Baby steps to reading
It's so strange hearing of the heaps of snow in the Northeast when it was about 60 and sunny here today. Please don't feel like I'm rubbing it in, because I'm already pre-emptively mourning the end of winter, which is probably soon here, and it's only been cold for a little while with snow on the ground once. I want more. I need more. (I know many of you would gladly send me yours. If only it worked that way.)
Almost the end of January, and I have things to report on my annual goals. It's a good time, right now: family things calmed down a bit (::knock on wood::), classes not in heavy duty project mode yet. I'm sure I will fall terribly behind in everything later, so I'm taking advantage of the time now. I posted to my family blog this month, I have taken some very concrete actions toward adopting a dog (to the extent of visiting one for an hour and a half today), I've been crocheting a thing, and, possibly the biggest deal, I've actually been reading some. This week I finished the Primeval tie-in novel I started last year for a fandom book club, and this month I read (well, re-read) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
The rest of this post is the massive essayish thing I wrote the night I finished the Dawn Treader and my internet was out and thus failed to distract me.
***
I finished a book! (!!!) It's not a new book to me, but it was published fiction with chapters and everything. So. \o/
It was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and I read it because I recently saw the movie. Aside from the horrible experience that was "3D" there were a lot of things I liked about the movie, but also several things I was dissatisfied with. I had read the Chronicles of Narnia several times in my childhood and youth and again a few years ago before the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came out, but before I made up my mind about this movie, I wanted the book to be really fresh because I can't help comparing.
The book is basically this: a series of adventures by a group of people on a sea voyage. The voyage is loosely organized by a quest, but it's a peacetime quest. The young King Caspian, in the name of honor, wants to find seven lost lords who were loyal to his father and driven out of the land by his despot uncle. No one knows what happened to the lords after they sailed away to the east, and no one knows if there's any hope of finding them, but those on the ship are game for exploration if nothing else. Along the way, three children from our world come aboard, and they all go off together. It's not unlike The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without the social commentary. The stated purpose of Huck and Jim's voyage is escape, but, in a narrative sense, what matters a lot more than their getting free is the series of unrelated things that happen to them on the way. I am very fond of many of the individual adventures in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so much so that the book as a whole is one of my favorites in the series. It has a *mood*. For a C.S. Lewis children's book it's fairly atmospheric.
The problem is, I suppose, that a collection of loosely related adventures doesn't make a very good movie. No, actually I could imagine it making a very good movie, but it would take Alfonso Cuaron and David Lynch together, and it wouldn't be the kind of this franchise *wants* to make. They want lots of children as well as their parents and other adults to be interested so they will spend lots of money and justify the special effects budget. They want a traditional family action/adventure movie.
And that's okay. So they adapted the story, skipping or truncating some things, rearranging some others and adding a few more in order to give it a more structured narrative flow, a greater sense of urgency, and an action-packed climax. The problem is, I don't think they did those things very *well*. It was all very deliberate, obvious to me, and just not that emotionally engaging. First, though, I'll talk about the things that were not bad to pretty good.
One of the more memorable parts of the book for me was the chapter about the island of the Dufflepuds. Lucy has an adventure there that's a little bit creepy initially, but all through it there are these creatures providing comic relief. The Dufflepuds are very funny. In the movie, this becomes a kidnapping and it's all quite a bit shorter and we don't get a good sense of the Dufflepuds. I was disappointed in that, but I understand it.
