Pick Three: Richard Brody on “The Odyssey” and Other Summer Films

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2:25This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. So far, this year in film has been largely defined by two low-budget horror movies, Obsession and Backrooms, both big successes directed by very young upstarts still in their 20s. that's all about to change because this weekend a highly anticipated blockbuster enters the fray Christopher Nolan's epic version of Homer's The Odyssey. After years of war no one could stand between my bed and home.

3:03I sat down with the New Yorker's film critic Richard Brody to talk about Nolan's Odyssey and what other movies are worth getting off the couch for this summer. Richard, I tried to get a ticket to The Odyssey. I went online, and it is sold out all over the place. You got in, of course, because you're the film critic, and you went to a screening. What did you think? Well, it's good on its terms. The terms aren't so good, but the movie's pretty good. It's very hard to spoil that story. It's such an exciting story. And Christopher Nolan keeps it moving really nicely. But it's a very unusual interpretation or reinterpretation of the Odyssey, which I kind of enjoyed for its intellectual coherence and didn't quite enjoy for its lack of substance.

3:53So I took a sneak peek at your review, and one of the things that you said was that the gods are missing. This is all about human beings. And in an epic poem in which the gods play a pivotal role, That's an interesting interpretation. Yeah, exactly. Athena is played by Zendaya, but her role is cut down to a few more or less cameo-like appearances. Essentially, he turns The Odyssey into an American-style, a Hollywood-style action film. And Odysseus, far from being the glib, sly schemer that he is in Homer, is played, you know, very tight-lipped and terse, like a current-day military hero in movies.

4:33So, Matt Damon is more Jason Bourne than he is Odysseus? Exactly. There's none of the glint in his eye that he had in Good Will Hunting. Now, you've been brutal on Christopher Nolan. If I remember correctly, you said that Oppenheimer was kind of close to being a Wikipedia page, which was pretty cutting for a film that won at least half the awards that year. There's something strange about Christopher Nolan. You know, I, for instance, rather liked Inception and Interstellar and Tenet. I think that Christopher Nolan excels at science fiction precisely because it allows him a certain, let's say, emotional and even political freedom.

5:16With a film like Oppenheimer, where he is so devoted to the subject, to transmitting a particular message, and that's exactly the case with The Odyssey also. It's as if he's filming with his hands behind his back. What is that? It means he's not doing everything he's capable of doing. He's restraining himself. So, for instance, there are wondrous images in Inception. I don't think it's a great movie, but I think it's a movie that is, at moments, really audiovisually startling. The Odyssey is not audiovisually startling at any moment. Really? The Odyssey is filmed in some oddly transparent, style-free way.

5:49It's pictures of actors acting. There's a lot of battlefield churn done in very quick cuts. But essentially, he's transmitting. He's not creating. What do you mean by that? Tease that out. I get the feeling that he puts a lot more thought into the decor, a lot more thought into the landscapes, a lot more thought into the dialogue, a lot more thought into the messaging than he's putting into the way it looks and feels. And it's almost as if style, some sort of audiovisual artifice, would seem like a betrayal of a fundamental idea that he wants to get across. Now, Richard, a lot was made about the casting in this film, in particular Lupita Nyong 'o and Elliot Page's presence in the movie annoyed a lot of people.

6:30including, unbelievably, Elon Musk, who posted about it on and on. What do you make of the casting controversies, if that's what they were in this film? I don't want to attribute evil motives to the people who were upset, but I do. I think that it's simply a matter of plain and simple racism. I don't think that there are many classic scholars in the group of people who are criticizing that casting decision. But I actually think when the hard-right cadre sees the Odyssey, they're going to be upset by something much more than the casting. What's that? This Odysseus, although he's a courageous warrior, he's also a troubled warrior.

7:07Essentially, this is Odysseus with PTSD. This is a traumatized Odysseus whose homecoming is essentially delayed partly because he's not ready psychologically to come home. Not that it's his decision. You know, the benevolent goddess, Calypso, keeps him on the island as her lover, but also is trying to put him back together to get him home. He's also a guilty warrior. The Trojan horse comes up quite often in this film. It's mentioned only briefly in the Odyssey, but it is shown plentifully in the movie. And the reason for it turns out to be paradoxical. Odysseus ends up feeling extremely bad about having broken the laws of Zeus by using that ruse to destroy Troy.

7:56Richard, I'm curious how language works in this film. Obviously, there have been a lot of translations over the ages of the Odyssey. The most recent celebrated one is by Emily Wilson, a British scholar, who famously made the line a lot shorter, more colloquial. and it was a feminist translation in some way or another. How does any of that come through? I don't think that Christopher Nolan translated The Odyssey on his own. By the way, I think Wilson's translation is wonderful from the perspective of being a brisk reader's translation. I should tell the listener what you're not going to admit, which is that long ago you studied ancient Greek and made your way through at least part of the poem in the original.

