Other worlds...
Feb. 11th, 2008 01:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katsarisThree movies, all of them adaptations of books, which I saw the past December/January. HEAVY HEAVY SPOILERS for both movies and books to follow:
The Golden Compass
I came very close to calling this that rare thing -- a movie adaptation that's actually better than the book, (same as I believe the Chronicles of Narnia movie to have been). I'll have to not exactly cancel but perhaps postpone that judgment for the reason I'll mention later -- but let me begin with what the movie did *great*.
One of the things that the movie did better than the book was connect from the beginning the "Dust" to the idea of sexual maturity, an idea which in the books blossoms too late to actually seem consistent with what preceded it (only really appears in the third book, I believe). And in making that connection more explicitly, the image of people performing obscene operations ("a simple cut") on children to prevent such maturity, in obedience to Authority, becomes at the same time more horrifying and more relevant to *our* world -- to female genital mutilation in its most extreme form, to religious male circumcision in its softer version.
The second thing that the movie did very very well was replace the book's references to the Church to vaguer references to the authority of the "Magisterium" -- which is still pretty obviously religious but not explicitly Christian. Some people am sure are seeing this as some sort of chickening out, that the movie didn't dare to portray the Christian Church (even a Christian church set in a different universe) as the archvillains.
And perhaps the real reason was indeed cowardice on the part of the producers, but personally I see this change to be enhancing the movie -- helping clarity of thought. The true problem with the Magisterium isn't that it's (supposedly) Christian -- indeed the Gnostic deity they obey and that the characters end up fighting against in the (mostly sucky) third book, really doesn't have much of anything to do with Christianity (or with Islam or with Judaism) as currently existing. The true problems with the Magisterium are two: that it's blindly obedient to Authority, and that it also sets itself up as an authority to be blindly obeyed -- that it's a slave and at the same time wants to make slaves of the rest of us too.
This is of course true of the Christian church, but not significantly truer of it than a hundred other systems of thought and of obedience. The true problem is not Christianity, but Authority -- and that one the movie does indeed call by its proper name. :-)
So far so good -- indeed so far *better than the book*. My only objection through most of the movie, was a minor aesthetic grievance -- I didn't like the visual effects when Lyra was receiving the knowledge from the Alethiometer; they seemed like visions rather than the intuitive understanding it properly is in the book, which begins slowly at first with half-reasoned half-hesitant uncertain answers but by the end become to Lyra immediate and accurate intuitive understanding of what the golden compass is telling her...
This is but a minor grievance really. My bigger grievance concerns the end.
See, the book's ending was possibly one of the strongest book endings I have read. World-shattering, literally. Moving. A combination of hopelessness and sheer determination, as Lyra, having utterly failed in everything she hoped for, betrayed, alone, is still unbowed and chooses to travel further to the unknown, leaving everything familiar behind her. The movie ends instead a few chapters too soon, leaving the events above to be put in the second film. And that's just weaker, every way I see it. For the first movie we're left with a much smaller and much more vague, much more happy and much less significant ending. Just plain disappointing.
But all in all a marvelous movie, greatly recommended despite its wimpy and weak ending.
Stardust
Stardust as an adaptation works and fails in the opposite ways of The Golden Compass. I have no complaints about the plot -- it helped combine the different threads in a way more efficient and elegant in some ways. I can still recommend the movie as a great fun adventure story.
But -- and this was something really seen only in the finale of the movie, but it's present from the start -- the movie completely negates and reverses the great *dignity* that the book was giving all its characters in the end, and in the end it negates and reverses the dignity of the whole storyline.
In the book, Tristan's original love, Victoria was a foolish girl who in the end deeply regrets that she immaturely sent Tristan to such a dangerous quest -- she apologizes to him, and is prepared to fulfill her original vow to marry him (even though she doesn't love him). Tristan, again dignified, responds by telling her she'd made no such vow -- her vow was to give him his hand *if* he asked it, and he now asks her to marry the person she truly loves. We are given to understand that Mr Monday (her current fiance) has been made aware of the whole unfortunate vow situation, and even if he doesn't appreciate it he still understands the choice Victoria was making.
In the movie, Victoria is merely a silly immature girl throughout, and the final confrontation between her and Tristan, is one where Tristan maneuvers her in a position where he can *ridicule* her for maximum effect, thus also losing the dignity he himself possessed in the book. Far from dignified, her fiance in return attempts some swordfighting intimidation, but Tristan is better at it. And at the end of the movie it's also implied Victoria's fiance won't stay faithful to her.
In the book, there's no final violent confrontation between the witch and the protagonists -- they merely outrun her until when she reaches them she has no power left to fight them, merely talks with Yvaine and they exchange some brief conversation before they let each other be and go on their ways.
