My dear friend LD and I were talking once about the Peter Jackson movie of the Fellowship of the Ring. She was disappointed by the movie because it left out her favorite character in the whole LOTR saga. There are many things that make the books far better than any trilogy of three-hour movies made of the stories (though Jackson's movies have some profound moments).
The most pervasive element not present in the movies is the language Tolkien uses. He develops a form, a kind of dialect of English, which represents the age and complexity of the world he is writing about. It's a sort of reflexive modifier on the actual content of the story.
And in content, indeed there is so much which was left out of the movies. I vaguely remember something about giants throwing rocks in the high frozen pass which, in the movie, the party must turn back from only because of a wizard-induced avalanche. Here, then, is an entire species of middle-earth which gets not even a nod in the celluloid casting.
Doubtless, thick tomes and entire dissertations and theses have been expounded on Tolkien's stories. I will content myself to say that the small party, just out from the Shire, is rescued from a sticky situation before they've hardly gotten their walking shoes on by a very old soul living peacefully aloof with his partner Goldberry in a small and ancient forest just across the Barrow Downs from Bree.
It might be nigh time to read the entire series again, but perhaps i will content myself with just chapters six and seven of book I. It is a more manageable piece and really i only need to see how old Tom looks at frodo when that foolish hobbit for the first time does something which later becomes so contested. It's such an idle, casual act while they're talking around the fire in the living room that you'd almost miss it. Indeed, Jackson completely missed it and, so doing, rewrote the history of middle earth in at least some small part. It puzzles me every time why this happen just so, unless it is to give us clear indication that old TB knows what he's about and chooses not to get involved in the ways of men and hobbits.
3 comments:
Hmm, I'll have to go back and read those scenes. I like your writing style here, by the way, like a New Yorker movie reviewer. And without going back it seems certain that TB is a Force of Nature, personified so we can relate (in the way religions personify GOD), but beyond our ken. Of course, he wouldn't worry too much about our temporal affairs -- at least not until we come near upsetting the natural applecart. This thought puts me in mind of two things: Patricia
Wrightson's wonderful Australian fantasy The Nargun and the Stars, and Ursula LeGuin's poems and stories written from the perspective of trees (old) and rocks (really really old).
but what i find interesting is exactly that Tom doesn't worry about the affairs going on in middle earth prior to the return of the king. that, despite how grim things appear to gandalf and aragorn and all involved, tom considers it all inconsequential. he knows, i guess, that, whether the dark lord enslaves everyone in middle earth or whatnot, tom's world will persist.
I think that's in part what I was trying to say, that the forces of nature are above our petty temporal lives (relatively temporal). By the way, your comment section requires TWO levels of word verification --- rrrgggh.
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