My very, very favorite part of the book is the reforming of Eustace Scrubb. This I think the movie dealt with decently. In the first half of the book, Eustace is a little pig: selfish, whiny and arrogant. Actually to call him a pig isn't fair to those noble porcine creatures, but you know what I mean. Really insufferable, and they captured that in the movie too. (Aside: one thing I reacted to differently during this reading of the book was in the very beginning when Lewis described Eustace this way: "Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information..." Later we learn that he's fond of bullying when he can get away with it, and that's not nice, but what's wrong with being interested in entomology and facts? I get the feeling that for C.S. Lewis those characteristics represented a lack of imagination, which was a major sin. And so I feel a little indignant on Eustace's behalf.) At some point, he becomes afflicted with an enchantment that causes him to suffer terribly, but also changes his attitude about everything. Faced with sudden, real loneliness, becomes helpful and a good companion. Most importantly, to break the curse, he goes through a whole ritual which is related in the story as possibly literal but in a meta sense is highly symbolic: he has to shed layers of himself. He removes layer after layer himself, easily, but can only really be restored to his true self by painfully tearing deep into himself and shedding not just the surface but *everything*. And he needs help to do it. It's very moving, but because it's such a metaphor, maybe it was too cerebral for the film. If I recall, we pretty much lost the skin-shedding.
However, the movie did pick up on something in the book that wasn't really emphasized but in my opinion completely warranted the expanded treatment it got in the film: the relationship between Eustace and Reepicheep the Mouse. Reepicheep is the most warlike individual on the ship, but he's also the most noble and gracious. When no one else really wants anything to do with Eustace (though they're too decent to actually exclude him) Reepicheep takes an interest in him and tries to goad him into being a better man. When Eustace is suffering the most, it is Reepicheep who knows how to comfort him without a shred of pity, letting him keep his dignity. We got to see more of that in the movie, and I really liked it.
In the book, there's not a lot of time spent on the characterization of anyone except Eustace, but a few things happen with Lucy from which one could extrapolate some inner conflict. It's the kind of thing fanfic does with TV and movie characters all the time, and it's perfectly understandable for a movie to do it with a book character. Lucy is certainly at an age where any feelings of insecurity about her appearance and personality might be intensified by the apparent beauty and success of her older sister, and they play with that a bit in the movie, adding another child character to allow a nice resolution.
Where I thought the film failed was in the added plot elements. They were good in theory. There's a "dark mist" that periodically appears and swallows up people, and on one island the people actually make human sacrifices to the "mist," though it's not explained why. Out of fear and superstition, I assume. Caspian vows to find out what's going on, and to find and return the missing people if possible. So in addition to finding the lost lords, there's this unrelated mission to solve the mystery of the "mist." This is where I get a bit fuzzy about the plot because it was all invented for the movie, but at some point the adventurers learn that each of the missing lords was carrying a magical sword and only by uniting all the swords can the mist be defeated. I think.
It's great that they try to tie those elements together, but... what IS the mist? We never find out. Why were the swords important for defeating it? Who knows. How did the (exactly) seven lords happen to be in possession of the (exactly) seven swords? Again... no clue. So there are missing people, including a cute little girl's mommy in (assumed) real peril, and that ups the stakes of it all, but if you're going to try to give a story a traditional, cohesive plot, I think you should give that plot some logic at the same time. Not just throw things at it that look good.
The climax is a big action sequence in the middle of the "mist" with a sea monster (stolen from another part of the book), lots of fighting and daring acts of heroism. That was fine but I think they missed an opportunity to make it scarier. In the book, the ship does travel through an area around the "Dark Island," which is a place where dreams come true. Not daydreams, as a tortured longtime resident of the island explains, but *dreams*. The ones you have at night, many of which may be nightmares, most of which are surreal and you wouldn't want to see while awake. So most of this scene is very quiet, murky, and each of the people on the ship is lost in his own mental world of fears. They're not generic fears either, but creepy and revealing about each of the characters. I think it's Edmund who keeps hearing giant scissors opening and shutting. It's very Twilight Zone. But in the movie, all that happens is Edmund imagines a sea monster and they have to fight with it. Eh. Exciting as an action sequence but not as an *idea*. Everybody is afraid of enormous monsters bent on killing, right?
I'd like to watch the movie again without having to be tortured distracted by 3D, but in the end I'm probably going to be the old fuddy duddy who would rather read the book for an eighth time. I do really enjoy rewatching the first film, though, so I know it's not that I'm dead set against making films of beloved books.
Mainly, I'll be over here sending up fervent prayers and smoke offerings to the movie gods for The Silver Chair. If I thought I cared about Dawn Treader, it's nothing compared to my investment in Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb and Puddleglum.
