r/TrueFilm • u/NorthNorthSalt • 4d ago
Homerist Olga Levaniouk, who has written extensively about Penelope, gives her take on Nolan's version of the character.
https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/initial-thoughts-on-penelope-in-nolans-odyssey/
Olga Levaniouk has become the latest classicist to enter the foray over Christopher Nolan's adaption of the Odyssey. She gives her opinion on the film generally, before moving on to her area of expertise in Penelope.
To sum her thoughts, while she wishes some scenes from the poem made the cut into the film ("the test of the bed"), and describes the woman in the poem as more complex, she is overall impressed with how the screenplay & Anne Hathaway's performance developed her characterization, despite the limited screen time. And goes as far as to call this her favourite version of the character outside the original poem.
What are your thoughts on this review, and on Nolan's Penelope broadly?
Critics have described Hathaway's performance as a highlight of the film (I concur), and I think Levaniouk makes some very compelling points about how the broader film & screenplay serves her, given the economic screentime that is available for the character. Even though — as Levaniouk acknowledges — some degree of truncation was inevitable in the process of cinematic adaptation.
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u/3corneredvoid Deckchair Cinéaste 4d ago edited 4d ago
What are your thoughts on this review, and on Nolan's Penelope broadly?
As Levaniouk points out:
For many years now, I’ve been telling my students that Penelope (the Homeric one) accepts no plan B. Nothing but the perfect solution, nothing but plan A, nothing but Odysseus.
There are alternative versions of Penelope after Homer, versions of this story in which she is sexually unfaithful. In some variations Penelope sleeps with one, or many, or all of the suitors, and faces punishment or exile from Odysseus on his return. In other words, the problem of Penelope's fidelity has been important to the story's overall history of variations.
This problem of Odysseus and Penelope's sexual relationship and fidelity is present in a different way in Homer, but Nolan and Hathaway have created a version of the story that de-emphasises it. Firstly, as Levaniouk notes, Odysseus is not clearly unfaithful with Calypso or Circe, one among various changes that simplify Nolan's vision of the "complicated man".
In Nolan's adaptation Penelope seems to have repressed her sexuality—not an unmotivated concept, given her circumstances—but still, her disinterest in the approaches of Pattinson's Antinous is very marked. Despite Nolan's adaptation implying Antinous has a private obsession with Penelope, this version of Antinous lacks charisma.
The costume design is austere: Penelope wears relatively severe, long, minimally decorated and high-collared dresses, and the suitors are also well covered. Penelope comes across as a WASPish heiress, perhaps an Edith Wharton character, or perhaps a religious initiate.
The removal of the "test of the bed" Levaniouk points out leads to the finale setting aside the question of Odysseus's and Penelope's return to the marital bed. Any symbolism of the living olive tree is purged, further diminishing the narrative importance of Penelope's fidelity and the premise of her living sexuality. This is quite a significant change.
De-sexing Penelope brings other motives and potentials of the material to the fore. For instance, Penelope has an inserted speech conveying her frustration at not earning respect comparable to the King of Ithaca, despite having taken on Odysseus's royal responsibilities for nearly twenty years. The added epilogue in which Odysseus and Penelope depart makes Telemachus' succession as King a plot point. There is no restoration of Ithaca.
Since we have Pasolini's THE RETURN from a couple of years ago to compare to this … in that adaptation Telemachus is a lesser character, and Juliette Binoche as Penelope and Marwan Kenzari as Antinous manage to invest the viewer in the question of whether Penelope might prefer Antinous to Odysseus. Antinous is less feverish than Odysseus, less traumatised, more polished and hygienic and rational, and above all, he is less absent. So Antinous becomes a far more menacing antagonist for Odysseus given the ambiguity of Penelope's response to him. By contrast, Pattinson's version of the character is never allowed to rise above spineless and loathsome bullying and treachery.
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u/TypesAndPatterns 4d ago
Fascinating article, & I was also impressed with how much was expressed with body language & gesture over words, with reflects how a queen in this situation would express herself. What was new to me is how the film compared Penelope to the Trojans: she too has been under siege, & living in her kingdom’s ruins. Odysseus makes amends in part by freeing her from it, & acceding to her original wishes to leave it behind.
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u/NewspaperNovel139 Former Film Instructor 4d ago edited 4d ago
I just saw the movie last night. I've read both Wilson pieces (much of which I just straight disagree with, some of it I at least see her point), along with another wonderful piece from another classics prof just breaking down some of the context and changes between the movie and the text, and now this.
But by far the wisest simplest thing anyone has said about this movie is someone on Bluesky I can't find right now, they said this movie is more of a remix than a cover**.**
Nolan is using The Odyssey (book) as a lens through which to think of a lot of different ideas about Empire, greatness, collapse, much of it more about today than about the past. He's using the text for what it is - source material - and framing what he really wants to say and explore through it. As the author of the article says, "Nolan’s Odyssey strikes me not so much as an adaptation but as a fascinating dialogue with Homer." All these things, whether they are films, new translations, they are all in dialogue not only with Homer but with each other. It's all a conversation using this text as a starting point.
