Wilson&#039;s apparent approach, I suspect audiences would have had to sit through a considerably longer film, packed with material that might be fascinating on the page but would probably make the cinematic experience a major bore. There is a reason screenwriters and directors adapt source material rather than simply reproduce it.Historian Tom Holland, who actually knows a thing or two about Homer and Greek mythology, has seen the film twice and described it as &quot;by some way the best cinematic adaptation of a Greek myth I have ever seen&quot;. He added that it &quot;honours Homer while simultaneously making something new of him&quot;.&nbsp; That sounds to me like a far more sensible way of looking at the adaptation.[MEDIA=twitter]2074383569120546863[/MEDIA]I&#039;ve not seen the film myself yet, so I have no idea whether it is brilliant, terrible or somewhere in between, but I do know that I don&#039;t expect the film adaptation to be like a scholarly translation of the original poem. A screenwriter and director should have the freedom to reshape, condense and reinterpret the source material to make it work for a modern audience. That&#039;s not betraying the original, it is what adaptation is.Perhaps Emily Wilson should have remembered that before criticising the film for not being the film she would have made. There&#039;s a difference between being faithful to Homer and being slavishly faithful to every line of Homer. The former can produce great cinema. The latter could just produce a very long and very boring film. Maybe that&#039;s why she writes for the London Review of Books, which probably has a circulation of about 12 and Christopher Nolan writes a screenplay for a international blockbuster that is seen by millions.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Angela Channing, post: 442560, member: 33"] I found Emily Wilson's comments bizarre, to be honest. They seem to reflect the mindset of someone who doesn't know the difference between reviewing a literary text and adapting a massive piece of source material to turn it into a commercially successful film for a modern audience. [I]The Odyssey[/I] is a film entertainment, not a filmed edition of Homer's poem. Christopher Nolan isn't required to produce a six-hour, line-by-line recreation of the original text simply to satisfy literary purists. Film and literature are two completely different forms of storytelling and a good adaptation should be judged on how well it works as a piece of cinema and not on how closely it reproduces every detail of the source material. Had Nolan followed Wilson's apparent approach, I suspect audiences would have had to sit through a considerably longer film, packed with material that might be fascinating on the page but would probably make the cinematic experience a major bore. There is a reason screenwriters and directors adapt source material rather than simply reproduce it. Historian Tom Holland, who actually knows a thing or two about Homer and Greek mythology, has seen the film twice and described it as [I]"by some way the best cinematic adaptation of a Greek myth I have ever seen"[/I]. He added that it [I]"honours Homer while simultaneously making something new of him".[/I] That sounds to me like a far more sensible way of looking at the adaptation. [MEDIA=twitter]2074383569120546863[/MEDIA] I've not seen the film myself yet, so I have no idea whether it is brilliant, terrible or somewhere in between, but I do know that I don't expect the film adaptation to be like a scholarly translation of the original poem. A screenwriter and director should have the freedom to reshape, condense and reinterpret the source material to make it work for a modern audience. That's not betraying the original, it is what adaptation is. Perhaps Emily Wilson should have remembered that before criticising the film for not being the film she would have made. There's a difference between being faithful to Homer and being slavishly faithful to every line of Homer. The former can produce great cinema. The latter could just produce a very long and very boring film. Maybe that's why she writes for the [I]London Review of Books[/I], which probably has a circulation of about 12 and Christopher Nolan writes a screenplay for a international blockbuster that is seen by millions. [/QUOTE]

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