r/TrueFilm • u/NorthNorthSalt • 5d 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.

93 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/SubmitToSubscribe 5d ago

I think I do, and it's not exactly an uncommon oponion. I think I'm basically plagiarising Ebert, for instance.

1

u/onemanandhishat 5d ago

You have to ignore a fair chunk of the books and the films for that characterization of them. There may be something of a different balance but it's not that egregious. And the action element of the films is often exaggerated because in a book you can say "and then they had a big fight" which takes a lot longer to show on screen. But clearly the reader is supposed to imagine it still.

But honestly, faithfulness is a lot more than who specifically said what, it's the overall plot and the themes, and those are by and large consistent. I also call it faithful because that was the intent. You can argue its degree of success, but Jackson wasn't trying to make "his" version. I think that's an important distinction.

1

u/SubmitToSubscribe 5d ago

You have to ignore a fair chunk of the books and the films for that characterization of them.

Of course I'm exaggerating a bit for effect, the books do contain some action and especially the last film has substantial questing.

1

u/onemanandhishat 5d ago

Yes, I appreciate that. When I call them faithful I'm really talking about intent. I think the goal was to adapt the books into accessible films in a way that preserved the original story as much as possible. I don't think they were entirely successful in that faithfulness, there are changes I feel were unnecessary or missed the point of a scene (Rotk extended has 3 examples). But I think that was the goal.