warning: letter on Peter Jackson ahead
Dec. 16th, 2004 07:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI haven't seen Jackson's extended RK yet, but I can respond to Salon's review of it by addressing the points relating to the film in general.
Dear Salon,
Laura Miller's review of the extended Return of the King is thoughtful, but sometimes reveals a depressing sense of taste on the part of reviewer and filmmakers alike. Miller is properly skeptical of Jackson & Co's belief that "some scenes that work well as prose" necessarily would "fall flat as cinema," and of their "unfortunate strategy of using the dwarf for comic relief," though she notes shrewdly that a small amount of it would be welcome. (She doesn't note that a properly small amount of it is in the book. Taking subtleties from the book and exaggerating them into unrecognizability is one of the film's principal strategies.)
And it's a relief to find that both Miller and Jackson are disappointed with the "rakish, jovial air" of the Army of the Dead. Miller even compares them to a Disney thrill ride; I'm relieved that I wasn't totally off-base by finding this scene echoed by Geoffrey Rush's performance in Pirates of the Caribbean. ("You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Gimli.")
Alas, Miller also writes approvingly of a "delicate balance between romantic solemnity and a bumptious, irreverent vigor" in the film's tone. But there's a fundamental wrongness in the whole "delicate balance" approach. It's like trying to maintain a "delicate balance" on a bicycle by sitting on it without moving and trying to keep from falling over. What's needed is someone who knows how to ride the bicycle. Then you wouldn't need to maintain a balance, you'd just stay up by instinct, and go somewhere in the bargain. Tolkien could ride the bicycle, and that's why his book is great: if he'd tried to write it by maintaining a conscious "delicate balance," it would have been just another epic of forgettable fantasy slush. Unfortunately, Jackson can't ride the bicycle.
And it's just sad to read Miller's claim that the grotesque, pointless, and self-parodic scene of Pippin singing while Denethor stuffs himself, heavy-handedly intercut with Faramir's ride, is "the film's most beautiful moment." Or the writers, on first watching the rushes of Sam carrying Frodo up the slope of Mount Doom, telling the actors, "You made us cry." Well, it made me cry that Sam hoists Frodo over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes instead of carrying him piggyback, like a tired child, as he does in the book.
I'm too stunned to have any reaction on reading of the mercifully abandoned counter-textual idea of a hideous awfulness that can't be expressed. Miller finds "particularly intriguing" and "such a good idea, I almost wish they'd gone through with it." From some things, mute thanks that we've been spared.
Dear Salon,
Laura Miller's review of the extended Return of the King is thoughtful, but sometimes reveals a depressing sense of taste on the part of reviewer and filmmakers alike. Miller is properly skeptical of Jackson & Co's belief that "some scenes that work well as prose" necessarily would "fall flat as cinema," and of their "unfortunate strategy of using the dwarf for comic relief," though she notes shrewdly that a small amount of it would be welcome. (She doesn't note that a properly small amount of it is in the book. Taking subtleties from the book and exaggerating them into unrecognizability is one of the film's principal strategies.)
And it's a relief to find that both Miller and Jackson are disappointed with the "rakish, jovial air" of the Army of the Dead. Miller even compares them to a Disney thrill ride; I'm relieved that I wasn't totally off-base by finding this scene echoed by Geoffrey Rush's performance in Pirates of the Caribbean. ("You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Gimli.")
Alas, Miller also writes approvingly of a "delicate balance between romantic solemnity and a bumptious, irreverent vigor" in the film's tone. But there's a fundamental wrongness in the whole "delicate balance" approach. It's like trying to maintain a "delicate balance" on a bicycle by sitting on it without moving and trying to keep from falling over. What's needed is someone who knows how to ride the bicycle. Then you wouldn't need to maintain a balance, you'd just stay up by instinct, and go somewhere in the bargain. Tolkien could ride the bicycle, and that's why his book is great: if he'd tried to write it by maintaining a conscious "delicate balance," it would have been just another epic of forgettable fantasy slush. Unfortunately, Jackson can't ride the bicycle.
And it's just sad to read Miller's claim that the grotesque, pointless, and self-parodic scene of Pippin singing while Denethor stuffs himself, heavy-handedly intercut with Faramir's ride, is "the film's most beautiful moment." Or the writers, on first watching the rushes of Sam carrying Frodo up the slope of Mount Doom, telling the actors, "You made us cry." Well, it made me cry that Sam hoists Frodo over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes instead of carrying him piggyback, like a tired child, as he does in the book.
I'm too stunned to have any reaction on reading of the mercifully abandoned counter-textual idea of a hideous awfulness that can't be expressed. Miller finds "particularly intriguing" and "such a good idea, I almost wish they'd gone through with it." From some things, mute thanks that we've been spared.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 07:02 pm (UTC)First, that "TOWWAFO" is not a story. It not only doesn't have the One Plot, it has no plot at all; it's a meditation on a fictional situation.
Second, though, one could argue that the meditation creates the One Plot: The "story" presents the reader with a (mora/ethical) problem. The reader makes various attempts to resolve the problem, and either succeeds or fails interestingly.
Cheers.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-16 08:49 pm (UTC)Actually, you could stuff "Omelas" into the One Plot if you pushed and shoved enough - but the point is, anyone who thought of the situation in those terms would have written a mechanical pulp story and not Le Guin's story, even if the set-up and punch line were the same. In other words, it ain't the One True Plot. There are more ways of writing stories than are dreamt of in Silverberg's philosophy.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-18 01:21 am (UTC)