January 21, 2003

Tellings and Retellings
Chris

After the first time I saw "Fellowship", I came out traumatized by the cumulative effect of all the minor changes Jackson had made, but after repeat viewings those faded from my mind and I came to love Jackson's film as a splendidly fresh retelling of a story that had grown perhaps a little too familiar. Having seen ?The Two Towers? only once, I have the same trauma about plot alterations but I expect I'll eventually fall in love with it anyways

But although I'm a fairly obsessed fan of the books, I have a bone to pick with all the purists who complain because the movie isn't an exact reproduction of Tolkien's storyline. Here's what I think:

In the actual Prologue to TLOTR, Tolkien pretends he is not the author of the story but only its translator and interpreter, and that his ?novel? is really a historical reconstruction ?drawn mainly from the Red Book of the Westmarch? or, actually, from copies of that work, since ?the original Red Book has not been preserved?. With that telling phrase ?drawn mainly from? Tolkien implies that his version of story is neither original nor necessarily authoritative.

It?s also worth remembering that the ancient epic poems, such as Beowulf or the Kalevala, that served as actual sources of inspiration for Tolkien were themselves the product of oral tradition, in other words of the same story being told by many different people ? and presumably being altered in the telling ? before finally being written down.

If we take these two facts together, they suggest that we can treat Jackson?s movie as a kind of re-telling, in the manner of oral tradition, of a story that Tolkien himself was also only re-telling. And so we can judge the Jackson version not so much by its literal faithfulness to the text of Tolkien?s book (although this is surprisingly high) but by how well it works as a different but equally legitimate version of the same story.

That said, I do have some complaints about the Two Towers. Like most people, I felt that Faramir was underdeveloped and somewhat inscrutable. I don?t object to the plot alterations , but I miss the lofty-yet-not-too-lofty character that Tolkien described (I still think Denzel Washington would make a great Faramir) and I especially miss his grief over his brother, his nighttime vision of Boromir?s funeral boat floating ghost-like on the Anduin. Perhaps we?ll see these in the extended DVD next November.

But most of all I felt the Ents were short-shrifted. They get very little screen time and were distressingly Disneyfied: they come across as benign but slow-witted, parochial and silly. The most important fact about Tolkien?s Ents, which highlights the bravery of their decision to confront Saruman, is that they are dying. The Entwives are gone and there will be no more Entings. If Jackson had included mention of this key point, their reluctance to involve themselves in the wars of Men would be more understandable and the overall atmosphere of tragedy and doom that builds throughout the movie would have been heightened. It would also underscore the whole quality of sorrow for a world that is passing away which is one of central strengths of the book.

As it is, I think that if some viewers find this movie lacks the heroic seriousness and somberness of Tolkien?s book, and has too much of its ?boyishness? and sentimentality, it might be because the Ents were taken too lightly.