It's taken me far too long, but I've finally finished listening to the hefty 13-part BBC Radio adaptation of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings from 1981. That's not in itself a criticism of the series, more about the amount of time I have available for listening to things!
I'd posted about the early episodes some months back on this Blog http://viewsfromthesecondfloor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/lord-of-sounds.html
and in the main my thoughts then stayed the same throughout, which is somewhat disappointing.
The production does get more adventurous towards the end, with excellent use of song to describe the battle of Pelennor Fields as a variation from Gerard Murphy's (otherwise excellent) narration when they felt they couldn't present a full-on battle in sound only without confusing the audience. The battle of Helm's Deep in the 'Two Towers' section was less convincing, though. On the acting side Bill Nighy really shines through as Sam Gamgee and Michael Hordern is simply brilliant as Galdalf.
On the whole, though, I think my major criticism of the whole production is that it's too theatrical - or should I say too staged. I didn't feel that it was using the medium of radio to its best effect. The scenes are definitely scenes in the theatrical sense with narratorial gaps in between, making it stilted at times when it should be flowing and sucking in the listener, keeping him there.
Sound effects are only used when they're obviously needed, there's no background soundscape there to maintain pace or atmosphere. Similarly a lot of the more supernatural character voices are not treated. They're well performed, but they come across as bombastic at times, like they've gathered together some of the most fruity and 'listenable-to' actors and hoped that the quality of their voices would be enough. I think more could definitely have been done with Treebeard, the Witch-King of Angmar and the Mouth of Sauron in particular. Probably the biggest shame for me was Robert Stephens as Aragorn. Yes, the man has a wonderful voice - he's brilliant as the villainous Abner Brown in The Box of Delights, for example - but it's all precision line delivery, I never picked up any real emotion or passion behind it, and he sounds more like a senior civil servant than a tough ranger. Jack May's Theoden is similar, although thankfully he lets his hair down and comes good at the end for his final scenes in the battle of Pelennor Fields. Peter Vaughan, on the other hand, is clearly giving Denethor some thought and he comes across well as a tired, possessive and broken old man
Unfortunately for me Ian Holm also falls into this category of delivery over 'humanity', making him seem slightly distanced from the action a lot of the time. There's a sudden change in him towards the end where his intensity increases and you get a real sense of his suffering, but I would have preferred a more gradual degradation. This is particularly noticeable next to Bill Nighy's Sam, who displays subtlety and character throughout.
The ending was always going to be tricky. It was an issue for the films and it's an issue here in the radio adaptation too. It's not so much an issue in the book, but it is a great example of the way the different media work. When you read a story (novel, book, ongoing saga) you know it ends when you get to the last page. An author wouldn't necessarily end their novel on a dramatic highpoint, there's usually a bit of tidying up to be done first, and that's an accepted norm. In performance media it's not so important - you can leave the audience guessing on certain matters without incurring their wrath. The problem with The Lord of The Rings is that the title is unclear - who is the lord of the rings? Sauron? Frodo? The one ring itself? If it's the ring or Sauron their story ends on Mount Doom, but there's fifty-odd pages left to read after that (not including the appendices!). Frodo and Sam being rescued after is enough, and the audience could be left to assume that everyone else ends happily too, with the big nasty baddie gone forever. That's certainly the case with the film, recalling the groans from unsuspecting cinema audiences as yet another scene followed a blackout - and that was without all the Shire business at the end that Jackson cut out.
If Frodo himself is actually the lord of the rings, then the story should end with him. But he doesn't 'master' the ring in the end, and besides the story ends with Sam. Oh.
The scouring of the Shire with the petty, fallen Saruman and Worm-tongue, after everything's been tidied up in Gondor, works in the book because it's part of Book VI and you can see that it doesn't end till it ends. Film works differently, so the scouring needed to be cut, but there's still a number of addenda scenes to finish of the Hobbits' tale and it's arguable how necessary these were. The same goes for radio in my opinion. The whole of the thirteenth episode is such a come-down after the intense dramatics of Mount Doom that it felt tagged on and I found myself getting frustrated with it and willing it to end. It wasn't interesting or adding any value to the story for me as a listener, it was only rounding off the characters. But as a book I've never had a problem with those final sections. I think that just shows the different powers of the different media and why it's not always wise to faithfully follow all aspects of a book in adaptation.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it - I wouldn't have put myself through thirteen fifty minutes if I hadn't, but I think I was more curious about it than anything. I do think they could have done it better, though, and made more of it's radio-ness and less of it's audiobook-ness. Maybe next time I'll enjoy it a bit more, already knowing what I'm going to get? But it won't be for a while, and I might try to read the books again first. In the meantime Peter Jackson's giving us a three-film adaptation of The Hobbit. Three films?! Oh lord...
Really interesting, Tim. I didn't realize Bill Nighy was Sam in this. He's great on radio (and I happen to like him in film, too).
ReplyDelete