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Micro-organism, pt. 2
In my initial post, I forgot to mention two of the comforts to which I have historically resorted to when sick. The first of these is warm jello. It's a very comforting beverage for a sore throat (I prefer strawberry). The second was that--presuming my head wasn't too clouded--I liked to read The Lord of the Rings. Or, at the very least, to start it. Why? Besides being a great story, when I'm sick I would always really identify with Frodo when he's stabbed at Weathertop--it always seemed rather more exciting to be struggling against a wound from a Morgul blade than to be struggling against a cold or flu....
And now, thanks to Peter Jackson, I can now combine the love of The Lord of the Rings with a love of watching movies when ill, so I watched the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring. In some part of my mind, I imagined myself watching it and then watching The Two Towers, but apparently I had no real conception of how long the movie was! The extended edition is long. Not that it felt long, but by the time is was over, quite a bit of time had passed. But what a time it was! This film is by no means perfect, but I don't think anyone could reasonably expect the books to be brought to the screen any better than this. If someone else had done it, he or she might not have made some of the decisions that I didn't like from Jackson, but no doubt there would have been other decisions I wouldn't have agreed with. The compression of a film (even one as long as this extened version!) demands changes to make it fit and work as a satisfying film.
I was going to gripe about a change, but when I looked back at the novels, I realized that it wasn't so much a change of fact as a change of emphasis, a simplification of something that was originally more complex. This is the sort of change that, while unfortunate, is not surprising. Not that films can't portray nuance, but films that were originally books are almost always fighting against time constraints. It takes time to tell a story as richly as a good novelist can tell it, and whether the film is 2 hours or 3 hours or 3 and a half. And, after all, there are so many things that the film does well that I can't find the passion to complain about the little imperfections.