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Earthsea in anime
Sep. 12th, 2007 08:25 amDid anybody who went to Japan come back with a copy of the DVD of Miyazaki Jr.'s Earthsea film? A little bird got me one, with instructions for finding the English subtitles in the all-Japanese menu.
I was anticipating this with trepidation. It didn't get very good reviews in Le Guin fandom from those who'd seen it. The author herself was rather dismayed. As someone who found Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings no better than a decent hack-fantasy film, and an absolute travesty of the spirit and ethos of the book it's based on, what would I think of this?
Oh, it's terrible, all right, but I find I can't work up much animus against it, at least in the absence of screaming hordes declaring how wonderfully true to the book it is. As someone once said of a truly inept scientific paper, This isn't even wrong. The plot of this film can best be described as a free fantasia on themes mostly taken from The Farthest Shore and Tehanu, with no attempt to tell the story that's actually in the books. Jackson tried to tell Tolkien's story - he got the vague general outline of the plot, but not much more than that - but failed. Miyazaki Jr. didn't even try, so I find it hard to give him an F for a course he never enrolled in.
One thing the script does have in common with Jackson's is a knack for taking the book's most profound and subtle moral precepts and rephrasing them as treacly mush. That takes talent, though it's not what I'd call a very useful talent.
Compared with the notoriously loose and rambling films of Miyazaki Sr., this one is very brisk and tightly constructed, though it's no more coherent, a flaw for which it has less excuse. The animation is nowhere near as imaginative or beautiful as Dad's, though the dragons are impressive. I also like that a little time was set aside for scenes of quiet domestic life.
I was anticipating this with trepidation. It didn't get very good reviews in Le Guin fandom from those who'd seen it. The author herself was rather dismayed. As someone who found Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings no better than a decent hack-fantasy film, and an absolute travesty of the spirit and ethos of the book it's based on, what would I think of this?
Oh, it's terrible, all right, but I find I can't work up much animus against it, at least in the absence of screaming hordes declaring how wonderfully true to the book it is. As someone once said of a truly inept scientific paper, This isn't even wrong. The plot of this film can best be described as a free fantasia on themes mostly taken from The Farthest Shore and Tehanu, with no attempt to tell the story that's actually in the books. Jackson tried to tell Tolkien's story - he got the vague general outline of the plot, but not much more than that - but failed. Miyazaki Jr. didn't even try, so I find it hard to give him an F for a course he never enrolled in.
One thing the script does have in common with Jackson's is a knack for taking the book's most profound and subtle moral precepts and rephrasing them as treacly mush. That takes talent, though it's not what I'd call a very useful talent.
Compared with the notoriously loose and rambling films of Miyazaki Sr., this one is very brisk and tightly constructed, though it's no more coherent, a flaw for which it has less excuse. The animation is nowhere near as imaginative or beautiful as Dad's, though the dragons are impressive. I also like that a little time was set aside for scenes of quiet domestic life.
