This might be a first. The London Review of Books was down for a few hours yesterday morning after traffic to Emily Wilson’s review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey crashed the site.

• ICYMI: Wilson, the first woman to publish an English translation of the epic poem, is atop bestseller lists as interest in the 3,000-year-old story is hotter than Helen of Troy.

Wilson’s review, too, is a scorcher. Right up top:

Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.

Wilson also credits the source material for the fact that the film has more female characters than Nolan’s past work, though she notes that, “none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem.”

Weighing in on the culture wars, Wilson torches Nolan’s casting choices in an inversion of right-wing criticisms:

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.

What about the dialogue? Wilson has no problem with Nolan’s choice to use contemporary American English, but she finds the execution “relentlessly expository, humourless and flat,” which just about sums up her reading of the whole project. No character or set piece gets a pass.

And yet: Wilson demonstrates the rarest of skills in these unnuanced times, holding her critique alongside appreciation for the ways the film is driving a return to cinemas and generating new interest in an ancient book during “a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities.'”

👀 Wherever you land in the book vs. movie debate (hear our reactions here), the whole piece is worth your time.