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So today I watched ROTK. It made me feel all warm and squishy. (When I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 there was a preview for a movie called Danny Deckchair that had Miranda Otto in it. )
Two random thoughts I had upon watching it again. One was that you know where Frodo tells Sam in CU that they've taken the ring and Sam says they haven't, and explains, "I thought I'd lost you. So I took it." Damn, that sounds incredibly suspicious. I mean, NotInHIsRightMInd!Frodo's got even more reason to be suspicious of Sam in the movie than in the book. "I thought I'd lost you," is just so...lame sounding. Especially since presumably Frodo's got no way of knowing how very dead he seemed. And when you think of the whole theme of Sam losing him--the last time Sam thought he'd lost Frodo was when Frodo had taken a left in the cornfield and was all of ten feet away...it just struck me how totally suspicious poor Sam might seem there.
The second thing is harder to admit, but, you know when Sam's carrying Frodo up the mountain? And it's so dramatic and we should all be thinking about what a good friend Sam is and how much Frodo's sacrificing? I seem to always wind up staring at Frodo's cute little behind in that scene. It's just sitting there upside down right by Sam's ear in those silly little trousers with the suspenders. So there it is.
Naturally, watching this movie made me think about one of my favorite book bits, Crickhollow. I think if anybody was to ask me what place and when in a book they'd like to be, that would be it. I don't mean what part of a story I'd like to live, just a fictional place I'd like to go--my happy place, I guess some people would call it. Maybe I'm just the most unexciting person in the world, but that's got to be my idea of the perfect evening--a cozy house on an autumn evening, a hot bath after a day with lots of walking, your best friends, good food, wine, and a fire. Usually when I think about fictional places I think about how they look, but when it comes to Bag End or Crickhollow when Frodo lives there I always think about how it must smell delicious. (And being a hobbit slasher, there would be a wide variety of board games to round out the evening in my smial.)
I'm trying to remember if there were any other fictional places I really wanted to climb into before Crickhollow. I used to sit on my parents' dresser and try to figure out how to get into the mirror. Also my mother had this doohickey thing hanging at the end of the chain to the light in her closet and I used to want to get into that. I always imagined it would look like the inside of Jeannie's bottle on I Dream of Jeannie, you know with the circular purple velvet cushion couch and the colored windows. Only it would float and go places, like Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator (which I don't think I knew about yet). I also had a specific book of The Snow Queen where the illustrations were all done with like miniatures and models and I always wanted to go into Kay's house with the window boxes and Gerda next door. But those were all visual things, not so much things I just got from a description. There must have been something. I'll have to think.
Anybody else have places like that?
Two random thoughts I had upon watching it again. One was that you know where Frodo tells Sam in CU that they've taken the ring and Sam says they haven't, and explains, "I thought I'd lost you. So I took it." Damn, that sounds incredibly suspicious. I mean, NotInHIsRightMInd!Frodo's got even more reason to be suspicious of Sam in the movie than in the book. "I thought I'd lost you," is just so...lame sounding. Especially since presumably Frodo's got no way of knowing how very dead he seemed. And when you think of the whole theme of Sam losing him--the last time Sam thought he'd lost Frodo was when Frodo had taken a left in the cornfield and was all of ten feet away...it just struck me how totally suspicious poor Sam might seem there.
The second thing is harder to admit, but, you know when Sam's carrying Frodo up the mountain? And it's so dramatic and we should all be thinking about what a good friend Sam is and how much Frodo's sacrificing? I seem to always wind up staring at Frodo's cute little behind in that scene. It's just sitting there upside down right by Sam's ear in those silly little trousers with the suspenders. So there it is.
Naturally, watching this movie made me think about one of my favorite book bits, Crickhollow. I think if anybody was to ask me what place and when in a book they'd like to be, that would be it. I don't mean what part of a story I'd like to live, just a fictional place I'd like to go--my happy place, I guess some people would call it. Maybe I'm just the most unexciting person in the world, but that's got to be my idea of the perfect evening--a cozy house on an autumn evening, a hot bath after a day with lots of walking, your best friends, good food, wine, and a fire. Usually when I think about fictional places I think about how they look, but when it comes to Bag End or Crickhollow when Frodo lives there I always think about how it must smell delicious. (And being a hobbit slasher, there would be a wide variety of board games to round out the evening in my smial.)
I'm trying to remember if there were any other fictional places I really wanted to climb into before Crickhollow. I used to sit on my parents' dresser and try to figure out how to get into the mirror. Also my mother had this doohickey thing hanging at the end of the chain to the light in her closet and I used to want to get into that. I always imagined it would look like the inside of Jeannie's bottle on I Dream of Jeannie, you know with the circular purple velvet cushion couch and the colored windows. Only it would float and go places, like Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator (which I don't think I knew about yet). I also had a specific book of The Snow Queen where the illustrations were all done with like miniatures and models and I always wanted to go into Kay's house with the window boxes and Gerda next door. But those were all visual things, not so much things I just got from a description. There must have been something. I'll have to think.
Anybody else have places like that?
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From:
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(As for your second confession, I laughed a lot on reading that. Thanks!)
I have a couple of ‘book places’, some of which I still retreat to from time to time. The Shire is one, although only when I’m feeling in a more sociable frame of mind. Another place is Narnia, although I’d probably dream more about being on the Dawn Treader.
The third place is real, more or less. When I was still pretty young I read Paul Gallico’s book ‘Thomasina: The Cat who thought she was God’. I wanted to go there (ie the Highlands of Scotland), where there were mountains, and streams and wild places. Where the witch lived, alone in a little cottage surrounded by trees, looking after the animals. It sounded (and still does sound) like the best place in the world, to me.
From:
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And now that you've described those Highlands they really do sound like the best place in the world!
I love that the Shire is someplace you think of in sociable moods--because it's true, it's not a place you go for seclusion or privacy. Though I suppose Frodo and Bilbo found their own privacy within it inside Bag End and on their walks.
I think in that scene in the movie I was also thinking about...well, I always sort of laugh at Frodo's, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry for everything!" (which I've noticed is not enough for some people who insist HE NEVER SAYS HE'S SORRY!). Anyway, I can't help but laugh because he really does owe Sam a great big I'M SORRY and also his mistake almost got him killed and would have if Sam hadn't saved him. But it's hard because at this point they just have to move on with the story so there's no real time to play out the possible consequences of what's happened. So in my mind it's almost like Frodo's saying, "Sam, I'm so sorry. I'll never invent scenes again! I'll follow the book from now on, I promise!"