King Arthur

Liked the movie, too, though I wish they had tried harder to stick to the likely dates for Arthur’s life — which are, admittedly, much in dispute, as is his existence outside of myth and legend.

Still, as a myth geek since the age of nine, I like to think of him as having lived. Most of the scholars who do, place him in the 450-525 range, give or take. After the Romans had left the island (410). They also see him as a kind of warlord, or Dux Bellorum (Duke of Battles), probably of Celtic-Roman ethnicity. Never a king. His chief role in history, if he existed, was to forestall the English invasion just long enough to force a different kind of conquest and a more “civilized” rule.

I really wish Hollywood would do a movie based on Sword at Sunset, by Rosemary Sutcliff, one of my favorite childhood novels.

But the truly unforgivable, grand-canyon-sized hole in my movie life is due to the absence of one about Cuchulain (pronounced, Cu-hool-in), the Irish Achilles. I have no idea why Hollywood hasn’t gone there. They could go back to Sutcliff for that, too, with her Hound of Ulster. Or Morgan Llywelyn’s Red Branch. Or much further back in time to Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne

But make it they must!!

WV,

I think you’re right about that. Hollywood doesn’t do them justice.

The recent attempt at Homer’s Iliad, “Troy,” just killed me. I will never understand why Hollywood directors feel they need to mess with (and rewrite) Greek myths — or any other kind of ancient story — which have stood the “test of time” for well over two millennia. They are loaded with more than enough drama, suspense, action, excitement, psychological insight, etc. etc. . . . to be left as is. Not one change is necessary. Yet they inevitably feel they can’t leave them alone.

In the movie “Troy,” they even destroy their own chance at sequels, which are there in the myths. They kill off Agamemnon there, for some inexplicable reason, instead of going with time-honored stories of his Return and murder while at home, by his wife, Clytemnestra. Lots of other weird changes in the movie script, which, to me, just didn’t improve upon the myths, at all.

They never do.

Oh, well.

You and I differ on that, ZN.

I definitely go with “reverence for the original,” when the original is spectacularly cool as is. And I find it illogical to call a movie X, Y or Z, if it’s not going to be a depiction of X, Y or Z. Don’t put in “based on X, Y or Z,” when it’s clearly not. Just do your own “original” and call it something else. Make it new, as Pound said.

And I say the above as an artist. A painter, poet and aspiring novelist, and as someone fascinated by art, too. Always have been, since I was a wee lad. Always will be.

You might go with that but art doesn’t. Art picks things up from the past and alters and recombines them. It just does.

ZN, again, I’m an artist, from a family of artists. I know what art is, what it does, where it comes from.

Perhaps the problem here is that you’re a bit too quick to label something “art.” I don’t think the movie “Troy,” for instance, qualifies. Not all films do.

And, there are wildly different ways to draw from the past, to recombine things, to alter them and remake them. Not every choice along the way should be automatically accepted, just because one wants to call it all “art.” Even when it comes to their masterpieces, for instance — painting, sculpture, musical composition, poetry, novel, film and so on — few artists are satisfied with all of their choices. Most are not. Many frequently go back and redo things over time, like Yeats, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Picasso and Van Gogh.

(The latter, if he had lived past 37, likely would have redone or destroyed more than a few profoundly beautiful works, IMO.)

Also, if a filmmaker decides to make a movie about an ancient myth, he or she has already decided NOT to do something “original” per se. They have made a conscious decision to adhere to, at least somewhat, source material. If they change it here and there, it’s still not an “original” work of the imagination. It still uses the foundation of another’s, directly-sourced work, which goes into the credits. It is a reproduction, with alterations, good and bad. Calling it “art” automatically, IMO, jumps the gun and then some.

ZN, again, I’m an artist, from a family of artists. I know what art is, what it does, where it comes from

And I am an historian of art and so I speak to what it has always done.

As long as we’re going to revert to the “argument from personal authority” move.

