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Yeah. The last post I made was kinda long and went off topic a bit, didn't it?
Well, I finished the first chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea and I really don't have much motivation to read further. The setting is rich and colorful, but the characters are flat. The vast majority of the chapter was exposition told from an omniscient point of view. There was very little dialog. What there was was short and usually one-sided. A couple lines from one character might be given, then the rest of the exchange paraphrased.
The writing, from a technical standpoint, is quite good. Tending a little too much toward long, complex sentences, but good. And the descriptions are lovely. But they tend to be flat and analytical. The same emotional weight is given to a battle scene as to a boy's coming of age ceremony.
And remember the omniscient pov I mentioned? It's used to tell, not show, what the characters are like. I was told by the narrator that Duny's father didn't care much for him, but that wasn't shown. It felt fake, flat, and condescending. As if the author didn't trust the readers to analyze the characters from their actions and come to their own conclusions.
How this became a fantasy classic is beyond me, quite frankly. There isn't even anything particularly original so far. Youngster with a gift for magic becomes great hero. Whoopee. We're even told in the first sentence of the book that he becomes arch mage and dragon tamer. I guess it could be interesting finding out how, but right now I really don't care all that much.Current Mood:  tired Current Music: (watching something on TruTV) |
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Not all books make good movies and vice versa. The two media are very different and the way one tells a story is restricted accordingly. Because of this, authors are often dubious about sending their precious babies to the slaughter houses known as movie studios.
As an aspiring writer, I sympathize with these authors and am more than willing to acknowledge the anger and frustration when sweeping changes are made to the story.
But as a reader of books and watcher of movies, I also have to admit that sometimes the changes had to be made. There is, after all, only so much you can fit into one and a half to two hours of screen time. The best the author can hope for is that some of the less essential bits get left out or glossed over.
Remember now, I said the best the *author* can hope for. How good the movie is sometimes has very little to do with how faithful it is to the original. There seems to be a general consensus, for instance, that Disney's The Little Mermaid is several magnitudes better than the original Anderson story, which the movie only resembled vaguely.
My impression is that there are just a few outcomes for the book-to-movie journey.
The movie makers could take great pains to make a movie as close to the original as possible, as if to prove that this story should never have seen the light of day to begin with. (I can't think of an example at the moment, but I'm sure there is one out there somewhere.)
The movie makers could take equally great pains to make the movie faithful to the original, with the realization that the information contained in those long tracks of exposition are going to either have to be ignored or presented in a rather more visual manner. The quality of this method depends a great deal on the quality of the original work. (Though people will probably argue on for decades as to whether the right choices were made in the Lord of the Rings movies.)
The movie makers could say, 'hey, cool concept,' and work a mostly new story around those cool ideas. Here the quality depends on the skill of the movie makers, the quality of the original (the lower latter and higher the former the better), and just how rabid the fanbase of the original is. Because, let's face it, some aspects of quality are subjective.
And, lastly, the movie makers could completely ignore the source material and make something up out of whole cloth. (I, Robot, I'm looking at you.) Here the quality of the original is irrelevant unless it was so bad that no one cares what anyone did with the movie, in which case why was a movie even made? What will make a difference is the size of the angry mob armed with torches and pitchforks marching up to the studio gates.
All this brings me to the actual reason I wanted to write this post.
I recently saw Studio Ghibli's new movie, Tales From Earthsea (properly Gedo Senki, which seems to translate as Ged Battle Strategies or something like that). I rather liked it, though I was rather concerned during the slow parts as to how they'd wrap things up before the end of the movie. Probably didn't help at all that I was watching it online and so could see just how much time was left. Takes away from enjoying the moment.
Well, I noted in the credits that it was based on a series of books, so I did some research. And found a rather curious article writen by Ursula LeGuin herself. I say curious because of the combination of understanding and displeasure evident in the work. I nearly said 'ignorance' instead of 'displeasure,' but that would have been unfair. Not all of the problems she seemed to have were the result of ignorance.
The article certainly made me curious as to what the original source material was like, so I just today borrowed a copy of the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, from the library. Honestly, I didn't expect much, given my experience with Howl's Moving Castle. (The movie was a great deal better than the book, for reasons that could be an entire post in it's own right.)
What I've read of the book, so far, comes later. Right now, to the article.
"It was explained to us that Mr Hayao wished to retire from film making, and that the family and the studio wanted Mr Hayao's son Goro, who had never made a film at all, to make this one. ... I am told that Mr Hayao has not retired after all, but is now making another movie. This has increased my disappointment."
This is why I nearly used the word 'ignorance' above. Miyazaki-san has tried a number of times to retire. It almost seems like every movie he makes is 'going to be his last one.' He probably means it every time, too. It just doesn't last very long. Frankly, I don't think he's capable of retiring by any means short of death. An event that I hope is a long time in coming.
