read books, not movies
Nov. 20th, 2005 02:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacIn anticipation of some films I expect to see, I decided to re-read the books they're based on, to put them well in mind and to enjoy them unsullied by film contamination while I still can.
I hadn't read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in, oh, decades, I guess. I'd forgotten how short and fairly simple it is (though there are often two plot threads going on at once). It seems to me to offer plenty of scope for inspired movie-making. We'll see.
But it does have some problems. On previous readings my biggest difficulty with the book was the way it treats the Resurrection as a legalistic trick that Aslan plays on the Witch. He's just done a better job of shepardizing than she has. ("Shepardizing," which is short for "consulting Shepard's citation service," is a law school term meaning "confirming that a given case law is still valid.")
This time, however, I noticed more how Lewis never shows you something being numinous, moving, etc. He only tells you that it is. I recall the later books being much better in this regard. I sure hope so.
The single most condescending remark in the entire book was: "This was bad grammar of course, but that is how beavers talk when they are excited." (Mr Beaver had said "It isn't her.") Lewis was a professor of English, of course. This makes me want to lock up all the world's professors of English in a room and hurt them.
Surely Pride and Prejudice is Austen's most lucid and entertaining novel. It occurs to me that its chief delight is her full reports of conversations between ordinarily intelligent people and complete blockheads. (Mr Bennet vs Mrs Bennet, and of course Elizabeth vs both Mr Collins and Lady Catherine.) Just some of the most delightful dialogue in all fiction, certainly in all 19th century fiction. I hope there'll be room for much of it in the film. (The BBC TV production reproduced most of it verbatim as I recall.)
I am also secretly pleased by the revelation in the last chapter that just because everybody is now happily married it doesn't mean the families all get along. Mr & Mrs Darcy are clearly happy to put as much distance between themselves and her mother as possible.
One tiny snag, I thought. Darcy renews his proposals to Elizabeth after hearing of her conversation with his aunt. "I knew enough of your disposition," he says, "to be certain that, had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would have acknowleged it to Lady Catherine, frankly and openly." And she agrees. But it seems to me that the whole point of her replies to Lady Catherine is that it's none of her business what Elizabeth thinks of Darcy, favorable or otherwise. To Lady C.'s demand that she promise never to enter into an engagement with Darcy, Elizabeth had properly declined to make any such promise, and she owed none, whatever her actual intentions. Room for a horrible misunderstanding between Darcy and Elizabeth here, but fortunately it doesn't happen.
I hadn't read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in, oh, decades, I guess. I'd forgotten how short and fairly simple it is (though there are often two plot threads going on at once). It seems to me to offer plenty of scope for inspired movie-making. We'll see.
But it does have some problems. On previous readings my biggest difficulty with the book was the way it treats the Resurrection as a legalistic trick that Aslan plays on the Witch. He's just done a better job of shepardizing than she has. ("Shepardizing," which is short for "consulting Shepard's citation service," is a law school term meaning "confirming that a given case law is still valid.")
This time, however, I noticed more how Lewis never shows you something being numinous, moving, etc. He only tells you that it is. I recall the later books being much better in this regard. I sure hope so.
The single most condescending remark in the entire book was: "This was bad grammar of course, but that is how beavers talk when they are excited." (Mr Beaver had said "It isn't her.") Lewis was a professor of English, of course. This makes me want to lock up all the world's professors of English in a room and hurt them.
Surely Pride and Prejudice is Austen's most lucid and entertaining novel. It occurs to me that its chief delight is her full reports of conversations between ordinarily intelligent people and complete blockheads. (Mr Bennet vs Mrs Bennet, and of course Elizabeth vs both Mr Collins and Lady Catherine.) Just some of the most delightful dialogue in all fiction, certainly in all 19th century fiction. I hope there'll be room for much of it in the film. (The BBC TV production reproduced most of it verbatim as I recall.)
I am also secretly pleased by the revelation in the last chapter that just because everybody is now happily married it doesn't mean the families all get along. Mr & Mrs Darcy are clearly happy to put as much distance between themselves and her mother as possible.
One tiny snag, I thought. Darcy renews his proposals to Elizabeth after hearing of her conversation with his aunt. "I knew enough of your disposition," he says, "to be certain that, had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would have acknowleged it to Lady Catherine, frankly and openly." And she agrees. But it seems to me that the whole point of her replies to Lady Catherine is that it's none of her business what Elizabeth thinks of Darcy, favorable or otherwise. To Lady C.'s demand that she promise never to enter into an engagement with Darcy, Elizabeth had properly declined to make any such promise, and she owed none, whatever her actual intentions. Room for a horrible misunderstanding between Darcy and Elizabeth here, but fortunately it doesn't happen.
