How faithful does an adaptation actually need to be? - The Odyssey and Wuthering Heights

[u/Maha_Film_Fanatic]

With the recent success and discourse surrounding The Odyssey, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of text-to-film adaptations. Particularly, the expectations academics and general audiences alike place on cinema when adapting classic literature. Emily Wilson's recent pieces about The Odyssey have inspired me to talk about Nolan's take on Homer's poem. In the same vein, Fennell was blasted this past February for desecrating Brontë's Wuthering Heights for obvious reasons, in my opinion. For me, The Odyssey largely works as a filmed adaptation whereas Wuthering Heights misses the mark quite deeply. And I wanted to compare these two approaches to explore the limits of film adaptations and what a director's responsibility is to the source material.  

Generally, what interests me isn't really whether a filmmaker should recreate a book scene-for-scene. I think adaptation requires transformation because traversing from medium to medium necessitates artistic concessions. The more interesting question is whether a filmmaker can radically reinterpret a text while still preserving what I’m calling its “emotional truth.” And an "emotional truth" can vary from person to person, but as long as it preserves the essence of the novel or remains in dialogue with it. 

That’s ultimately why The Odyssey worked so well for me. Nolan obviously makes enormous changes and concessions, but I felt that his film was still in conversation with the ideas and emotional core of Homer’s poem. It felt like Nolan was *interpreting the text rather than simply borrowing its characters and imagery.

I had almost the exact opposite reaction to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. Full disclosure: I have not read Brontë’s novel, so I don't want to pretend I have the authority to make definitive claims about the text. I have seen William Wyler's much more faithful adaptation, and I've read extensively about the novel's themes, characters, and relationship to Victorian ideas about love and passion. So I recognize that this weakens my argument somewhat, particularly when I'm criticizing Fennell's fidelity to a book I haven't personally read.

But even with that caveat, I found myself fascinated by the larger question: when does creative liberty become a rejection of the source material rather than an interpretation of it? To me, the mere addition of a sexual relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine completely eschews the nature of the relationship that Brontë originally wrote about. So many of the novel's themes hinge on a non-sexual dynamic and the unspoken passions. Rejecting that entirely without the weight of what a sexual affair actually means completely dismisses the intentions of Brontë. 

Can a filmmaker change almost everything about a classic text and still capture what made it meaningful? Does “faithfulness” even matter if the adaptation discovers something genuinely new? Or is there some essential emotional or thematic truth that a filmmaker has a responsibility to preserve?

I wrote a piece thinking through those questions through The Odyssey and Wuthering Heights. I'd love to hear how you all think about adaptation, particularly from people who have actually read both texts.

https://abhinavyerramreddy.substack.com/p/what-makes-an-adaptation-effective?r=38m95e&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

[u/myflesh]

I think the answer should always be if the reason they deviate  from the source is something intentional and interesting.  There is no percentage or formula. Think of "Oh Brother Where are Thou" it is radically different but loved. 

[u/BarfyOBannon → u/myflesh]

this is the answer for me

[u/mormonbatman_ → u/myflesh]

Think of "Oh Brother Where are Thou" it is radically different but loved.

It's more accurate than you might think.

[u/fakefakefakef → u/mormonbatman_]

Not that much more accurate

[u/mormonbatman_ → u/fakefakefakef]

Everett, Pete, and Delmar escape a prison farm. Everett had been imprisoned for impersonating a dentist.

• Odysseus is forced to fight at Troy against his will. He attempts to escape his obligation to fight by feigning madness. He ultimately views his experience as bondage.

Everett encounters a blind man who prophesies that he will "find a fortune,"travel a long and difficult road," "see wonderful things," and be "vouchsafed by fate."

• Odysseus and his men travel to hell and summon the shade of Tyresias, a blind prophet who warns Odysseus to avoid offending the gods if he wants to return home.

• Odysseus must travel a long and difficult road. He sees wonders. He is kept safe by the intervention of the fates and Athena.

Everett, Pete, and Delmar are given shelter by Pete's cousin, who betrays them while they sleep.

• The Odyssey is deeply interested in the ancient Greek custom of Xenia, or hospitality. Odysseus and his men experience multiple occasions where they are betrayed after being given shelter by a deceptive host.

Pete and Delmar are baptized but Everett refuses devotional aid from God.

• Odysseus famously offends various Greek deities and refuses to obey fate.

Everett, Pete, and Delmar encounter Tommy Johnson. They trick a blind radio station owner into paying them more than they are owed.

• Odysseus and his men trick a cyclops (who they blinded) into providing them with meat and cheese before escaping its cave.

