🔥 Hotter than Helen of Troy

This might be a first. The London Review of Books was down for a few hours yesterday morning after traffic to Emily Wilson’s review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey crashed the site. ICYMI: Wilson, the first woman to publish an English translation of the epic poem, is atop bestseller lists as interest in the 3,000-year-old story is hotter than Helen of Troy. Wilson’s review, too, is a scorcher. Right up top: Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth. Wilson also credits the source material for the fact that the film has more female characters than Nolan’s past work, though she notes that, “none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem.” Weighing in on the culture wars, Wilson torches Nolan’s casting choices in an inversion of right-wing criticisms: The race-neutral casting of Nolan’s Odyssey was inevitably deplored in some quarters. But there is nothing progressive about it. Most of the non-white ...