• En sortant du film « The Odyssey » de Christopher Nolan, j’ai mentionné Emily Wilson, la première femme à traduire l’Odyssée d’Homer en anglais en 2017. Ma source venant de Tiktok et ce commentaire prenant place après une (très) longue tirade sur pourquoi j’ai absolument détesté ce film, il a été jugé pas pertinent.

    Ça c’était il y a plus d’une semaine. Aujourd’hui, je viens d’apprendre que Christopher Nolan se serait carrément inspiré de la version de Emily Wilson, et que celle-ci a visionné le film et a publié un review (en anglais) :
    https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

    L’article entier est génial mais je tiens à noter mes passages préférés :
    – “At the end of the film, a character sets out to ‘sail beyond the sunset’ and I almost expected everyone to break into Elvish."
    – “There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material."
    – “(…) this Hollywood version of Mycenaean Greece is the only ‘civilisation’ in the world – the only place that still just about remembers that strangers and beggars must be welcomed, according to Zeus’ law."
    – “We don’t see the design or construction of the Trojan Horse; instead, a kitsch, poorly designed horse (with no wheels) appears on the windswept beach as if dumped there by drone. The difficulties of transporting large, unwieldy objects over difficult terrain must have been on the director’s mind as he lugged his IMAX cameras through the film’s many challenging locations."
    – “Mentor (Ryan Hurst), who helps Telemachus (Tom Holland), is not a disguised goddess but a helpful guy with a beard; Eurylochus is not an embittered rival to Odysseus but another helpful guy with a beard.”
    – “The Trojan War is an aberration, the fault of faceless, monstrous Agamemnon (the one in the weird Darth Vader outfit), who has failed as an American family man by killing his daughter.”
    – “We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it”
    – “Pattinson is the only person on set who seems to be having any fun (…) he also deserves one of the Oscars that will shower down on this movie like the golden rain of Zeus.”
    – “There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”

    • C’est mieux de mettre les citations… en citation :

      – “At the end of the film, a character sets out to ‘sail beyond the sunset’ and I almost expected everyone to break into Elvish."

      – “There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material."

      – “(…) this Hollywood version of Mycenaean Greece is the only ‘civilisation’ in the world – the only place that still just about remembers that strangers and beggars must be welcomed, according to Zeus’ law."

      – “We don’t see the design or construction of the Trojan Horse; instead, a kitsch, poorly designed horse (with no wheels) appears on the windswept beach as if dumped there by drone. The difficulties of transporting large, unwieldy objects over difficult terrain must have been on the director’s mind as he lugged his IMAX cameras through the film’s many challenging locations."

      – “Mentor (Ryan Hurst), who helps Telemachus (Tom Holland), is not a disguised goddess but a helpful guy with a beard; Eurylochus is not an embittered rival to Odysseus but another helpful guy with a beard.”

      – “The Trojan War is an aberration, the fault of faceless, monstrous Agamemnon (the one in the weird Darth Vader outfit), who has failed as an American family man by killing his daughter.”

      – “We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it”

      – “Pattinson is the only person on set who seems to be having any fun (…) he also deserves one of the Oscars that will shower down on this movie like the golden rain of Zeus.”

      – “There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”

    • 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 actors – Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott – play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist. Scott, as the Ithacan bard, Phemius, yells a few words and pounds a stick, but does not get to sing, tell a story or play the lyre: the most melodic note in the percussive soundtrack comes from the plucking of Odysseus’ bow (a beautiful sonic image of the archer as musician, borrowed from the poem). Nyong’o’s double part as Helen and Clytemnestra is hugely underwritten; she is given only a few minutes of screen time to perform a set of brief tableaux of female victims (the outraged bereaved mother, the abused wife, the repentant adulteress).

    • https://justpaste.it/di29f

      Le problème éthique le plus préoccupant soulevé par L’Odyssée de Nolan concerne la décision de tourner une partie du film dans le territoire occupé du Sahara occidental, normalisant ainsi les violences persistantes à l’encontre du peuple autochtone sahraoui. Il est particulièrement révoltant que Nolan ait utilisé cette terre comme simple toile de fond visuellement saisissante pour un film qui met en avant, glorifie et réhabilite le héros d’une guerre territoriale au motif de sa reconnaissance tardive et partielle de sa propre culpabilité.

      Malgré tout cela, la sortie de L’Odyssée reste un événement à célébrer. À l’ère du streaming, comme on nous le répète sans cesse, cette épopée ramène le public dans les salles de cinéma. À une époque où l’on nous parle de déclin de l’alphabétisation et de « mort des sciences humaines », les traductions de L’Odyssée, y compris la mienne, s’arrachent en librairie. Certains de ceux qui achètent le livre ou se rendent au cinéma pour voir Tom Holland se mettront peut-être à étudier le grec ancien. Peut-être que le film convaincra quelques responsables d’établissements d’enseignement supérieur de ne pas supprimer leurs départements de littérature, de langues et d’histoire. Nolan, qui a étudié l’anglais à l’University College London – où les étudiants étudient toujours L’Odyssée comme « texte fondamental » en première année –, fait de son mieux pour inciter le grand public à se remettre à la lecture, et je lui en suis reconnaissant.

      Oups ! cette conclusion me laisse songeur ...