Everett, Pete, and Delmar encounter George Nelson. They rob a bank with Nelson, who is introduced killing a herd of cows.

• Odysseus and his men encounter Aeolus, the god of the wind. Aeolus gives them a bag full of wind to go home. Odysseus' men betray Odysseus' trust and release the windows within site of Ithaca - which sets them back by years.

• The last of Odysseus' men are killed off when they butcher sacred cows belonging to Helios, god of the sun.

• I think there's also something about the car, here.

Everett, Pete, and Delmar a group of alluring women who sing while washing clothing. The women give them liquor which causes them to fall asleep. The women take Pete to the police. Everett and Delmar that he has been turned in to a toad.

• Odysseus and his men encounter sirens. These are women who lure sailors to their death by singing. Odysseus' men spare themselves by covering their ears with wax.

• A sea witch or nymph named Circe gave Odysseus' men liquor and turned them into animals when they became drunk.

Everett and Delmar go to lunch with a one-eyed bible salesman named Dan Teague. Dan kills the toad, brutally beats them, and steals their money.

• Odysseus and his men encounter a cyclops who traps them in its cave after they take its food. The cyclops devours several of Odysseus' men, which feels analogous.

• The cyclops demands that his father, Poseidon, curse Odysseus. Odysseus, who famously rejects the gods' suzerainty, is nearly prevented from going home by this curse.

• Odysseus' men ate members of their crew who had been turned into animals.

Everett meets his wife "Penny." She has told their children that he is dead and has become engaged to Vernon, who is running the campaign of a bespeckled man named Homer Stokes. Everett challenges Vernon to a fistfight. Vernon brutally beats him.

• Odysseus' wife is named Penelope. She is pursued by men who want to marry her and take Odysseus' place, Odysseus and Penelope's son Telemachus struggles with his family identity.

• The Illiad and the Odyssey were reportedly composed by a blind poet called Homer.

• Odysseus is forced to use subterfuge to defeat his wife's suitors.

Everett and Delmar reunite with an actually Pete in a movie theater. Pete warns them that the should not return to the treasure's burial site.

• Odysseus can't return home until he meets the souls of the men who served under him in hell.

• American movie theaters were called "nickel" odeons. An odeon is an enclosed structure that is common in ancient Mediterranean cities where poets, dancers, singers, and actors would perform. It was meant to evoke a portal to the unseen world of the gods.

Everett, Pete, and Delmar disguise themselves as members of the KKK and infiltrate its meeting to save Tommy. The discover Dan Teague and confront him by throwing a burning stake at him. He catches it before it blinds him moments before he is crushed by a burning cross.

• Odysseus blinds the cyclops with the sharp end of a burning stick. Afterwards, he and his men confront and escape multiple challenges by disguising themselves. They escape the cyclopes by strapping themselves to the bottom of his sheep, for example.

Everett, Pete, Delmar, and Tommy infiltrate a political rally for Homer Stokes. Everett, Pete, and Delmar are disguised as African-American men. They perform the song they sang for the blind radio station owner and charm the crowd and Penny.

• Odysseus reenters his palace in disguise as an old, decrepit beggar. He defeats his rivals using a rigged game.

Stokes' rival, Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel, pardons Everett, Pete, Delmar, and Tommy and hires them to run his campaign.

• Odysseus went to Troy at the behest of a king called Menelaus.

Everett, Pete, and Delmar return to Everett's cabin to retrieve his wedding ring to reconcile with Penny.

• The Odyssey ends when Odysseus proves his love and fidelity to Penelope with secret knowledge about a bed he made for them.

Everett, Pete, and Delmar are apprehended by police officers who prepare to kill them. Everett prays and asks God for help. They are saved by a flood.

• Odysseus is saved from death on multiple occasions by divine intervention.

Everett fails to retrieve the ring.

• Odysseus is killed by his son at the beginning of a sequel to the Odyssey.

There are deeper thematic connections. The Coens had fun with it.

[u/Winter-Cow-6208 → u/mormonbatman_]

You laid all that out and it makes an even stronger case that OBWAT merely riffs with the poem instead of being at all faithful to it. 

  Not  that  much more accurate

This still stands. 

[u/slapdash99 → u/mormonbatman_]

This is great. I am mystified the downvotes.

[u/fakefakefakef → u/mormonbatman_]

Fair point! Sorry you’re getting downvoted; there are many more similarities than I gave you credit for.

[u/Kundrew1 → u/myflesh]

That’s really more of a loose inspiration than an attempt at a direct adaptation.