Art has always, among other things, picked up and re-done prior art. It just has. You personally may not like that, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, because it always has. Heck for that matter homer is not the “original author” of the troy stories, and many shakespeare plays are re-written versions of other plays, when they aren’t re-written versions of other plays (and tales) that were themselves taken from ovid. Who himself (ovid) was not the originator of most of HIS stuff.

It is just a thing that happens.

And we can do 2 things about it.

One is declare a canon of taste about how we’re “supposed” to feel about that.

And another is my way. See what actually has happened in all its diversity, and just embrace the whole thing for what it is.

You will never approach it my way, probably, but then what I see in your way is A way…not THE way.

There have always been competing doctrines, canons, ideas of art. That’s part of art. Always has been and always will be. In the middle of all that some take sides. Some don’t.

…

ZN,

Not going by “argument from authority.” Was responding to your insistence that you know what art is, and I supposedly don’t. My first degree was in Art Studio, with a minor in Art History. I know the “history” part too. I also have never stopped studying the history of the humanities in general, and have more than enough credits for a degree in Literature, and an MFA if I want to go back. I was taught music while young, with an emphasis on its history, too. We both have strong backgrounds on the subject. You teach it. I could teach it. And so on.

Again, I don’t think we’re even talking about the same thing here, though I am getting the idea that we disagree on what qualifies as “art.”

Oh, well. This too shall pass.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

Not going by “argument from authority.” Was responding to your insistence that you know what art is,

That particular way of putting it is all in your head BT. There was no “insistence” of any kind. And no one said they “know what X is” in a general unqualified way. What I actually said is that art (in general, not in every instance) has always picked up on, altered, reconfigured, re-imagined, re-cast, and so on, prior art…and that’s an empirical claim that is just accurate. You took that to mean individual x claims to know “what art is,” as opposed to just an ordinary empirical/historical statement about one thing that has always happened.

I described something that has always happened, and gave my attitude toward that. What I said at the empirical level is just true (though it’s not, as you apparently took it, a philosophical claim about what the whole of art IS. That particular historical statement is not totalizing.) As for the personal attitude toward that fact—I said I don’t mind that, regardless of the form it takes. Just a strong opinion and openly marked as such. So in terms of my expressing my opinion and attitude, it was all marked by opinion qualifiers.

What I don’t like is the “reverence for originals” approach. To me it’s stuffy.

I have no problem whatsoever with a cinematic version of xyz because a cinematic version of xyz does not subtract from, deny access to, or supplant the original.

They’re just different things. Which is absolutely fine with me.

Where I disagree is that I don’t think the fact that that is always happening means the later guys have to stay clear of what the earlier guys did

In terms of the opinion part, yes we see it differently but I never really said it was more than that.

In terms of the empirical part…yes things get re-written and re-imagined all the time. That is just something that has always happened. That’s just true. (Which again is not a totalizing claim about what art IS. I made no such claim.)

Are we more in line now? We have different views on this and that’s all I ever really said.

Billy_T wrote:

Oh, and speaking of Game of Thrones, a series I like . . . . just found out via Wiki that one of its Show Runners, David Benioff, worked on “Troy.”

He seems to have shifted on the topic of keeping close to the source material since then. While there are differences between the HBO show and the Martin originals, and it’s now gone beyond them in time, they did try to keep it close. Martin has so many different characters, and so many different plates in the air at the same time, TV producers, even those who have the luxury of a series, have to consolidate here and there. So I get that. I just don’t get change for change’s sake, especially when the original is much better and more powerful (Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, etc.)

I love “Game of Thrones.” One of the highlights to me is how they do the complicated political process of it all: how does a king maintain power? All of the scheming behind the scenes by lesser characters. How it all works to keep the machinery running.

Just a fantastic show.

But can they please give the Arya storyline a kick in the butt already? Finally–finally it looks like maybe she is finally done training after 6 seasons of training. And then last week happens. WTF?

PA,

I read all the books. They’re page turners, but not especially well-written page turners, IMO. They did hook me, but all along the way, I could find serious faults with the plotting and the prose.

