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Jun. 16th, 2004
The texture of a story
Jun. 16th, 2004 05:23 pmLast night I went to see Harry Potter 3 with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
djjo and danthered. Unfortunately, as one of the immeasurably small percentage of the audience who had not read past Book 1, I found the climax incomprehensible. Despite the minimal explanation required afterward, I won't let the movie off the hook. It should be intelligible to a non-reader. I knew what had transpired; but the apparent shift in character motivations did not make sense until afterward, when Daniel pointed out a small piece of information had deliberately been omitted all along. The moment of revelation was lost on me, in fact I'll have to see the movie again to catch it.
And I will see it again. Despite this flaw, I agree with the common concensus that it's probably the best of the series so far.
The shortcoming ironically highlights a point of discussion I had with Danny on the way to the cinema. I was talking about books, specifically the two I have been reading recently.
I paused reading E.M. Forster's Maurice—an unprecedented novel about erotic love between men, written in 1914 but not published until after the author's death in 1970—in order to read Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, the first in a fantasy trilogy published within the past decade, slightly predating the Harry Potter books. It was a gripping read, one I could hardly put down after opening the first chapter. After finishing it last week I resumed Forster, but found I had lost the train of certain subtleties in the plot of Maurice.
Ninety years ago, novels were written to be savoured and absorbed. People read them at leisure without distraction and had time to consider them as a whole, richly textured, without skipping from chapter to chapter between subway stops and TV shows. Danny suggested older movies were written that way, too. I mentioneddaisydumont's preference toward watching a movie over the course of several evenings.
Now we have given ourselves to the tyranny of too much information. If a book or movie doesn't provide a meaningless thrill every 15 seconds, the average person loses interest and turns on Survivor instead.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is far from fatuous, but I'm afraid a culture that runs on brief multimedia clips will increasingly bewilder those of us who refuse to immerse ourselves in it. Maybe I'm just getting old.
djjo and danthered. Unfortunately, as one of the immeasurably small percentage of the audience who had not read past Book 1, I found the climax incomprehensible. Despite the minimal explanation required afterward, I won't let the movie off the hook. It should be intelligible to a non-reader. I knew what had transpired; but the apparent shift in character motivations did not make sense until afterward, when Daniel pointed out a small piece of information had deliberately been omitted all along. The moment of revelation was lost on me, in fact I'll have to see the movie again to catch it.And I will see it again. Despite this flaw, I agree with the common concensus that it's probably the best of the series so far.
The shortcoming ironically highlights a point of discussion I had with Danny on the way to the cinema. I was talking about books, specifically the two I have been reading recently.
I paused reading E.M. Forster's Maurice—an unprecedented novel about erotic love between men, written in 1914 but not published until after the author's death in 1970—in order to read Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, the first in a fantasy trilogy published within the past decade, slightly predating the Harry Potter books. It was a gripping read, one I could hardly put down after opening the first chapter. After finishing it last week I resumed Forster, but found I had lost the train of certain subtleties in the plot of Maurice.
Ninety years ago, novels were written to be savoured and absorbed. People read them at leisure without distraction and had time to consider them as a whole, richly textured, without skipping from chapter to chapter between subway stops and TV shows. Danny suggested older movies were written that way, too. I mentioned
daisydumont's preference toward watching a movie over the course of several evenings.Now we have given ourselves to the tyranny of too much information. If a book or movie doesn't provide a meaningless thrill every 15 seconds, the average person loses interest and turns on Survivor instead.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is far from fatuous, but I'm afraid a culture that runs on brief multimedia clips will increasingly bewilder those of us who refuse to immerse ourselves in it. Maybe I'm just getting old.