[davem]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

I think that it's much easier to get away with this in films, "bloskbuster" films at least, because they are much more immediate. One can get swept up in the action and have less time to think about the logic of the situation. It is far more important for books to maintain credibility because the reader has time to pause for thought.

If I'd seen the movies before I read the books I think I'd have been blown away by them. If I'd seen them after one or two readings of the book I might have felt the same way. I think PJ's vision matches mine when I was a teenager & it was all about battles & magic & beauty. PJ captured that side perfectly.

Maybe I've just read & thought about the books too much - & I may be going against my argument in other threads here - I'm not sure. I think, though, that my problems aren't caused by dragging in too much primary world baggage, but rather by my increasing awareness of the deeper themes Tolkien was dealing with. the accusation I read in one review keep coming back into my mind - that PJ seemed to think LotR was an action movie in book form. He touches on some of the themes I'm talking about, but never goes into them in the kind of depth necessary. Either he doesn't understand them or isn't interested in them. Then, as I've pointed out elsewhere, he (or the other writers) give speeches or experiences to one character that belong to another (Eowyn being given Faramir's dream of the Great Wave for instance) which remove the deeper meaning or significance of them.

He also doesn't seem to know where to stop. There's a nice interchange between Aragorn & Eowyn about Dwarf women ('Its the beards.') which would have been fine of he'd stopped there, but he couldn't & has to have Gimli falling off his horse! Or later where he takes one of my absolute favourite scenes from the book - Gimli's rescue of Aragorn at HD - 'Baruk Khazad! Khazad Aimenu!' ('Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!' - even writing that brings tears to my eyes!) & replaces it with Gimli falling into a puddle & having to be lifted up by Aragorn.

LotR isn't an action novel, & so shouldn't be turned into an action movie. It reminds me of the 'Hamlet' skit in Last Action Hero.

I think what I missed was the sense of loss that pervades the book. Its almost (in one way at least) a meditation on loss & bereavement - perhaps coming out of Tolkien's own experience of loss - of his parents, of friends in the war, of the countryside he loved, of the values he held, & I suppose we respond to it because we've all experienced some such loss ourselves & become more aware of it as we grow older - though I'm not going back on my statements that we should try & leave the specific baggage we carry with us at the door when we enter the secondary world. Our own experience of loss will enable us to empathise & connect & be enchanted by the story, specific memories will pull us out of the secondary world.

I suppose LMP's points about the loss of Eden are significant, I think, because the deeper feeling of loss - the loss of wonder & beauty & magic which we all feel (more & more as we get older) is perhaps not down to personal experiences of loss, but due more to a sense of 'exile' from we know not what, but symbolise for ourselves as 'Eden' or the Elves. Along with that sense of loss & exile goes the 'belief' (if its not more than that) that its possible to find our way 'home' again: 'Still rond the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate, & though I oft have passed them by, a day will come at last when I, shall take the hidden paths that run, West of the Moon, East of the Sun.' This is what I feel overwhelmingly when I read LotR - loss & hope (even if that hope lies 'beyond the circles of the world'). I also get it when I listen to the BBC radio adaptation, but not from the films. Perhaps that's the faut of the medium, the (inevitable) fact that the events are presented in real time, & with a sense of immediacy, as though its all happening as I watch, rather than, as with the book & the radio series (which is more of a dramatised reading), it being something that happened a very long time ago to people who have long since passed into the West.