avevale_intelligencer | A great good

Last Tuesday we watched all the extended Lord of the Rings films consecutively.

I would like to think that this film (it is one film: the temptation to add “to rule them all” is well nigh overwhelming) will be regarded as one of the first truly great events of the twenty-first century. The magnitude of the achievement of Peter Jackson and his cast and crew staggers the imagination. There are those who do not like it: nothing pleases everybody. And some of these people do that peculiarly human trick of imagining that because they do not like a thing, it therefore should not have been done. I’ve seen ranting and railing to this effect on the web. I don’t understand these people. I don’t want to.

But it was done. It exists. It is a real thing. And I have lived to see it. That's a great good.

I don’t believe there will, or necessarily should, ever be another cinematic production of Lord of the Rings. We don’t need one. This is the definitive film version, and any attempt to do it again would either fall short, or be regarded as simply an imitation. This, flaws and all, is the best film that could be made of…well, how can one describe the book? I personally feel it is the greatest work of literature this century has produced, but if I said that I would be deluged with comments about Tolkien’s alleged lack of storytelling skills and stylistic polish, the book’s lack of plot(!) and strong female characters (or female characters at all), the reactionary tendencies, the simplistic view of good and evil, the talkiness, the this, the that and doubtless the other as well, and I’d end up getting into arguments with people who know more than I do about everything except my heart, which will not change its opinion. It has been said to be the most read book in the world after the Bible, which might be taken as an index of some kind of success. It was, I think, directly responsible for the success of fantasy as a genre, and thus for the publication of many other books I have loved (some more than LotR, if I’m honest), and some I have laughed at. Would there be a Discworld if not for Tolkien?

Maybe I should stick to personal opinions. This is the best film I have ever seen. Based on the greatest book I have ever read. I wish I could thank everyone involved, personally, face to face, one after the other, for the gift they have given all of us: a labour of love, a tour de force, for which, however much money they make from theatrical releases and DVDs and merchandise and so on, we will owe them for ever.

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My problem with LotR (the book, I still haven't seen any of the film) is that I know it too well. That's unusual for me, because I can normally reread books even when I've read them 50 times, and I've only read LotR about 5 times, but the periods between me rereading it get bigger exponentially. I think it's because it /is/ so well written (in my definition of the term -- it induces not just secondary belief but primary belief in me) that I don't need to reread it.

(A funny: the first time I read the Silmarillion, the first part about the creation of Ea, my thought was "Ah, so that's where the Norse myths came from!" See what I mean about primary belief? JRRT wrote them better than the skalds did...)

that I don't need to reread it

Some stories etch themselves so firmly into my memory that I can't re-read them. The mystery and suspense aren't there because I know how the story goes, and the story only needed telling once. I find there are very few books I re-read. They tend to be slightly lighter stories, re-read because they distract me or make me laugh. Maybe there are quite a few others I ought to re-read, but I suspect they're mostly ones I couldn't quite grasp at the time, and somehow un-read books hold more promise.

There are stories I reread. They are the stories I write songs about, because a moment, an emotion, an interaction of two characters moves me enough to want to capture that feeling in song, and to want to re-experience that moment again in print.

I don't, or at least rarely, reread books for the story as a whole, but for those moments.

to re-experience that moment

I guess there may be some of that in why I re-read books, though for me there's also at least a bit of wanting to re-live the story. I suspect this only happens if I can identify with one or other of the characters. This might explain why I'll occasionally re-read Lord of the Flies, all The Dark is Rising books, but only the early Pern Harper Hall books and The Horse and his Boy of the Narnia books. I've yet to feel the need to re-read Lord of the Rings.

JRRT wrote them better than the skalds did

The "contrast" (for want of a better) is, IMHO, even more pronounced when you look at the 'original' versions published in History of Middle Earth (tho' I know a lot of people find those unreadable). JRRT's version of the Birth of Time is, for me, especially mythic.

Wouldn't you want a cinematic version of LOTR when it becomes a musical?

Hee hee ...

It's been done. Sort of.

There are (at least) two animated movies that are musicals. Well, not exactly musicals; the singing is done by the bard/narrator telling the story rather than by the characters themselves, but there are songs.

The Hobbit and The Return of the King, produced by Arthur Rankin, Jr., and Jules Bass. Jules Bass also "wrote and adapted" the lyrics. Music by Maury Laws, screenplay by Romeo Muller. Released on DVD by Warner Brothers. I've got them here.

I suppose that they didn't bother with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers because of the animated/rotoscoped Ralph Bakshi version of the first half of the trilogy, leaving a gap, but perhaps they were produced and I just haven't seen them, or they weren't released on DVD.

Producing a real musical, operetta or opera with live actors singing their character development and maybe plot would be another thing. Either it would be a series (a new Ring cycle) or there would be brutal compromises.

"Return of the King (uh huh!)"...

I think if the whole thing were done properly it would indeed be around the size of Wagner's Ring cycle. But in English and without as much repetition...

"Producing a real musical, operetta or opera with live actors singing their character development and maybe plot would be another thing. Either it would be a series (a new Ring cycle) or there would be brutal compromises."

Sounds like a job for the Reduced Tolkein Company... *grin*

"I personally feel it is the greatest work of literature this century has produced, but if I said that I would be deluged with comments about Tolkien’s alleged lack of storytelling skills and stylistic polish, the book’s lack of plot(!) and strong female characters (or female characters at all), the reactionary tendencies, the simplistic view of good and evil, the talkiness, the this, the that and doubtless the other as well, and I’d end up getting into arguments with people who know more than I do about everything except my heart, which will not change its opinion."

This quote made me smile because I identify with it so strongly. Funny thing is I don't even know if I am completely convinced LOTR is the greatest piece of literature of the 20th Century, but I do know it is the piece of literature that continues to touch and inspire me most deeply and that's good enough for me.

Oh my. I'm getting back ache just thinking about a session that long. We did 3 disks in succession at one point and the coccyx was very unhappy about it.

Worse than that -- I'm getting *addicted* to the commentaries. Six discs -- ow!

"I wish I could thank everyone involved, personally, face to face, one after the other, for the gift they have given all of us: a labour of love, a tour de force, for which, however much money they make from theatrical releases and DVDs and merchandise and so on, we will owe them for ever."

I can identify with this. Oh, I have my gripes with the films, especially the needless "sexing-up" of events or characters they didn't think exciting enough, but they are still *so* much better than I ever dreamed or hoped they might be - a work of love, devotion and genius in almost every area.

Yes, there are things that bug me about them. But the chance that something could fix these whilst still getting everything else so right just isn't going to happen. Well, except maybe in the 25th Anniversary Special Edition... *grin*

A great good

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Tolkien vs skalds

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