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cimorene i did too. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jennaria's review was also very insight-making about this point. i, too, am going to see it again tonight and hope that resolves something. this is what i wrote in comment to maija:
i feel really conflicted too, because all the things you mentioned were really good and others, too. but i found the end CRUSHINGLY unsatisfying--combinations of so many things--the overdramatic manner of arwen's appearance; faramir and eowyn being cut so short; the huge number of fades to black; the cut-off of the non-shire story with no further information and then that little shire bit, which mirrors the beginning, yes, but feels anticlimactic because it's the wrong length or something. there's not the right feeling of heavy sadness in it. the way they make it so suddenly happy, with frodo laughing and whatnot, too, seems too fast.
eta: i definitely still prefer ttt. rotk may be a better movie despite irritating choppiness. i was thinking ofkemelios's post on the subject. she says in very insightful words, "I just can't take Rosie too seriously as a character. She's so unnecessary. " i've never thought of it exactly that way, but that's my main problem with rosie: as i said to kem,
t's so very painfully obvious that she WAS an afterthought. tolkien did not care or believe in the rosie and sam relationship enough to go back and make the additions that would have made her credibly sam's true love (actually, pj did, but i feel that does the books a disservice because it changes who sam IS). or perhaps it occurred to him to do it and he couldn't because the book was so emphatically about frodo and sam for him that he didn't see where she might have gone.
now, that said, the movies are not the same as the books. in the movies, pj does what would have to have been done by way of adding her in from the beginning, and it works. the het content is believable. at the wedding, in the pub, you can see the f/s as an incredibly powerful form of platonic that doesn't really make a wife unnecessary. they made sam's thoughts of rosie at the foot of mount doom believable and fitting. but i do think it's a different story than the book's. the books do not have that. they are about a different sam, a sam whose mind can't and wouldn't go to rosie until all the danger and the adventure is well and truly over--until his worry for frodo is eased, until he's home again. his onlythought is for frodo, not just his first. it pained me, even believable. i still felt it out of place because a huge part of the power of their relationship in the books is how huge, all-encompassing the emotion is. it doesn't have any labels. it might be sexual or emotional and it might or might not be platonic, but calling it one or the other would have lessened it. i suppose the emotion itself is above that or something. it doesn't have disclaimers. and it doesn't have the ability to just sort of change the subject in the middle of a discussion of frodo to sam's own more personal concerns. it might have happened five minutes later, after the first agony and panickiness of comforting frodo had ended, when his mind started to drift. perhaps they just had to cut it because they couldn't film five minutes of silence, but i wanted to see that space in the movie itself.
jennaria's review was also very insight-making about this point. i, too, am going to see it again tonight and hope that resolves something. this is what i wrote in comment to maija:i feel really conflicted too, because all the things you mentioned were really good and others, too. but i found the end CRUSHINGLY unsatisfying--combinations of so many things--the overdramatic manner of arwen's appearance; faramir and eowyn being cut so short; the huge number of fades to black; the cut-off of the non-shire story with no further information and then that little shire bit, which mirrors the beginning, yes, but feels anticlimactic because it's the wrong length or something. there's not the right feeling of heavy sadness in it. the way they make it so suddenly happy, with frodo laughing and whatnot, too, seems too fast.
eta: i definitely still prefer ttt. rotk may be a better movie despite irritating choppiness. i was thinking of
kemelios's post on the subject. she says in very insightful words, "I just can't take Rosie too seriously as a character. She's so unnecessary. " i've never thought of it exactly that way, but that's my main problem with rosie: as i said to kem,t's so very painfully obvious that she WAS an afterthought. tolkien did not care or believe in the rosie and sam relationship enough to go back and make the additions that would have made her credibly sam's true love (actually, pj did, but i feel that does the books a disservice because it changes who sam IS). or perhaps it occurred to him to do it and he couldn't because the book was so emphatically about frodo and sam for him that he didn't see where she might have gone.
now, that said, the movies are not the same as the books. in the movies, pj does what would have to have been done by way of adding her in from the beginning, and it works. the het content is believable. at the wedding, in the pub, you can see the f/s as an incredibly powerful form of platonic that doesn't really make a wife unnecessary. they made sam's thoughts of rosie at the foot of mount doom believable and fitting. but i do think it's a different story than the book's. the books do not have that. they are about a different sam, a sam whose mind can't and wouldn't go to rosie until all the danger and the adventure is well and truly over--until his worry for frodo is eased, until he's home again. his onlythought is for frodo, not just his first. it pained me, even believable. i still felt it out of place because a huge part of the power of their relationship in the books is how huge, all-encompassing the emotion is. it doesn't have any labels. it might be sexual or emotional and it might or might not be platonic, but calling it one or the other would have lessened it. i suppose the emotion itself is above that or something. it doesn't have disclaimers. and it doesn't have the ability to just sort of change the subject in the middle of a discussion of frodo to sam's own more personal concerns. it might have happened five minutes later, after the first agony and panickiness of comforting frodo had ended, when his mind started to drift. perhaps they just had to cut it because they couldn't film five minutes of silence, but i wanted to see that space in the movie itself.
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(no subject)
Date: 17 Dec 2003 11:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Dec 2003 11:41 am (UTC)yeah.
(no subject)
Date: 17 Dec 2003 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Dec 2003 12:37 pm (UTC)I expect a lot of y'all will love the movie. It's got a lot going for it, honestly -
And then there's Frodo and Sam. Yes, I'm reacting very strongly, and your mileage may vary. I've seen reviews already that say it's not that bad. Hell, one reviewer took the scene wherein Frodo awakes -- alone -- in Ithilien, after the destruction of the Ring, and flipped it on its head from the way I interpreted it. But what I saw between Frodo and Sam was distance, reaching out to each other and missing their grip.
I could take Shelob, arachnophobia and all. But not the distance. My heart was broken at the end, but not as I wanted it broken. It's not sunshine and afternoon at the ending, or rather it shouldn't be. It should be evening, and Sam drawn in by Rosie with Elanor on his lap, and the sound of the Sea still and always in his ears. Don't water down my bittersweet, dammit. This isn't a happy ending.
(no subject)
Date: 17 Dec 2003 12:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17 Dec 2003 01:43 pm (UTC)