Who gets to have an opinion, professionally?

A grand time for the discourse this week after Emily Wilson, the first woman ever to translate The Odyssey into English threw eloquent shade at Christopher Nolan for his adaptation in the LRB. I very much enjoyed reading it, particularly the fact that she ends by expressing gratitude for the film, despite thinking that it's not good.

I also had a reasonably good time watching Nolan's Odyssey despite also thinking that it's not good. This is not a review and I'm not going to go into detail about why I didn't think the film is good – that's what letterboxd is for. I will say that the title card reading In a time of apparent magic did get us off on decidedly the wrong foot.

I will maybe also say that he is simply to heterosexual a man to be fucking with Greek mythology, insane to make an Odyssey where the only thing even remotely camp is Agamemnon's fit.

Wilson's piece unleashed a couple of days of le discours and a lot of it involved questions around whether it's meaningful for a translator and author to review a film at all. There was a surprising amount of authors don't really understand cinematic language. Quite a bit of film criticism should only ever come from film critics. Several it doesn't matter if it's an accurate adaptation, only if it's a good films.

I disagree with most to all of this, but I think it raises an interesting question. Namely, whose opinions on art and entertainment are valid or valuable. At a professional level, you understand; we are obviously all entitled to our opinions as amateurs.

We are all also entitled to dismiss anyone else's opinion we like.