But Nothing Happens!
Sep. 16th, 2002 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tmcgI 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....
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no subject
Date: 2002-09-16 11:28 am (UTC)But you have to be able to see it.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-16 02:08 pm (UTC)Americans are masters of un-subtlety. (I know, I've been all un-American in my posts lately.) The Japanese fit infinite meaning into the smallest space (witness the tea ceremony). I can't think of two cultures more dissimilar, off the top of my head.
And you've made me want to watch the movie again.
And Toshiro Mifune is stunning.
p.s.
Date: 2002-09-16 02:09 pm (UTC)Re: p.s.
Date: 2002-09-16 05:54 pm (UTC)Do you remember Breakout? I liked that movie so much I actually have it on VHS. That's pretty scary.
Re: p.s.
Date: 2002-09-16 06:53 pm (UTC)Old. I am sooo old. *g*
Re: p.s.
Date: 2002-09-16 08:49 pm (UTC)Waaay O.T.
Date: 2002-09-17 12:49 pm (UTC)(In your handwriting *g*)
Re: Waaay O.T.
Date: 2002-09-17 02:28 pm (UTC)I still have mine too! I'm not sure where it is, but I stumbled across it at some point.
Aieeeeeee!
no subject
Date: 2002-09-16 05:58 pm (UTC)You and me both. *g*
And Toshiro...yeah. Stunning. On a lot of levels.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-16 04:59 pm (UTC)One of the things I liked about Seven Samurai is that it looks at the real cost of being a hero or, I guess, of doing something heroic. The cost is different for different people, but, except for the person who has no inner life, there is a cost in every act of doing or not doing.
I watched a movie last night (High Crimes in which Ashely Judd and Morgan Freeman are really good (they seem to have a great chemistry with each other), but the last fifteen minutes of the movie made the entire initial premise stupid beyond belief. It was a sacrifice of decent storytelling to action twist and, worse, it undermines the pretty good characterization that the first part of the film had. Stuff happens in this movie, but it's stupid stuff.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-16 06:04 pm (UTC)Thanks for the take on High Crimes. Sounds like a waste of good acting and otherwise good scripting/direction. I have a lot of trouble getting through movies if the premise is lame. If the people are boneheaded enough, I entertain myself by rooting against them.
I like Morgan Freeman, though.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-17 09:05 am (UTC)Yeah. I'm also starting to like Ashley Judd quite a lot. She has an interesting face which you can't say about all that many actors.
Morgan Freeman is good in this movie too. And it has some really great scenes (that it undermines later). The only reason I wasn't pissed off with the ending was because you could see the 'twist' coming from a mile away and it had a feel about it, like you knew they just wouldn't be able to resist going for the final twist even though it undermined everything that had gone before....