Ranting to /dev/null

Home, on being there

I saw Return of the King today. I liked it. I enjoyed it more than either of the other two LoTR films. I have a lot to say about it, but even though I think that it's pretty likely that most of it has already been said better by other parties, or will be in the near future, I still want to get it off my chest. So here goes. For those who care, spoilers follow.

I say again, I liked the movie. A good reading of "The Ride of the Rohirrim" from Book V never fails to move me to tears, and Jackson's depiction did so as well.

My basic feeling is that Jackson and his team have missed the forest for the trees. There were no end of little touches that will keep the most hardcore Tolkien geek happy (Gandalf's wearing of Narya in the penultimate scene was quite gratifying), but no amount of attention to detail will save you if you don't understand what the story is about. And even though I enjoyed the Jackson's "Return of the King" more than any of the other films (and though that isn't saying a whole lot [I didn't like The Two Towers any more after seeing the Extended Verison last night] I enjoyed it a lot more than a lot of movies I've seen recently), it was this one that truly convinced me that Jackson doesn't really understand.

My complaint has nothing to do with the fact that the movies are different than the books. Of course they're going to be. I believe it was Coppola who said that the best screenplays don't make the best films, simply because there are things you can do with the printed word - like create rich and meaningful inner worlds for your characters - that you just can't do on camera. Of course they didn't include Tom Bombadil: though it's a fun story, it doesn't actually advance the plot in any essential way, and takes a damned long time to tell. Of course Arwen is going to be featured more in the films than she is in the books: Tolkien had absolutely no idea how to write significant female characters, and not only do the movies need a good female presence, but we need to be shown exactly how much Arwen motivates Aragorn to action. Fine. I don't really have a problem with that (though the whole flashback/vision thing in TTT pissed me off; not including stuff is one thing, but don't make shit up).

These would all be minor, geek-type gripes. I only have one of those, which is that Jackson seriously screwed with the geography. Part of what made Middle Earth so real is that Tolkien took the time to make the landscapes believable and the distances plausible. I don't care whether it's good cinematography or not, there's no way in hell you should be able to see Orodruin from the steps of Cirith Ungol, and there certainly isn't any way you can see it from Minas Tirith. Jackson has telescoped the geography enormously. Instead of a blasted expanse that goes on for leagues, Mordor looks as if it's only a few acres, perhaps an afternoon's solid hiking.

Okay, end geek-rant. There are a few things that started to arouse my suspicions. The first was the change made in Aragorn's character. In the books, Aragorn is a focused, driven, confident, self-possessed king-in-exile. Jackson has turned him into something of a directionless and unmotivated drifter, far more Strider than Elessar. That bothered me. In the Two Towers, things got worse. Elrond seemed, not grave and serious, but almost pissy. And Faramir... what can I say? Nobility defiled. And again, it isn't simply that it's different. I'm willing to allow Jackson to make things different. But by systematically denying the characters the chance to be noble without misgivings, he has, in my opinion, forced his own post-modern worldview on Tolkien's self-consciously Christian one.

Jackson and his fellow writers simply can't deal with nobility. They seem to need their characters to be flawed, to show some significant weakness. We 21st century sophisticates can't seem to let people be uncomplicatedly noble anymore, we have to bring them down a notch. But in doing so, Jackson seriously compromises part of what Tolkien was after. Tolkien considered himself to be writing the great mythological backdrop that the English-speaking world has never had. The Greeks have Olympus, the Germans and Scandanavians have their own pantheon and epics, but the English have no parallel set of stories. Tolkien wrote his characters to be larger than life. Jackson seems to want us to be able to identify with Aragorn, Legolas, Elrond, Gimli, and Faramir. But if we are supposed to identify with anyone in the stories, it is the hobbits, not the elves, Numenorians, or dwarves. They are heros, gifted beyond normal mortals, or not even mortal at all. They are examples of virtue to be admired and revered, viewed from below, not as peers.

But even deeper than that, I think that Jackson and his crew not being Christians caused them to ultimately miss what I think is the central theme to all of Tolkien's works: living in a world that one loves while realizing that it must come to an end, and that no matter how strong are the ties we form here, our home is somewhere else. Jackson failed to include the Scouring of the Shire in his third film, and rumor has it that he didn't even film it because he didn't think it fit. And if that rumor is true, it is in my mind final confirmation that Jackson simply doesn't understand. The Scouring of the Shire is a way of seeing that even if the great deed has been accomplished, evil changes things, and taints this world we hold most dear. Evil can be held at bay, and it can even be defeated, but its effects can not always be undone. There are some wounds that never heal, no matter how much we want them to, and no matter how much those around us love and take care of us. Some hurts are too deep, and some evils to great to ever be erased. This world contains that evil in it, an evil that has been defeated, but will not be erased until all things are made new. Tolkien knew this, and this sense of longing was embodied in all of his work, but especially in the elves.

"We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees
The starlight on the Western Seas."

They remember spring in the Undying Lands, the "stars that in the Sunless Year / With shining hand by her were sown", the land where they can be forever blessed. They remember why they left, why they were cast out, and the rebellion that caused their exile. The men of Gondor remember with longing the glory of days past, of when a King sat on the throne and ruled with strength and wisdom. Theoden feels a weight of loss when he thinks back on the days of Eorl. Even the mammon-loving dwarves recall with pain the glory that was Khazad-Dûm before their own greed drove them out. All of them know that there are glories that have been lost, some to evil, some to decay, that will never be restored, and that the true restoration lies beyond the end of the world. Jackson does not see this, because he does not believe it. He tries in places. But the conversation between Pippen and Gandalf during the battle for Minas Tirith is disappointing beyond words. He had a chance to do it right, but he just doesn't see.

Tolkien is writing about living in one world while belonging in another. This is a fundamentally Christian concept, one that Jackson could not possibly have gotten, but one that he probably could have included were his worldview capable of such perspective. This is what really gets me about the movies. Jackson did a good job. The films are wonderfully made, the attention to (non-geographic) detail is fantastic, and the cinematography is excellent. But the underlying eschatological and spiritual foundation for the work, which is the most significant part, is beyond his grasp.

That being said, I'm still planning on seeing Return of the King at least once or twice more. But for now, it's time to spend some QT with the family. Goodnight, all.

Posted by ryan at December 23, 2003 09:46 PM | TrackBack