Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Neurion
Lord of the Rings isn't just small-person-takes-evil-Ring-to-Land-of-Shadow-and-drops-it-into-volcano, it's Gimli capering about when he hears the message Galdriel has sent him, Aragorn leading on the levies of Gondor with the Rangers at his side and the Star of Elendil on his brow, Barliman Butterbur musing over the unprecedented excellence of his beer, Gimli dwelling on the beauty of Aglarond, the three banners of Gondor, Rohan and Dol Amroth waving in the wind, sable, green and blue.
|
Actually, LotR is none of those things to me -- I am sure that it is to you, and for that we should both be grateful for it is personal to each of us. There are moments in the text that I have taken to heart in the way that you have apparently taken to these, but these moments are utterly indvidual and variable. Some of my favourite aspects of the story made it into the film, others did not. What's more, the film has given me new moments (like the charge of the Rohirrim -- I still can barely breathe as they rush forward crying out "death! death! death!".
And while I agree that LotR "isn't
just small-person-takes-evil-Ring-to-Land-of-Shadow-and-drops-it-into-volcano", I would argue that this is precisely what it is for everybody who cherishes it, either in book or movie form. We may disagree on our favourite bits or views (I, for one, have no real qualms over the lemming like wargs, but I think that Minas Tirith was far too dirty and ragged about the edges) but the one thing that it is for everyone is that story you have just retold. Of course, it's much much more than that: a lot of that "more" is personal and idiosyncratic (wargs, tone of language, look and feel of scenes, how characters are 'supposed' to be) but not all of it. Much of that "more" is thematic and this is the "more" that I think PJ and crew have successfully adapted to the screen.
I think that there's a violent sense of outrage when something we feel propriety rights over seems threatened. I know what a balrog is supposed to look like, and so when PJ gets that "right" I am unruffled. But when he shows Bree to be a drunken, ramshakle town of brigands, which is just "wrong" I am ruffled. But I am sure that if I could actually look into the mind or imagination of any other reader I would find an infinite number of other such wrongnesses. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that
Saucepan Man, for example, has got balrogs totally incorrect; I know that
davem couldn't pick Galadriel out of a one-person lineup, and that
HerenIstarion is lamentably incorrect about the type of accent charateristic of the Shire. But I know equally, and more importantly, that we all agree on the core value of the tale, and that we share (albeit not always in perfect accord!
) a similiar sense of the story's moral vision. The only difference between any of us and PJ is that he was the lucky son of a so-and-so who actually got to put his own personal vision of the story on film!