XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: ronc@europa.com   
      
   On Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:10:28 +0200, Troels Forchhammer   
    wrote:   
      
   >And yes, I do set a rather high bar here -- the point of the last   
   >criterion, that the solutions offered are the same, is to ensure that   
   >Tolkien would accept the position propounded by the films as a fair   
   >representation of his own position.   
      
   Well, that is your opinion, and at least I know where you're coming   
   from.  I think you raise some good points.  I'd argue that many of the   
   themes really are there, at least to some extent, and it's more   
   difficult (but not impossible) to portray (for instance) an overall   
   reluctance to do battle and a desperate last-ditch effort at survival   
   at the same time...  (how did that ever work in print?)  I'm wondering   
   if there is or was a director who could pull that kind of conflict   
   off...  Perhaps Cocteau?  Kurosawa?  But then those directors would   
   get other things wrong.  (I just had a vision of a slow pan across   
   details of armor and saddle... of a cloud following Aragorn across the   
   field...  never mind.)   
      
   I wonder if these aren't merely examples of what happens when you go   
   from print to film.  A reader could maybe hold in his/her mind the   
   idea of bookish warriors who do not love the sword for its sharpness   
   and only go reluctantly into battle, and at the same time have in the   
   back of their mind that a massive army is attacking them in their   
   homes in a last ditch effort to utterly extinguish their race.  And   
   that this kind of dichotomy might be easier to write than to film.   
      
   It also occurs to me that these parts -- Gandalf's discussion with   
   Frodo regarding Gollum, Faramir's philosophy, and other things, are   
   what give some (small group of) people the mental image of a bucolic   
   Middle Earth where all the cutting and stabbing occurs offscreen.  Not   
   saying you feel that way, but I can see where that could arise, and   
   that any reasonable film portrayal of, you know, a WAR, would   
   disappoint.   
      
   But (going to the larger question) I still feel like we're arguing the   
   meta-topic rather than the real topic.  This thread was originally   
   about the upcoming film, and then we got off onto the usual tangent of   
   lamenting about the ways in which the current films don't match the   
   print.  Now granted (I hasten to add) you've expressed some real   
   issues, and not once... ok maybe just once... called Jackson a liar   
   and a carjacker.  (Ok I made up the "carjacker" part.)  So the   
   conversation went well, on the whole, I think.   
      
      
   	Ron   
   -   
   2003 FLHTCUI "Noisy Glide"   
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