I'll admit to being a non-fiction reader, and at that, far from a tomeworm. I prefer periodicals, short bursts of idea. My attention span is not the most linear; associative properties excite me more than ordered learning, so connectivity will frequently interrupt my reading or studying as I either contemplate material and become lost in speculative branches from the root, or else break away altogether and move to the next source I find to be the most necessary to my train of thoughts. I greatly prefer pith and efficiency - for enabling quick cognitive entry/exit - to the sprawling, ponderous prose that we as a literary culture have inherited, particularly from the 19th Century - one requiring a far longer, less flexible mental visitation. Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities I literally could not settle into; and failed to finish reading either of them under high school assignments, their worlds not relevant enough to be of value to me. Frank Herbert's Dune, an equally voluminous novel, did manage to catch and hold my interest - I can only assume that his blend of descriptive color and narrative economy struck a favorable balance with me.
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit I can read easily; the depth and deliberation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, however, has rebuffed me through my youth and early adulthood. I've managed to read most of the first two books, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, and so the story arc and major characters are in good familiarity. The Return of the King I have never begun, sheepishly acknowledging that a trilogy can only be completed when all its segments have been digested to satisfaction.
It is with that lack of intimacy that I was able to enjoy Peter Jackson's filmmaking of The Lord of the Rings to a certain point. As any film will dictate alterations and abbreviations, no one should be surprised that a book will almost always retain a greater breadth and depth than its cinema counterpart (one notable exception is The Shawshank Redemption an ambitious expansion on an otherwise inconspicuous short story by Stephen King). I saw The Fellowship of the Ring (FOTR) last year and fairly well enjoyed it; I did feel as if the movie were "one day in Paris," madly trying to stuff all the events of hundreds of pages, bursting with culture and legend, into the better part of three hours.
Now, here's where I depart from your average purist who'll knot his brow at the first sign of verbatim betrayed. It's a two-tier system of appreciating movie adaptations of books: I call it "Dune and Oz."
I have never read L. Frank Baum's Oz series, but I recall a schoolmate - back in fifth grade, no less - decrying the night-and-day discrepancies between the fantasy-epic novel and its eponymous, light-hearted musical-film counterpart. Here's where I draw the line: while confident that the book provides a fuller experience, the MGM movie is fantastic. Ignorant of Baum's typewritten Oz, the Western world has a cinema classic nonetheless.
Even before I read Frank Herbert's first installment of his Dune series, I was nonplussed by David Lynch's mid-1980s bizarro feature. Yes, the general artistic styling, particularly the Fremen stillsuits was impressive and, in fact, for my mind definitive - but the plot emasculation and plethora of other, less-successful Lynch-inspired artifacts (no, music by Toto doesn't count for points) added up to a failed attempt to bring Herbert's sci-fi classic to the screen. It's a dud movie that one must ultimately separate from the book.
Let's review some book-to-movie events as they apply to my criteria. Gone with the Wind: Oz. Braveheart: delightfully at odds with history, Oz. Roots: the best example of how to bring an epic to realistic viewer proportions - well-funded television miniseries - Oz. The George C. Scott adaptation of A Christmas Carol: sheer Oz.
Flops - enter your favorite here, since unless spectacularly headline-worthy in their fall these forgettably failed movies are more difficult to ferret out. Dune is my standout. Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow is another inventive stinker. No more pain - I'm sure you get the idea.
Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring is slightly bearing the marks of an Oz - it was pleasantly faithful to the spirit and letter of Tolkien's work. That said, deviations did occur. A significant character was cut, as were several "nuance" passages; barely any of Tolkien's pervasive songs and tales found their way into the relatively terse screenplay. A romance was added with the emphasized role of a minor book character. At the theater, I enjoyed the film - though I felt a little deprived. After buying an extended release on DVD, however, which managed to fill in crucial narrative and development gaps, I could sit back and call the movie definitive.
I watched The Two Towers in the theater last night. As a cinema experience, I quite enjoyed it. Where Jackson was merely illustrating indirect descriptions offered in print by Tolkien - the magnifcent duel through ages and elements between Gandalf and the Balrog - the movie is powerful. True to his words as early as December of 2001, however, Jackson did modify the story more noticeably than with the first movie. Charmed by the power of the drama onscreen and insulated by a relatively distant familiarity with most details of the book, I was immediately aware of only one major deviation through the film. Other sections, oddly enough, seemed less successful and it was only after I consulted the book later in the evening - and checked some fan sites this morning - that I realized to what extent Jackson had supplanted Tolkien's masterpiece with his own team's hand at storytelling.
At this point, I won't offer spoilers or dredge anyone through a nerdily exhaustive list of charges, scene by scene. Suffice to say, watching the movie draws me nearer to the book; in Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson's modifications arguably helped the movie's composition; he was successful in truly "adapting." In The Two Towers, not only were modifications conspicuous to those of us at least somewhat familiar with the original work but, as I had observed in the theater, several of them were rather unsuccessful simply as movie elements - and so extremely maddening as to why a would-be definitive film translation might so readily abandon its source.
I can foresee the disappointing conversations I'll be sharing with well-read Tolkien fans.
Finally, and perhaps the most important aspect of what this is, a film independent of the original author: people unfamiliar with the books almost unanimously love the movie. So in a way, Peter Jackson knew what he was doing as a filmmaker.
And, funnily enough, he's from the land of Oz.