I understand how in the movie they wanted a more climactic ending, and I have no problems with such. The sad thing is how *close* they came to achieving great dignity for the witch, and then they just snuff it away. They all fight, and they manage to kill her sisters before she has them at their mercy -- and then when she sees her dead sisters, she suddenly realizes that immortality/power/beauty, these are all meaningless without the only people she loved in the world -- and she lets Yvaine and Tristan go.
*Excellent* ending. Beautiful, meaningful, dignified... but then they suddenly have her turn and say "no I was kidding, am glad those bitches are dead, means more heart for me, mwahahaha".
WTF? Were the makers of the movie intentionally going out of their way to make the ending *less* meaningful, *less* character-based, and yeah (let me repeat that word again) less dignified?
The whole dignity-issue is part-and-parcel I guess of how they have them both become stars in the end. The world doesn't work like that and neither does Faerie -- whose rules are just as strict as the world's, even if different. In the book it's clearly stated -- stars can fall, but they never get back up. Some wounds don't heal (to make my obscure LOTR reference). The final scene in the book is how after a very long life, Tristan dies and Yvaine (with a limp that still hasn't quite healed from the first time she fell to the earth) is left remembering him and watching the stars.
In the movie they just have a very long life and then they keep on having a very long life, except now as stars, back in the heavens.
Thanks, but no thanks. Stars fall but they don't return to the skies once fallen. MORTALS DIE. And any story about Faerie that denies that, is at the end a false story.
The Bridge to Terabithia
And I guess that makes Terabithia a very true story instead. In "The Bridge to Terabithia" trailers and packaging was false advertising, leading prospective viewers to believe that it's a Chronicles of Narnia-redux. Couldn't be further from the truth. Instead of a imaginative tale about different realities like Narnia was, Terabithia is a painfully realistic tale about imagination.
Won't say much about this one -- I haven't read the book for this but I understand it was a faithful adaptation. I loved the movie, but I believe it'd be one that'd be painful to rewatch (in all the best ways), and so I probably won't
I was worried near the finale, I briefly feared they'd show us Jess retreating further and further into the Terabithia fantasy, until it becomes a life-destroying and reality-denying delusion. However my worries didn't come to pass -- Jess instead uses Terabithia to repair the rift between him and his little sister.
That's just marvelous, and a lovely ending -- imagination not as delusion, but as relief. Not as a cage, but as a bridge. Nice.
Recommended.
The Golden Compass
I came very close to calling this that rare thing -- a movie adaptation that's actually better than the book, (same as I believe the Chronicles of Narnia movie to have been). I'll have to not exactly cancel but perhaps postpone that judgment for the reason I'll mention later -- but let me begin with what the movie did *great*.
One of the things that the movie did better than the book was connect from the beginning the "Dust" to the idea of sexual maturity, an idea which in the books blossoms too late to actually seem consistent with what preceded it (only really appears in the third book, I believe). And in making that connection more explicitly, the image of people performing obscene operations ("a simple cut") on children to prevent such maturity, in obedience to Authority, becomes at the same time more horrifying and more relevant to *our* world -- to female genital mutilation in its most extreme form, to religious male circumcision in its softer version.
The second thing that the movie did very very well was replace the book's references to the Church to vaguer references to the authority of the "Magisterium" -- which is still pretty obviously religious but not explicitly Christian. Some people am sure are seeing this as some sort of chickening out, that the movie didn't dare to portray the Christian Church (even a Christian church set in a different universe) as the archvillains.
And perhaps the real reason was indeed cowardice on the part of the producers, but personally I see this change to be enhancing the movie -- helping clarity of thought. The true problem with the Magisterium isn't that it's (supposedly) Christian -- indeed the Gnostic deity they obey and that the characters end up fighting against in the (mostly sucky) third book, really doesn't have much of anything to do with Christianity (or with Islam or with Judaism) as currently existing. The true problems with the Magisterium are two: that it's blindly obedient to Authority, and that it also sets itself up as an authority to be blindly obeyed -- that it's a slave and at the same time wants to make slaves of the rest of us too.
This is of course true of the Christian church, but not significantly truer of it than a hundred other systems of thought and of obedience. The true problem is not Christianity, but Authority -- and that one the movie does indeed call by its proper name. :-)
So far so good -- indeed so far *better than the book*. My only objection through most of the movie, was a minor aesthetic grievance -- I didn't like the visual effects when Lyra was receiving the knowledge from the Alethiometer; they seemed like visions rather than the intuitive understanding it properly is in the book, which begins slowly at first with half-reasoned half-hesitant uncertain answers but by the end become to Lyra immediate and accurate intuitive understanding of what the golden compass is telling her...
