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But Nothing Happens!
Sep. 16th, 2002 11:50 amI saw a Usenet post once in which the person cried out against Le Guin's Tehanu because nothing happens in the book.
A great deal happens in Tehanu. A great deal might happen in Tehanu, and a lot of tension derives from the reader's being able to recognize signs of danger and fear them, recognize signs of desire and yearn for its consummation. Worlds of emotion are conveyed in the pulling of a single weed. Much is said in what is unsaid.
But you have to be able to see it.
I watched Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai this weekend. Twice. Once to see it again, and once to listen to the commentary. The movie is almost three and a half hours long. In only a very small percentage of those hours does anything "happen," from what I conceive to be the standpoint of a video-game, MTV generation that requires a continual assault of action and fast cuts to maintain interest.
Maybe we're suffering from a collective case of ADD. Maybe Hollywood just thinks we are. Did Jackson emphasize action over characterization and historical depth in The Fellowship of the Ring because that was his interpretation, as auteur, of the novel, or because he knew it was the only way to sell his flick?
It's ironic to note that Kurosawa's rough, realistic, fast, sloppy, "don't worry about the perfect stroke just kill some bad guys and stay the fuck alive" battle scenes were criticized at the time for not being sufficiently smooth and balletic, which is what people were used to in samurai movies, and that in comparison to previous Japanese films in that category his film was an action-packed thriller. I guess the cover of the DVD is talking to a long-dead generation of Japanese filmgoers when it calls the film "fast-paced." At the same time, it is fast-paced, in its way. There is little respite from things happening. There is no opportunity for the viewer to rest, space out for a while, unfocus. Every moment signifies. Every second of those three and a half hours demands attention. But I don't think that's what they meant by "fast-paced."
So much is there in the glances, the eyelines, the bits of business, the position of bodies, the hesitations, the false starts. Toshiro Mifune's character Kikuchiyo collapses into cross-legged, bent-over exhaustion after a climactic rant to the samurai and the audience in which he says, basically, "Farmers suck! But who made them that way? You did." And then, for what feels like a very long time, everyone just sits there, and nothing happens. Except that it does. In the glances raised and then fallen. In the glances that are never raised. In the fall of a pair of hands forward into a lap. The room sings with tension, vibrates with shock and paralysis and spent emotion, trembles with the brim of tears, opens into comprehension.
Stuff happens. But you have to be able to see it.
Now, what I would like to see is Akira Kurosawa's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. And imagine what he could have done with Earthsea....
A great deal happens in Tehanu. A great deal might happen in Tehanu, and a lot of tension derives from the reader's being able to recognize signs of danger and fear them, recognize signs of desire and yearn for its consummation. Worlds of emotion are conveyed in the pulling of a single weed. Much is said in what is unsaid.
But you have to be able to see it.
I watched Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai this weekend. Twice. Once to see it again, and once to listen to the commentary. The movie is almost three and a half hours long. In only a very small percentage of those hours does anything "happen," from what I conceive to be the standpoint of a video-game, MTV generation that requires a continual assault of action and fast cuts to maintain interest.
Maybe we're suffering from a collective case of ADD. Maybe Hollywood just thinks we are. Did Jackson emphasize action over characterization and historical depth in The Fellowship of the Ring because that was his interpretation, as auteur, of the novel, or because he knew it was the only way to sell his flick?
It's ironic to note that Kurosawa's rough, realistic, fast, sloppy, "don't worry about the perfect stroke just kill some bad guys and stay the fuck alive" battle scenes were criticized at the time for not being sufficiently smooth and balletic, which is what people were used to in samurai movies, and that in comparison to previous Japanese films in that category his film was an action-packed thriller. I guess the cover of the DVD is talking to a long-dead generation of Japanese filmgoers when it calls the film "fast-paced." At the same time, it is fast-paced, in its way. There is little respite from things happening. There is no opportunity for the viewer to rest, space out for a while, unfocus. Every moment signifies. Every second of those three and a half hours demands attention. But I don't think that's what they meant by "fast-paced."
So much is there in the glances, the eyelines, the bits of business, the position of bodies, the hesitations, the false starts. Toshiro Mifune's character Kikuchiyo collapses into cross-legged, bent-over exhaustion after a climactic rant to the samurai and the audience in which he says, basically, "Farmers suck! But who made them that way? You did." And then, for what feels like a very long time, everyone just sits there, and nothing happens. Except that it does. In the glances raised and then fallen. In the glances that are never raised. In the fall of a pair of hands forward into a lap. The room sings with tension, vibrates with shock and paralysis and spent emotion, trembles with the brim of tears, opens into comprehension.
Stuff happens. But you have to be able to see it.
Now, what I would like to see is Akira Kurosawa's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. And imagine what he could have done with Earthsea....