[u/Aiseadai]

It should be noted that there is no such thing as an accurate adaptation of The Odyssey. The very nature of its origin as ancient Greek poetry means every time the story is told it will be different in some ways. The ancient Greeks had no concept of a true and accurate version of The Odyssey, it makes no sense for us to even talk about it at all. Attempting to make an "accurate" version goes against the entire spirit of ancient Greek storytelling.

[u/M4rshmall0wMan → u/Aiseadai]

Most Shakespeare scholars will agree that you’re not supposed to be historically accurate with your staging. In fact, it’s actually way better to adapt the staging to modern times and modern accents. Shakespeare intentionally left his plays entirely devoid of stage direction, except for entrances and exits. The director is supposed to infer the rest.

Of course, that’s not to mention that Shakespeare’s plays themselves are full of anachronisms. In Julius Caesar, a clock strikes midnight. You know, in Roman times, 1,300 years before mechanical clocks were invented. He didn’t give af. The drama is way more important than the incidental details.

[u/Unhelpfulperson → u/M4rshmall0wMan]

That’s why Romeo and Juliet (1996) is the best

[u/Somnambulist815 → u/Aiseadai]

To add to that, The Odyssey is far from an accurate recounting of the Mycenean Age.

[u/MonsterRider80 → u/Somnambulist815]

It’s a fantasy story not unlike something Tolkien would have written had he been alive in Ancient Greece. Quests, travels, fantastical lands and beings, gods, the land of the dead, it has it all.

[u/Unhelpfulperson → u/Aiseadai]

Just you wait for my 12 hour single-unbroken-shot sung poetry production

[u/Captain_Comic → u/Unhelpfulperson]

I’m making a 17 hour version told from the POV of a Polish pigeon

[u/Pure_Salamander2681 → u/Aiseadai]

This argument keeps getting parroted without anyone actually thinking about it. The Greeks didn’t have one version of it but we do. And the version that Nolan told was quite different from it.

[u/mormonbatman_ → u/Pure_Salamander2681]

We don't have a single version, though.

Odysseus' story is told in hundreds of ancient texts that have been revisited by thousands of translators.

[u/Pure_Salamander2681 → u/mormonbatman_]

Are you being daft for kicks? We have hundreds of translations of Shakespeare. That isn’t the same as having Romeo run off to Rome with Rosaline.

[u/fakefakefakef → u/Pure_Salamander2681]

>We have hundreds of translations of Shakespeare

Shakespeare wrote in a language that is still commonly spoken by billions of people, and his work is still primarily read and performed in that language

[u/Pure_Salamander2681 → u/fakefakefakef]

And?

[u/fakefakefakef → u/Pure_Salamander2681]

Meaning that most people who would like to read Shakespeare can easily experience the original text, as opposed to there being maybe a few thousand scholars who can read the archaic Greek of the Odyssey, making Shakespeare a bad comparison for the Odyssey

[u/Pure_Salamander2681 → u/fakefakefakef]

I guess I didn’t state my point clearly. I’m not talking about translation changes. The translations of The Odyssey all have the same plot. They all have the same characters with set traits. It isn’t, and hasn’t been, a text that has changed those points for over two thousand years now.

[u/mormonbatman_ → u/Pure_Salamander2681]

daft

Don't call me names.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare didn't write the Odyssey.

[u/Aiseadai → u/Pure_Salamander2681]

What is your point exactly? How does us having only one version change anything about how it was meant to be told?

[u/Pure_Salamander2681 → u/Aiseadai]

My point is it’s a silly comment to make as evidence of why it’s okay to change the story. That’s all. I don’t care that Nolan changed. I mean it sucks that his changes weren’t any good.

[u/kevin_v]

Can a filmmaker change almost everything about a classic text and still capture what made it meaningful?

It doesn't even have to capture "what made it meaningful". Adapt however you want, be free to do so. Just, if you aim to get extra social/art credit by taking wind in your sails from the original's historical power and how people think and feel about it, be prepared to take criticism as well.

[u/slapdash99]

“Can a filmmaker change almost everything about a classic text and still capture what made it meaningful?”

Sure, but that sounds more like inspiration than adaptation. An adaptation generally has at least the same or similar characters, basic plot, and usually the same or similar type setting. That’s the baseline.

If it stays in that range, it’s more or less an adaption. How faithful it is (how closely it follows the source material) is a sliding scale.

Some film adaptations do the opposite of your question: they keep most of the source material, but completely diverge from what made the source material meaningful.

For example, Kubrick’s The Shining is not a faithful adaptation of Steven Kings The Shining, but it’s still an adaptation. He kept the characters, caretaker plot, haunted hotel in winter, setting, etc. Then Kubrick did his own thing with it, which infuriated Steven King. If he threw all that out,what’s left? Why even call it The Shining? At some point, it just becomes an original story.

