"It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth ... The writing is abysmal."

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- From classicist Emily Wilson's scathing review of Christopher Nolan's blockbuster movie The Odyssey.

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To go and see Christopher Nolan's blockbuster movie The Odyssey or not to go and see it? That is the question.

And it is especially a question for well-read intellectual snobs, like your columnist. The whole world is talking about the movie but everywhere the well-read who have seen it, and who have previously read and loved Homer's written version of The Odyssey are being scathing about Nolan's film version of it. Well-read intellectual snobs (like your columnist) fear that exposure to the influential and probably unforgettable three hours of the bogan blockbuster may contaminate and displace (for the brain has only limited room) our fond, cultured appreciations of the written classic.

Some who have seen it and hated it (they include Emily Wilson, and Nolan says he was moved to make the movie after he'd read the opening sentence of Wilson's acclaimed translation of Homer's epic) sound quite emotionally and culturally offended by the experience. No wonder then that your sensitive, well-read columnist is agonising over whether or not to go and see the movie, worried I might in anger hurl my boysenberry Choc Top at the screen.

Meanwhile, while making up my mind whether or not to drag my apprehensive mind to the movie, I am reading A.S. Kline's noble, elegant, literary 2004 translation of The Odyssey. I am reading it on my big desktop's quite big screen, never once feeling an urge to throw a Choc Top. Kline's translation is, thanks to Homer and to Kline, thrillingly, movingly beautiful.

Unlike Nolan's film (as assessed by the impressively tattooed and impressively brainy Emily Wilson),........

© Canberra Times