This entry was also posted at http://rustydog.dreamwidth.org/1026889.html. You may comment at either place.
Almost the end of January, and I have things to report on my annual goals. It's a good time, right now: family things calmed down a bit (::knock on wood::), classes not in heavy duty project mode yet. I'm sure I will fall terribly behind in everything later, so I'm taking advantage of the time now. I posted to my family blog this month, I have taken some very concrete actions toward adopting a dog (to the extent of visiting one for an hour and a half today), I've been crocheting a thing, and, possibly the biggest deal, I've actually been reading some. This week I finished the Primeval tie-in novel I started last year for a fandom book club, and this month I read (well, re-read) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
The rest of this post is the massive essayish thing I wrote the night I finished the Dawn Treader and my internet was out and thus failed to distract me.
***
I finished a book! (!!!) It's not a new book to me, but it was published fiction with chapters and everything. So. \o/
It was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and I read it because I recently saw the movie. Aside from the horrible experience that was "3D" there were a lot of things I liked about the movie, but also several things I was dissatisfied with. I had read the Chronicles of Narnia several times in my childhood and youth and again a few years ago before the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came out, but before I made up my mind about this movie, I wanted the book to be really fresh because I can't help comparing.
The book is basically this: a series of adventures by a group of people on a sea voyage. The voyage is loosely organized by a quest, but it's a peacetime quest. The young King Caspian, in the name of honor, wants to find seven lost lords who were loyal to his father and driven out of the land by his despot uncle. No one knows what happened to the lords after they sailed away to the east, and no one knows if there's any hope of finding them, but those on the ship are game for exploration if nothing else. Along the way, three children from our world come aboard, and they all go off together. It's not unlike The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn without the social commentary. The stated purpose of Huck and Jim's voyage is escape, but, in a narrative sense, what matters a lot more than their getting free is the series of unrelated things that happen to them on the way. I am very fond of many of the individual adventures in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so much so that the book as a whole is one of my favorites in the series. It has a *mood*. For a C.S. Lewis children's book it's fairly atmospheric.
The problem is, I suppose, that a collection of loosely related adventures doesn't make a very good movie. No, actually I could imagine it making a very good movie, but it would take Alfonso Cuaron and David Lynch together, and it wouldn't be the kind of this franchise *wants* to make. They want lots of children as well as their parents and other adults to be interested so they will spend lots of money and justify the special effects budget. They want a traditional family action/adventure movie.
And that's okay. So they adapted the story, skipping or truncating some things, rearranging some others and adding a few more in order to give it a more structured narrative flow, a greater sense of urgency, and an action-packed climax. The problem is, I don't think they did those things very *well*. It was all very deliberate, obvious to me, and just not that emotionally engaging. First, though, I'll talk about the things that were not bad to pretty good.
One of the more memorable parts of the book for me was the chapter about the island of the Dufflepuds. Lucy has an adventure there that's a little bit creepy initially, but all through it there are these creatures providing comic relief. The Dufflepuds are very funny. In the movie, this becomes a kidnapping and it's all quite a bit shorter and we don't get a good sense of the Dufflepuds. I was disappointed in that, but I understand it.
My very, very favorite part of the book is the reforming of Eustace Scrubb. This I think the movie dealt with decently. In the first half of the book, Eustace is a little pig: selfish, whiny and arrogant. Actually to call him a pig isn't fair to those noble porcine creatures, but you know what I mean. Really insufferable, and they captured that in the movie too. (Aside: one thing I reacted to differently during this reading of the book was in the very beginning when Lewis described Eustace this way: "Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information..." Later we learn that he's fond of bullying when he can get away with it, and that's not nice, but what's wrong with being interested in entomology and facts? I get the feeling that for C.S. Lewis those characteristics represented a lack of imagination, which was a major sin. And so I feel a little indignant on Eustace's behalf.) At some point, he becomes afflicted with an enchantment that causes him to suffer terribly, but also changes his attitude about everything. Faced with sudden, real loneliness, becomes helpful and a good companion. Most importantly, to break the curse, he goes through a whole ritual which is related in the story as possibly literal but in a meta sense is highly symbolic: he has to shed layers of himself. He removes layer after layer himself, easily, but can only really be restored to his true self by painfully tearing deep into himself and shedding not just the surface but *everything*. And he needs help to do it. It's very moving, but because it's such a metaphor, maybe it was too cerebral for the film. If I recall, we pretty much lost the skin-shedding.