"We were given the impression, indeed assured, that the project would be always subject to Mr Hayao's approval....We realised soon that Mr Hayao was taking no part in making the film at all."
I do wish she'd explained exactly how they (she and her son) realized that. It would help convince me of the validity of that last statement. Oh, I'm quite certain that Miyazaki-san gave his son as much freedom as was asked for, it just seems strange that a promise like that would go unheeded.
"Mr Goro Miyazaki asked me just as I was leaving, 'Did you like the movie?' It was not an easy question to answer, under the circumstances. I said: 'Yes. It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie.'
"I did not realise that I was speaking to anyone but him and the few people around us. I would have preferred that a private reply to a private question not be made public. I mention it here only because Mr Goro has mentioned it in his blog."
No idea why she would think such a question would be private, at least for any great length of time. Surely she realized that the instant the movie was released she'd have to give a public response to that question? In any case, it was a very diplomatically put answer.
"The excitement was maintained by violence, to a degree that I find deeply untrue to the spirit of the books."
Was she watching the same movie I was? Because there hardly seemed to be much violence, certainly in comparison to some of Studio Ghibli's earlier works. Heck, the kid couldn't even draw his sword for 99% of the movie!
"Both the American and the Japanese film-makers treated these books as mines for names and a few concepts, taking bits and pieces out of context, and replacing the story/ies with an entirely different plot, lacking in coherence and consistency. I wonder at the disrespect shown not only to the books but to their readers."
Now this got me very interested. It reminded me a lot of some of the things I'd heard about Howl's Moving Castle, which I've already mentioned was better than the original book, in my eyes. In any case, I wouldn't have called the movie 'incoherent,' exactly. There were a lot of unanswered questions up until the end, but that's part of the reason one keeps watching. To find the answers to those questions.
"I think the film's "messages" seem a bit heavyhanded because, although often quoted quite closely from the books, the statements about life and death, the balance, etc., don't follow from character and action as they do in the books."
This is where I go into my reading of the first book. Now, granted, I haven't gotten very far. Page six, to be exact. But those first six pages where almost entirely exposition with some mention of the balance thing. If much more of the book is like that I can see why the movie, while quoting from the book, would sound a tad "preachy" as she says later on.
"The moral sense of the books becomes confused in the film. For example: Arren's murder of his father in the film is unmotivated, arbitrary:"
She goes into detail at this point, which would be a major spoiler so I won't quote it here. Suffice to say that she would rather the motive have been presented at the beginning as she did with Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea instead of held in suspense until the last third.
This leaves me rather dreading further reading of that book, since it seems having such a clear answer from the start would defeat the purpose of turning the next page.
"But in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems."
Well, yes. Here we get back to the whole book medium vs movie medium again. Movies are very visual. If there isn't anything happening on screen people won't pay attention. You can have an internal struggle, but there better be an external one, too, so that people have something to watch other than the character angsting. Ghibli's Tales From Earthsea have both, and while LeGuin might not like physical struggles with external evil it sure does make for a compelling story.
One more question, did she even notice that the good guys tried to talk Cob out of doing something stupidly evil? Perhaps not.
There's also the issue she had with the skin tone of the characters. Apparently the people of Earthsea are mostly dark skinned. I wouldn't have known that from the first six pages of exposition, but apparently that was her intent.
Now that I have gone through what an author had to say about the movie based on her books, I want to make one last note on what I thought of the movie. Not Studio Ghibli's best work, but a very good watch. Now I shall see if the other 191 pages of this book measure up.Current Mood:  not enough sleep Current Music: rabbit grooming. *flapflapflap* |
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100 books, so many of which I haven't even heard of.
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
WATCHING MOVIES DOES NOT COUNT!!!
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen A doorstop book. But a good doorstop book.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Best fantasy series **EVER**.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling All of them. The last one almost in one sitting.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible Well, not all of it. I skipped over Numbers and a few of the other boring bits.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott I cried and cried.
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Eventually. Maybe.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien Heck. Dad read it too me before I *could* read. I was practically raised on this stuff.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Gotta borrow it from Dad sometime.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll Nowhere near as surreal as the Disney movie.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame Well, sorta. Most of it was read to me when I was small. But I have read some chapters myself.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Another series I was raised on.
34 Emma - Jane Austen Never again.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen It sounds interesting.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Duh.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne So much cute!
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell Creepy.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery I was a little disappointed with the ending.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert I think Dad has this book, too.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen Maybe.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley Did I say Animal Farm was creepy? This is creepy squared.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas I read a picture book version of it once. ^^; Kinda curious about it now.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker It was really cool until they killed the female vampire. It got kinda long after that.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett Classic.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens Some bits were kinda random, but it was good.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White I didn't like the ending.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I've read some of the stories, but not nearly all. The Speckled Band was cool.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Idiot title character.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
That's, what, 18 that I've read?
Wow.Current Mood:  accomplished Current Music: watching random TV show on Discovery. |
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