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a day that's gray and lonely
I have been reading reviews and such for it, and I'm worried. The Battle of the Pelennor Fields was less than impressive in the book, I'm not looking forward to it in the movie. And all that stuff about Faramir angst and Eowyn coming to terms with her heritage and a Deagol/Smeagol flashback? (Umm, assume the slash there was intentional. yes.) They cut Wormtongue and Merry and all for *that*?
Oh well, one of the things I liked about the first two was the way they remade the myth-- when he changed things, it felt just as real as the other, the same way I can read T. H. White and Mary Stewart, or Ovid and Sophocles, or Milton and Gaiman, and not worry about the contradictions. So that when I think back on the story I'm just as apt to think of one as the other. Except that TTT was much less good that way; the Aragorn/Eowyn stuff was much more annoying than intriguing, and the effects battle scenes more boring, especially on subsequent watchings. (And El does that slide-down-staircase-while-shooting thing much better than Legolas, anyway.)
What's really worrying me is the comments I've seen about the Sam and Frodo part. About Gollum sowing distrust and their having to rebuild their trust in each other against the power of the Ring, Frodo fighting the darkness. Because the trek through Mordor is the part of the book that's been the most important to me personally, and it's not like that at all.
Sam and Frodo's trip to me has always been the archetype of those legendary Eastern European movies that consist of three hours of watching someone, in monochrome, walk up a mountain. It's about inner strength. Sam and Frodo's relationship doesn't change or alter, because it's already a rock you could rest the world on. And Frodo doesn't fight with his own darkness-- if that was what it was about, then he lost. The ending would be tragic and terrible and sad instead of triumphant. Instead it's about doing what good you can do-- thus Bilbo's pity saves us all-- *even though* the darkness is going to win and you know it will;-- after all, we're coming to this from the terrible cliffhanger in part 5, and horrid elvish puns aside, hope has been defeated at last.
What Frodo and Sam are doing is putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going, not because they can or they should but because there isn't anything else to do. They're just walking, even though the sun won't come out tomorrow, even though it is all cobwebs and sorrow-- they keep going.
Ever since I first read that, Frodo has been my inspiration when I lack motivation. "Frodo made it through the Emyn Muil-- surely I can make it through two more chapters of chemistry." "Sam and Frodo climbed the stair of Mount Doom. The *least* I can do is climb out of bed in time for my 8 o'clock exam." To do something-- do anything-- to not just lie down and sleep-- is the hardest struggle of all. And I love Tolkien for making an epic of that.
I'm not sure what I'm more afraid of: that PJ will totally ruin it, or he'll do such a good job of completely rewriting it that I'll lose the love I had for the Frodo and Sam I already knew.
The same way I lost my copy of the book. I'm pretty sure it's in my room somewhere. Man, I need to clean.
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