However, the movie did pick up on something in the book that wasn't really emphasized but in my opinion completely warranted the expanded treatment it got in the film: the relationship between Eustace and Reepicheep the Mouse. Reepicheep is the most warlike individual on the ship, but he's also the most noble and gracious. When no one else really wants anything to do with Eustace (though they're too decent to actually exclude him) Reepicheep takes an interest in him and tries to goad him into being a better man. When Eustace is suffering the most, it is Reepicheep who knows how to comfort him without a shred of pity, letting him keep his dignity. We got to see more of that in the movie, and I really liked it.
In the book, there's not a lot of time spent on the characterization of anyone except Eustace, but a few things happen with Lucy from which one could extrapolate some inner conflict. It's the kind of thing fanfic does with TV and movie characters all the time, and it's perfectly understandable for a movie to do it with a book character. Lucy is certainly at an age where any feelings of insecurity about her appearance and personality might be intensified by the apparent beauty and success of her older sister, and they play with that a bit in the movie, adding another child character to allow a nice resolution.
Where I thought the film failed was in the added plot elements. They were good in theory. There's a "dark mist" that periodically appears and swallows up people, and on one island the people actually make human sacrifices to the "mist," though it's not explained why. Out of fear and superstition, I assume. Caspian vows to find out what's going on, and to find and return the missing people if possible. So in addition to finding the lost lords, there's this unrelated mission to solve the mystery of the "mist." This is where I get a bit fuzzy about the plot because it was all invented for the movie, but at some point the adventurers learn that each of the missing lords was carrying a magical sword and only by uniting all the swords can the mist be defeated. I think.
It's great that they try to tie those elements together, but... what IS the mist? We never find out. Why were the swords important for defeating it? Who knows. How did the (exactly) seven lords happen to be in possession of the (exactly) seven swords? Again... no clue. So there are missing people, including a cute little girl's mommy in (assumed) real peril, and that ups the stakes of it all, but if you're going to try to give a story a traditional, cohesive plot, I think you should give that plot some logic at the same time. Not just throw things at it that look good.
The climax is a big action sequence in the middle of the "mist" with a sea monster (stolen from another part of the book), lots of fighting and daring acts of heroism. That was fine but I think they missed an opportunity to make it scarier. In the book, the ship does travel through an area around the "Dark Island," which is a place where dreams come true. Not daydreams, as a tortured longtime resident of the island explains, but *dreams*. The ones you have at night, many of which may be nightmares, most of which are surreal and you wouldn't want to see while awake. So most of this scene is very quiet, murky, and each of the people on the ship is lost in his own mental world of fears. They're not generic fears either, but creepy and revealing about each of the characters. I think it's Edmund who keeps hearing giant scissors opening and shutting. It's very Twilight Zone. But in the movie, all that happens is Edmund imagines a sea monster and they have to fight with it. Eh. Exciting as an action sequence but not as an *idea*. Everybody is afraid of enormous monsters bent on killing, right?
I'd like to watch the movie again without having to be tortured distracted by 3D, but in the end I'm probably going to be the old fuddy duddy who would rather read the book for an eighth time. I do really enjoy rewatching the first film, though, so I know it's not that I'm dead set against making films of beloved books.
Mainly, I'll be over here sending up fervent prayers and smoke offerings to the movie gods for The Silver Chair. If I thought I cared about Dawn Treader, it's nothing compared to my investment in Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb and Puddleglum.
This entry was also posted at http://rustydog.dreamwidth.org/1026889.html. You may comment at either place.