The Capturing of Myth

[davem]

Originally Posted by SpM

I am sure that he recognised the impossibility of doing so. What he (and the production team in general) set out to achieve, I think, was toadapt the book to the big screen in a way that would appeal to as wide a section of the film-going public as possible. And in that, I think that they succeeded massively....
All in all, as I have indicated, I think that they get about as close as a film can get to capturing the mythic elements of the book and still retain mass appeal.

Maybe its just me, but it didn't manage that at all. It failed for me, because there was something essential missing - the 'numinous', perhaps. I was too detatched - probably because of my lack of input into the experience - it was all given to me, all happening on a screen, rather than in my head, & in the end it was actors pretending to be imagined characters. Which is an odd thing - I was always thinking, 'He's playing Gandalf well (or badly)', etc - I was never for a moment convinced that I was watching Gandalf.

When you read the book, its the 'real' Gandalf, in combat with the 'real' balrog: you've entered their world, but with the movie its like you're watching their world from the outside. I think this is why I agree with Tolkien's view that fantasy cannot be dramatised - its not about the script, the direction, the effects (Tolkien makes the point that it has nothing to do with how well those things are done), or the money, its simply the lack of creative input on the part of the audience. With literature we are involved. we participate in the sub creation, giving form to the places & people, so we became a part of it, with dramatisation we watch it happening 'out there'. Its the difference between being a player on the team & a spectator.

Myth, fairy tale, are participatory 'sports' - they must be if we are to experience the numinosity. In the end, the world of Middle earth is bigger than the story we're reading, but in the movie I simply felt that what we saw on screen was the whole thing - which in part was down to the moviemakers decision to remove anything that didn't 'move the story on', so the Old Forest was left out, & the Ring had to be shown to corrupt everyone who came into contact with it.

In true myth & fairy story we always have a sense that faerie is a lot bigger than what we're experiencing, that the concerns of our little tale are not the conerns of faerie as a whole. In short, the movie was too 'focussed', & as such, for all the sweeping landscapes, the Middle earth we saw felt too small, too closed off. In the Legendarium, as in myth generally, there is always the feeling that characters are drifting in to the story to play their part, be it large or small & then they will go off & get on with what they were doing before.

The movie made the Ring the focus around which everything in Middle earth constellated, rather than as in the book simply the focus of the particular story being told, while other stories, with other foci, were being told elsewhere.

Of course, it succeeds as an action movie, as an introduction - for some - to the book (though we have to ask how many people who would have read the book will have now decided they don't need to bother because they've ssen the movie), but it doesn't succeed as an attempt to translate the book into another medium, because the essence of the book cannot be translated. As Tolkien said:

Naturally, only the simpler ingredients ... are capable of presentation in this form.