00:00Is the new Odyssey movie feminist?
00:02Although its director used a translation considered feminist as a reference,
00:06The film is not a critical darling.
00:08We'll tell you.
00:09First, remember that The Odyssey is a story about the return home of a fictional hero,
00:14Odysseus, from ancient Greece.
00:15The story begins where the Iliad ends,
00:18and recounts the 10 years following the fall of Troy.
00:21It was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago,
00:23and since then it has been reinterpreted in virtually every possible format.
00:27This 2026 a new version arrived directed by Christopher Nolan.
00:32The film, which is currently in theaters,
00:33Among her references was the introduction written by Emily Wilson,
00:37the first woman to complete a full translation of The Odyssey into English.
00:41And this did not go unnoticed,
00:43because Wilson made history in 2017 with a version that was praised
00:47for using accessible language and representing female characters more fully.
00:52A translation described by some as a progressive abomination.
00:56And for others, such as one of the most faithful modern interpretations of Homer,
01:00from a linguistic point of view.
01:02Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania,
01:05and a specialist in Greek and Roman literature.
01:08But he must know very little about the subject, as his critics say, right?
01:12Wilson presents Odysseus as a complex character,
01:15not only as a man devoted to war,
01:17It focuses on other emotional and psychological depths.
01:20and describes him as the most human hero of the Greek world.
01:23The same expert also questions sexist interpretations
01:26which, according to her, were added without justification in previous translations.
01:30For example, a word used to refer to several women
01:33It was translated for years as whores or prostitutes,
01:36although in ancient Greek it simply meant women.
01:39Wilson decided to translate it as girls.
01:42He also gave Penelope another place,
01:43She no longer appears only as the protagonist's obedient wife,
01:47who is waiting for her husband,
01:48but as a politically brilliant woman,
01:51full of contained rage
01:52and capable of sustaining a kingdom virtually on her own.
01:54For her, it wasn't about inventing feminist characters,
01:57but rather to remove the layers of sexist interpretation
02:00that they imposed on them for years
02:02readings done primarily by men,
02:05playing over and over again
02:06the archetypes they have about women.
02:09Having said all that,
02:10And having a reference like Emily Wilson,
02:12It's a feminist film, as they say.
02:14The truth is that once again his film fails the Bechtel test.
02:18which raises a fairly basic point,
02:20that two women with their own names
02:22talk to each other about something other than a man.
02:24Nolan brought together some of the most renowned actresses of the time
02:27to put them back in secondary roles,
02:30in charge of accompanying the protagonist's journey.
02:33She stripped them of their complexity as advisors,
02:36political strategists, oath-takers, and goddesses
02:38to turn them into women at the service of a man or into victims.
02:42Athena, for example, ceases to be a warrior
02:44and a key strategist to become Odysseus's advisor.
02:48Or that the only relevant conversation between two women
02:50It's about betrayal and the struggle for a man's attention.
02:54This happens with Penelope,
02:55despite the fact that in the poem his life in the palace
02:57She is surrounded by other women.
02:59Without them, Odysseus gets nowhere.
03:02There is no journey, no hero, and no story.
03:05But Nolan didn't give them that place.
03:07It was not a decision based on literary fidelity to the work.
03:09Nolan himself said that he intentionally excluded
03:12several parts considered misogynistic.
03:15Nor can it be said that there was no space.
03:16because the movie lasts almost three hours.
03:19Why, out of all the information he was able to reinterpret from the Odyssey
03:22Did he choose to only recount the silence and devotion of the women?
03:25Something that already seems to be a pattern.
03:26The truth is that not everything is black and white.
03:29It's clear that Nolan tried to read the work from the current context.
03:32and transform some characters.
03:34Penelope, for example, was given more autonomy
03:37and showed her making decisions beyond her son's orders.
03:40It also removed all scenes of sexual violence,
03:43But in that zeal, he even eliminated any kind of intimate encounter.
03:46and in doing so, he concealed women's stories
03:48who freely lived their pleasure like Circe.
03:51That's why, once again, he ended up agreeing with them.
03:54to those who joke that he doesn't really know any women.
03:57Because she still doesn't know how to write them.
04:00Wilson, the literature specialist,
04:02She was not satisfied either.
04:03He said he would have been ashamed to write any part of that script.
04:07and questioned the lack of complexity of the story
04:10and of its female characters.
04:12She herself took care of interpreting them very well.
04:15Furthermore, from conservative groups,
04:17The film received transphobic and racist attacks
04:19against Elliot Page and Lupita Nyjong,
04:22disguised as criticisms of forced inclusion.
04:25Even so, the odyssey is breaking box office records.
04:27Have you seen it yet?
04:29What do you think?
04:29We read them.
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