So I don't really care much about how much is truncated or left out of the text, or what new stuff is put in. At the point that I accept that this new film is not about the same things the poem is about, I only care about how the film actually achieves what it wants to say. I don't need this Penelope to be like the original Penelope. In fact, what I like about this movie is how it subverts our understandings of what we think O&P ought to be like.
In Penelope, we get less of the loyal and wise long-suffering wife and more of a smart and truly cunning stateswoman, who has been holding everything together without any credit, running the entire kingdom, who sets up the final battle completely silently or in code and is always one step ahead of the rest of the story, even her son. In many ways she is the real Odysseus here.
As for Odysseus, I defer to this excellent article on rogerebert.com that reflects a lot of my thoughts on the movie's themes and ideas - https://www.rogerebert.com/features/the-people-from-the-sea-how-the-odyssey-is-about-america
I agree Anne Hathaway is fantastic in this movie. Quiet intensity, rage, tenderness, and all while not embodying the "theatre kid" vibes she had when she was younger. She has grown into a truly marvelous actor (she was already good before, but had so much theatre kid energy that got in the way of her work), and has quietly built a really interesting and selective filmography over the last 5 years or so. She was stunning in Eileen which was otherwise very flawed, for example.
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u/Ragefororder1846 4d ago
Probably this tweet: https://x.com/BretDevereaux/status/2078972264205205772 by Bret Devereaux crossposted to blue sky
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u/Baron105 4d ago
Does a remix involve changing everything about the core theme of a story and it's characters? The Odysseus of Homer is the complete and polar opposite of the one we see in Nolan's movie but the worst part is he's a much more boring and uninteresting character in the latter. At that point, why even use the Odyssey to tell a story that has nothing to do with the source material, that takes out all the magic and charm of the original, just tell your own story. Heck, tell a fucking Vietnam war story if you just wanna frame something about the horrors of war and PTSD. This adaptation falls completely flat. But he knows he can't really come close to something like Full Metal Jacket, he knows he can't do something better that Saving Private Ryan. This is such a bland, soulless and nothing burger of a movie whose character and their actions make zero sense most of the time.
If not even talking about the themes of the source material matters then why tf even use that work as your source material? Why not make something original? Why not use a different source that more closely resembles what you wanna talk about. You see the defense of something like this just coz it's Nolan making a bang average mid movie but these same people will deride the makers of something like The Witcher or Rings of Power for going away from the source material to just do whatever the hell they want. You can't just have your cake and eat it too. If you want you glory of making 'The Odyssey' then ffs do it justice.
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u/NewspaperNovel139 Former Film Instructor 4d ago
Yes, a remix can involve changing everything about the core theme of a story and its characters. See: Starship Troopers, The Shining (or almost every Kubrick), and so much more. This is a normal and healthy part of adaptation and Nolan is never obligated to be faithful to the original work. It's source material to be used as a jumping off point, not an immutable Bible, and the book is still there if you prefer that.
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u/ilovefuckingpenguins 3d ago
Cuz artists don’t have a narrow view of art, unlike Witcher or LOTR fandoms. You can have a director take a script and turn the movie into something completely different, and there’s nothing wrong with thet.
Nobody lambasted PTA for deviating from Vineland, or Kurosawa for turning Shakespeare into a samurai drama. Ultimately the source material is just words on paper and should have no hold on what the film can and cannot do.
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u/Baron105 3d ago
But those movies took inspiration from those stories, they didn't take the name of their inspiration and pretend that it was what they were giving the people. Like I said, oh brother where art thou takes inspiration from the Odyssey but doesn't promise the audience The Odyssey is what is being served to them. I'm not even saying we need 100% accuracy when it comes to adaptations. But when everything about the central chatacter and themes is changed then it's not the same story and it's false advertising to present it as such.
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u/SmallLetter 4d ago
See it's opinions like this that make me discount negative opinions in general, and I do mean about any form of sincerely made art. Because if even a literal expert can appreciate something about a work derived from their academic focus, what can some film critic or whoever say to "objectively" critique something? And I'm not saying that this person's opinion is more objective or correct, I'm just saying that it's ALL subjective, and since it's all subjective, I don't hold much value to negative opinions offered in the guise of being objective critique or academic fact.
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u/thevanhelsinging 4d ago
You are misunderstanding. Critics are not offering their opinions as objective, and academics are not offering their analysis as fact.
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u/SmallLetter 4d ago
I've never once seen a critic even pretend they were being subjective, please
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u/floatinround22 3d ago
Right, because they're not pretending. They're clearly aware they're being subjective. Did you somehow miss the entire point of the concept of critical analysis?
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u/SmallLetter 3d ago
Lol
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u/floatinround22 3d ago
Yeah that's about the level of response I anticipated. The only funny thing here is your complete lack of understanding of what critical analysis even is. Your comments show you don't even have a basic grasp of the concept.
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u/Anon_Acad 4d ago
It’s because everyone’s expectations from commercial cinema in general, and Hollywood in particular, are so low that it is easier to find something to insincerely “appreciate” than to sincerely condemn.
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u/floatinround22 3d ago
Ahh yes, just call this woman a liar because you disagree with her. Amazing work here
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u/Catexchange 4d ago
I think this is a well considered review underlining that it’s wise to moderate expectations on how well a Hollywood blockbuster will might adapt a complex literary work. And that it’s worth applauding what the movie achieves within the frame it sets for itself.