The HBO show, in many ways, is better than the book series. But it can suffer from what you bring up, which is also a problem with the books. Martin includes too many characters, doing too many things, draws this all out far too long, and creates unnecessary problems for his own books. I think he could have used his own Maxwell Perkins. But once you get that famous, publishing houses and agents are often too afraid to suggest paring things down a bit.

He may never finish his epic.

Yep. They have to move the Arya plot forward, and I have no idea where it’s going. I suspect, however, she will end up with Daenarys, and Daenarys will end up with Jon Snow as co-ruler of Westeros. If the Night’s King doesn’t get them all first.

You don’t like The White Album, Abbey Road and their last album, The Beatles?

You are one twisted spinal cracker, without his mojo filter.

;>)

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.

Billy_T wrote:

. It’s the complete rejection of 2700 years of plot line that pisses me off. Not “change,” per se. But the trashing of the original in the process.

Well…I don’t see changing as trashing it. I just respond to all that differently.

Take history. I like, in a rather unsophisticated pure pleasure way, Brit historical dramas. The King’s Speech. Elizabeth. The Queen. Rob Roy. The Madness of King George.

I don’t know if you enjoy those at all, but I do. And they absolutely MASSACRE history.

Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s so flagrant I laugh out loud in the theater. For example, in Elizabeth, it is set up so it looks like Walsingham poisons Mary Queen of Scots in Scotland. When her death is revealed, I just couldn’t help laughing (actually Mary was executed for treason by Elizabeth’s advisors, and she was in their hands because she was living in exile in England). Anyway here’s this shocking moment in the film, we discover the elegant and noble Mary dead, and I am the only person in the theater laughing.

In The King’s Speech, it;s more subtle–Churchill backs George and supports him in the face of Edward’s abdication. Actually Churchill supported Edward and argued publicly against abdication.

I register all those things, but in the end, it doesn’t detract from my pleasure in that kind of film. In fact it’s kind of interesting to notice the ways the filmmakers think they have to alter history.

That’s an analogy but it does kind of speak for how I see all this. So I just think we approach all this in completely different ways.

Take history. I like, in a rather unsophisticated pure pleasure way, Brit historical dramas. The King’s Speech. Elizabeth. The Queen. Rob Roy. The Madness of King George.

I think we may still be talking past one another. I like those films, too. Loved the first two, especially. Cate Blanchett was otherworldly as Elizabeth, and I noticed how the director crafted sets as if they were 16th and 17th century paintings. Beautifully done, beautifully acted. No. It didn’t bother me that they “took liberties” with history. This is where the “they all do it” part kicks in and makes sense to me.

But Homer isn’t history. His world is larger than life. His world contains myriad metaphors for our lives, and, as with pretty much all the best myth, points to deep psychological dynamics lesser works can’t touch. To me, messing with that is messing with the sacred. I don’t see “history” as sacred, and have never expected movies to stick to that book.

I probably also misread you in another way: I got the sense that you were saying a director MUST make changes to source material, or he or she isn’t an “artist.” I disagree with that take — a perspective you may or may not actually hold. IOW, a film director — or screenwriter — doesn’t have to change one iota of a story in order for it to be “art,” or for him or her to be an “artist,” or for their work process to also be an artistic process. The medium of film is perhaps unique in that way. That the decisions regarding how to visualize a story on the screen aren’t any less “artistic” for toeing the line with original source material. Sticking strictly to it, or deviating wildly from it, isn’t what makes it “art,” or the process artistic, or the director an artist, etc. etc. Other things do that. David Lean, for instance, took liberties with Pasternak’s book, and T.E Lawrence’s, but he created cinematic masterpieces all the same. And, given what he did produce, it’s fair to say, he would have created masterpieces had he been slavishly devoted to the original — though we’ll never know that counterfactual, etc.

Anyway . . . and to repeat: It’s not so much “change” per se. It’s “what” is changed. In the case of Troy, wiping out certain characters with their own set of vital, essential ancient myths (Agamemnon and the House of Atreus, et al) seems almost nihilistic to me. I didn’t see it adding to the movie at all, and it didn’t make sense as a plot device. Going back to the movies you cited, their changes “worked” for me. They worked artistically, etc.