8:44So you have a better grasp than most about how this poem works. Well, that's a long time ago. But the interpretation that Nolan brings is particularly interesting regarding female characters. Penelope is a wonderful character in this film. Suzanne Hathaway playing that. Anne Hathaway is terrific. She brings a strong melodramatic performance to a role that is written melodramatically, very forcefully. Look at this great house.

9:28She's no shrinking violet in this film. She's trying to take control of her life and laments the fact that, essentially, it's a patrilinear monarchy in Ithaca. Similarly, Circe, far from being depicted as a merely evil seducer is essentially a hard-bitten countrywoman of principle. I'm speaking with The New Yorker's Richard Brody. More in a moment.

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14:12Now, let's pivot to a movie that's far from being a big-budget action epic, but something you feel strongly about, and that's the new documentary called Remake by Ross McElwee. What makes this film appealing to you? It's a very sad film. The story concerns McElwee's son, Adrian. McElwee's a personal documentarian, and his son, Adrian, became a frequent presence in his films, especially in a film from about 10, 12 years ago called Photographic Memory, in which Adrian is a troubled adolescent. He's a remarkably creative young man who's having trouble, let's say, launching. And it seems as if his relationship to the movies that he's been in is in some way both inspiring him and troubling him.

15:05Mm-hmm. Remake adds one more dimension to this story. In 2016, at the age of 27, Adrian, who was already struggling with substance abuse in photographic memory, died of a fentanyl overdose. And Remake is McElwee's attempt to return to his life in films and to his life in films with Adrian using footage that he had already filmed to reconsider both the relationship and the fact of having filmed him. And he also immerses himself in footage that Adrian himself made. And Adrian was a very talented filmmaker, in my opinion, who, had he kept at it, had he been well, would have been able to achieve something substantial.

15:53First, there is a father, and he has a son. Then it starts all over. I am now the father, and I have a son. But something goes awry. Something goes off script. And then suddenly, you're gone. It sounds devastating, the film. It's devastating, it's very moving, and at the same time, it's very much a celebration of Adrian's life. Now, the final film that you really have strong feelings about is called I Love Boosters. And that didn't get as much attention as I think you would have liked. No, it didn't. It's the second film by Boots Riley, whose first film, Sorry to Bother You, was really wonderful.

16:36I should say Boots Riley was profiled at length in a certain comic weekly known as The New Yorker by our colleague, Emily Nussbaum. Indeed, and it's a wonderful profile in which some of the things he talks about actually, I think, go far to explain why I love Boosters, which I think is largely a terrific film, didn't in fact go as far, let's say, commercially and even critically as it should have. Fundamentally, it's a story of three women in the Bay Area, played by Kiki Palmer, Naomi Ackie, and Taylor Page, who are boosters. They steal high-end fashion and resell it. The character played by Kiki Palmer, named Corvette, has a special motive that gives the film a real kind of emotional and intellectual kick.

17:18Namely, she herself is an aspiring and very talented fashion designer. And the stores that they hit most of all are the stores of the merchandise by this one particular designer who turns out to be their nemesis of sorts. What would be your biggest challenge in a job like this? Probably that I feel like I should have it all. the colors, patterns, the beauty. I just want to take it all home, eat it up, and shoot it out in my eyes. I just feel like, give it to me. It's mine anyway. And from the perspective of this premise that is done with a great deal of humor and a great deal of visual flair and a great deal of raucous and wild comedy, it's a real success.

18:11But, you know, there's this line from Jean Cocteau that, you know, tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go too far. And Boots Riley goes too far, too far. You know, there was a science fiction dimension in Sorry to Bother You that I thought he handled extremely well. And in I Love Boosters, the first touch of it, which is the availability of essentially a teleporting device, which is used to ship this woman's fashions from the factory in China where they're made to the U.S. without paying is really ingenious. You know, the best tariff evader ever devised. Now, while we're at it, are there any movies playing in theaters right at this moment that you'd recommend?

18:53I shouldn't put it this way, but much to my surprise, I think Disclosure Day, which is still in theaters, is really well worth seeing. I think it's one of Steven Spielberg's best films, up there with 1941. You've been saying this for years, the 1941 line, and it never fails to get a rise out of everybody. No, but Disclosure Day is really well worth seeing. I get the impression, exactly like with 1941, that Steven Spielberg displays something that he hasn't displayed in most of his movies, namely an id. Richard Brody, thank you so much. David, thank you very much. Good to see you. The New Yorker's Richard Brody.

19:29You can read Richard on the movies every week at newyorker.com. And of course, you can subscribe to The New Yorker there as well, newyorker.com. I'm David Remnick. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer, with guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Parrish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett.

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