Okay, time for the daily geekness. I've been reading (re-reading, actually) The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. It's a useful book for those who are mystified by the idea of a respected scholar writing a fantasy novel. Since these are all his own words, they can't be said to be "interpreted" through the partisan viewpoint of an admirer. This isn't a review, I just wanted to quote some passages. For starters, Tolkien was semi-involved in an ultimately abortive effort to put the thing on film. Here are are samples of his hilarious critique of the film "treatment" he received -- basically, he "fisked" the thing; I am only sorry that for whatever reason the editors decided not to include the letter in its entirety:
Z.... has intruded a 'fairy castle' and a great many Eagles, not to mention incantatons, blue lights, and some irrelevant magic[...]And so on... So as you can see, Peter Jackson is by no means the first person to try and film Lord of the Rings. Of course, there is the animated effort by Ralph Bakshi of part of the series, which I have only seen snippets of (I understand it was an uneven affair, and personally I wasn't impressed with what I saw; a friend of mine gave me the soundtrack on vinyl, but I haven't listened to it yet). I can't really say from all this whether Tolkien would be pleased at all with Jackson's interpretation (I think he would hate the treatment given to Faramir, for instance, and considering his complaints about the contraction of time in this letter, he probably would not care for the same in the current film); but I think I can safely say that whatever departures were taken from the text in the film's screenplay, at least they aren't ludicrous.Gandalf, please, should not 'splutter'.
The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in the Shire is absurd...
The landlord does not ask Frodo to 'register'! Why should he? There are no police and no government[...] If details are to be added to an already crowded picture, they should at least fit the world described.
Rivendell was not a 'shimmering forest'[...] It could not be seen from Weathertop: it was 200 miles away and hidden in a ravine.
Why does Z put beaks and feathers on Orcs!? (Orcs is not a form of Auks.)
Now it is obvious that Tolkien took his work seriously, but he was also under no illusion as to its "importance," which is something I think people don't realize in this day and age of self-aggrandizing literary mavens who think entirely too well of themselves. From a letter to a fan, one Rhona Beare (he seemed to treat his fans, and their nitpicky lists of detailed questions, with much more respect than many bestselling authors would seem capable of; but then he was a college professor in a very nitpicky field):
I have only just returned from a year's leave, one object of which was to enable me to complete some of the 'learned' works neglected during my preoccupation with unprofessional trifles (such as Lord of the Rings)...His reasons for preoccupying himself with such a "trifle":
I write things that might be classified as fairy-stories not because I wish to address children... but because I wish to write this kind of story and no other.He also repeats throughout several of his letters that he does not like allegory, at all -- Aragorn is not Churchill, the Orcs are not the Germans, etc., etc., etc. I keep seeing this idea pop up here and there in commentary on the films (and thus the story) that we can directly apply the goings on in it to our time, and that is no more true now than it was then. The Orcs are not the hapless citizens of the various Middle Eastern countries that seem to be terrorist factories now, and the Ents' battle with Saruman is not an advocation of the Kyoto Accords. The most we can say is that the story is concerned with the universal issues of honor, perseverance, and loyalty; and the greater issue is not even power and who should have it versus who should not, but "Death and Deathlessness."
Later, I will finally get around to reviewing the film so far, and also write on what it means for an American to so admire a story that is chock full of non-American issues such as inherited rule.
[Note: I have rearranged this slightly.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at January 2, 2003 01:47 PM