This is but a minor grievance really. My bigger grievance concerns the end.
See, the book's ending was possibly one of the strongest book endings I have read. World-shattering, literally. Moving. A combination of hopelessness and sheer determination, as Lyra, having utterly failed in everything she hoped for, betrayed, alone, is still unbowed and chooses to travel further to the unknown, leaving everything familiar behind her. The movie ends instead a few chapters too soon, leaving the events above to be put in the second film. And that's just weaker, every way I see it. For the first movie we're left with a much smaller and much more vague, much more happy and much less significant ending. Just plain disappointing.
But all in all a marvelous movie, greatly recommended despite its wimpy and weak ending.
Stardust
Stardust as an adaptation works and fails in the opposite ways of The Golden Compass. I have no complaints about the plot -- it helped combine the different threads in a way more efficient and elegant in some ways. I can still recommend the movie as a great fun adventure story.
But -- and this was something really seen only in the finale of the movie, but it's present from the start -- the movie completely negates and reverses the great *dignity* that the book was giving all its characters in the end, and in the end it negates and reverses the dignity of the whole storyline.
In the book, Tristan's original love, Victoria was a foolish girl who in the end deeply regrets that she immaturely sent Tristan to such a dangerous quest -- she apologizes to him, and is prepared to fulfill her original vow to marry him (even though she doesn't love him). Tristan, again dignified, responds by telling her she'd made no such vow -- her vow was to give him his hand *if* he asked it, and he now asks her to marry the person she truly loves. We are given to understand that Mr Monday (her current fiance) has been made aware of the whole unfortunate vow situation, and even if he doesn't appreciate it he still understands the choice Victoria was making.
In the movie, Victoria is merely a silly immature girl throughout, and the final confrontation between her and Tristan, is one where Tristan maneuvers her in a position where he can *ridicule* her for maximum effect, thus also losing the dignity he himself possessed in the book. Far from dignified, her fiance in return attempts some swordfighting intimidation, but Tristan is better at it. And at the end of the movie it's also implied Victoria's fiance won't stay faithful to her.
In the book, there's no final violent confrontation between the witch and the protagonists -- they merely outrun her until when she reaches them she has no power left to fight them, merely talks with Yvaine and they exchange some brief conversation before they let each other be and go on their ways.
I understand how in the movie they wanted a more climactic ending, and I have no problems with such. The sad thing is how *close* they came to achieving great dignity for the witch, and then they just snuff it away. They all fight, and they manage to kill her sisters before she has them at their mercy -- and then when she sees her dead sisters, she suddenly realizes that immortality/power/beauty, these are all meaningless without the only people she loved in the world -- and she lets Yvaine and Tristan go.
*Excellent* ending. Beautiful, meaningful, dignified... but then they suddenly have her turn and say "no I was kidding, am glad those bitches are dead, means more heart for me, mwahahaha".
WTF? Were the makers of the movie intentionally going out of their way to make the ending *less* meaningful, *less* character-based, and yeah (let me repeat that word again) less dignified?
The whole dignity-issue is part-and-parcel I guess of how they have them both become stars in the end. The world doesn't work like that and neither does Faerie -- whose rules are just as strict as the world's, even if different. In the book it's clearly stated -- stars can fall, but they never get back up. Some wounds don't heal (to make my obscure LOTR reference). The final scene in the book is how after a very long life, Tristan dies and Yvaine (with a limp that still hasn't quite healed from the first time she fell to the earth) is left remembering him and watching the stars.
In the movie they just have a very long life and then they keep on having a very long life, except now as stars, back in the heavens.
Thanks, but no thanks. Stars fall but they don't return to the skies once fallen. MORTALS DIE. And any story about Faerie that denies that, is at the end a false story.
The Bridge to Terabithia
And I guess that makes Terabithia a very true story instead. In "The Bridge to Terabithia" trailers and packaging was false advertising, leading prospective viewers to believe that it's a Chronicles of Narnia-redux. Couldn't be further from the truth. Instead of a imaginative tale about different realities like Narnia was, Terabithia is a painfully realistic tale about imagination.
Won't say much about this one -- I haven't read the book for this but I understand it was a faithful adaptation. I loved the movie, but I believe it'd be one that'd be painful to rewatch (in all the best ways), and so I probably won't
I was worried near the finale, I briefly feared they'd show us Jess retreating further and further into the Terabithia fantasy, until it becomes a life-destroying and reality-denying delusion. However my worries didn't come to pass -- Jess instead uses Terabithia to repair the rift between him and his little sister.
That's just marvelous, and a lovely ending -- imagination not as delusion, but as relief. Not as a cage, but as a bridge. Nice.
Recommended.