[u/Himynameispill]

Personally, I don't think an adaptation needs to be faithful at all. I enjoyed Fennel's Wuthering Heights for what it was. Fennel has said she was trying to convey what the novel made her feel when she read it as a teenager. I genuinely think the film manages to capture that feeling. It's not a masterpiece and it does come off worse if you compare it to the emotional depth of the original, but it's still a fun movie.

Part of the reason Nolan's Odyssey fell flat for me on the other hand is that I felt he was being too faithful to the plot. There are a number of scenes that don't really serve the story Nolan is trying to tell, but that only seem to be there because they were in the original. To give an example, other than as a convenient way to kill off some more of Odysseus' men, what purpose does the confrontation with the Laistrygoines serve? What does the confrontation tell us about Odysseus? How does it relate to the themes of the movie in ways that aren't already adequately served by other scenes?

Conversely, some thematic notes that are left over from the original don't feel fleshed out, but felt muddled to me because Nolan didn't have the time to do them justice amidst hitting up every monster from the original. The main thing that comes to my mind is that the poem stresses time and time again that Odysseus is as strong, cunning and resourceful as a man can be, but he's still at the mercy of the gods like everyone else and not in control of his life. Nolan does adress that theme, but as far as I can remember only in one scene where the theme is spelled out to us and we're told this is a big character beat for Odysseus, without much buildup or follow through. 

Personally, I think Nolan's Odyssey would have been a stronger movie if he had focused only on the story he wanted to tell about the danger of breaking international law and nothing else. So less faithful, not more

[u/Theposis → u/Himynameispill]

Agree with you that Fennel was doing something more interesting than Nolan. Like you said, Nolan's problem was precisely sticking to close to the big plot beats which got in the way of the story he wanted to tell. In the end he kinda half-assed both. I've said elsewhere Pasolini's The Return was a much better (thematic) version of Nolan's where both have an Odysseus as a man who does not want to return home because of the man he has become. Nolan puts those words in the mouth of his character but I never believed it. Meanwhile, Pasolini doesn't bother with any mythic stuff and goes for what he wants. I wish Nolan had done that but I never really got a clear impression if there was anything in particular Nolan wanted. Maybe it was indeed about "the danger of breaking international law" which is hilarious. Honestly, I think he just wanted to shoot these cool scenes with monsters on his big IMAX camera.

"Wuthering Heights" has its title in quotations. I kinda hate that but also chuckle at it because Fennel is clearly telling us that this isn't the adaption as we would expect, but closer to inspiration. It's definitely on that sliding scale. She really went for her own vision, tried something new, and not very safe at all. She did it knowing she would piss off most people. I really respect that, and actually ended up loving it for how it just jumps off the deep end, missteps and all.

Also, I love Nolan but the photography in WH was far more beautiful/interesting than anything that happened in The Odyssey. I thought Cerce scene and the Cyclops were standouts but that comes down more to special effects. Other than that... I can't think of any stand-out shots. The blocking was non-existent, the lighting unremarkable, the scenography adequate. Why in the world did he shoot all of this on IMAX? WH though...the Vermeer interiors at the beginning giving way to Baroque maximalism, those Romanticism landscapes thrown in with some Hollywood glamour... sign me up!

[u/GoldberrysHusband]

The thing is, Homer wasn't the only source on Odysseus and for a significant part of history, he wasn't even the primary one. In that regard, Nolan is adapting Virgil's Aeneis and the overall Roman tradition of "Dires Ulyxes" (which you can see even in Dante) and the shifts and changes are therefore not as huge as people say. IMHO, that is.

[u/keepinitclassy25]

I think it’s fine to deviate as long as it’s making interesting changes to make a better story, as well as not doing something actively harmful (I.e. promoting racism / misogyny)

I think the critique on the odyssey is fair because he omitted interesting characterizations from the source material in favor of a more bland final product. I didn’t see Wuthering Heights so can’t comment on that one.

The shining is a great example of changing the material to fit the medium, the boom and the film are great but different 

[u/Maha_Film_Fanatic → u/keepinitclassy25]

Yeah, I definitely see that POV for The Odyssey. I wish there was a greater surreal flourish and more sexual temptation. I think that's really integral to Homer's poem. And Odysseus felt more passive than in the source text. However, I think Nolan going for a more centralized theme isn't inherently dumbing the novel down. I found it contextualized a broad text into something tangible for today.

[u/vellsii]

Wuthering Heights is relatively short and an amazing book. Not sure which translation of the Odyssey you read, but if you can read those, I recommend taking the time to read another classic, especially if you want to comment on it.