rotk random musings
Dec. 20th, 2003 05:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filegTotally unrelatedto the musings - I am also doing a *smidge* of writing in the Theatrical Muse, but I don't think I am ready to say who. If you are not reading them and want to look for me, drop me a note, neh?
You guys may just want to skip over the free association that is beginning in my brain. Some of it, like this, and last nights Faramir thought, come from the fact that people on my lines are complaining about interpretation without acknowledging that what they are objecting to is that someone else's doesn't match theirs. Now we are starting to get people complaining because fanon is being violated.
Well, when it comes to bizarre interpretations I have some doozys of my own. Most notable I guess is my feeling that Denethor does not love one son better than the other. He does not understand the first thing about love. He uses his approval to manipulate both boys. (I of course think that his rage with Faramir comes from the fact that Faramir does not fall for it). There has been a lot of talk about Gandalf and Denethor on my lines today, and I feel like putting my two cents in -- You may have this for book and movie both -
I get completely frustrated with Gandalf when he stops Faramir while Faramir is doing his utmost to keep his heart in control to tell him the *lie* that his father loves him and will remember before the end.
I know my interpretation of Denethor is *way* to the left of center, but speaking only in canon, whether you believe Denethor is a man who fell to madness, or one who was never kind - the truth is that the Denethor that exists *at that point* is mad as an eel. He will *not* remember that he loves Faramir. He will not remember love. He will throw Faramir on his pyre as grave-goods.
Movie!Denethor brought home an old belief of mine that as he held the shattered horn in his hands he did not grieve for Boromir because he loved him, but because of the completely unthinkable fact that -- Boromir Had Failed Him!
You guys may just want to skip over the free association that is beginning in my brain. Some of it, like this, and last nights Faramir thought, come from the fact that people on my lines are complaining about interpretation without acknowledging that what they are objecting to is that someone else's doesn't match theirs. Now we are starting to get people complaining because fanon is being violated.
Well, when it comes to bizarre interpretations I have some doozys of my own. Most notable I guess is my feeling that Denethor does not love one son better than the other. He does not understand the first thing about love. He uses his approval to manipulate both boys. (I of course think that his rage with Faramir comes from the fact that Faramir does not fall for it). There has been a lot of talk about Gandalf and Denethor on my lines today, and I feel like putting my two cents in -- You may have this for book and movie both -
I get completely frustrated with Gandalf when he stops Faramir while Faramir is doing his utmost to keep his heart in control to tell him the *lie* that his father loves him and will remember before the end.
I know my interpretation of Denethor is *way* to the left of center, but speaking only in canon, whether you believe Denethor is a man who fell to madness, or one who was never kind - the truth is that the Denethor that exists *at that point* is mad as an eel. He will *not* remember that he loves Faramir. He will not remember love. He will throw Faramir on his pyre as grave-goods.
Movie!Denethor brought home an old belief of mine that as he held the shattered horn in his hands he did not grieve for Boromir because he loved him, but because of the completely unthinkable fact that -- Boromir Had Failed Him!
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-20 06:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-20 12:55 pm (UTC)Denethor and Aragorn are like the Hierophant and the Magician of the tarot to me - the Magician trusts in his spirit to guide him, the Hierophant relies on rituals to make sure it all looks *proper.*
Movie!Denethor took me to a very old, bleak place. Something in John Noble's delivery won't let me dismiss him out of hand - and I think I felt for the first time that last acknowledgement of his power that Faramir must have been faced with all his life.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-20 06:53 am (UTC)Once I read an interpretation of Denethor´s pyre which, I think, changed my whole view of the character. Besides, it coheres perfectly well with your theory that the Nazgûl attacks were specifically keyed against Faramir, singled out for the onslaught among all the soldiers and commanders of Gondor. Denethor believes that the City is about to be stormed. He, who only has his reason to trust and guide him, has ironically all the objective reasons in the world to despair. He knows they will go after Faramir, will try to take him alive ("I won´t let them take you from me") to pay him back in kind for all the losses and hardships he has inflicted in Mordor for all those years (at Faramir´s current age, probably nearly twenty years). We all know what sort of loving treatment the Lord of Minas Morgul would have crafted for the Captain of the Ithilien Rangers. Thus he decides to kill his son (or rather, die with his son) to avoid that. Not only that, Denethor also wants to preserve Faramir´s corpse from outrage: orcish "care" of unburied enemy bodies is well (and shudderingly) documented. Thus the pyre: there shall be no corpse to befoul and maim. They will burn together in a purely negative and black act of protective love on Denethor´s part. This man´s emotions, after all, are all twisted and tangled.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-20 03:03 pm (UTC)But strangely, it doesn't really change what I feel about him and love - he has no real concept of it, and tries to approach it logically. He probably got away with that when he had one of the finest minds in Gondor. But now...
The brilliant Dave Carter wrote about the unmatchable terror of twisted feelings that think they are love in Tanglewood Tree
...i'm walkin' down a bone-dry river but the cool mirage runs true
i'm bankin' on the fables of the far, far better things we do
i'm livin' for the day of reck'nin countin' down the hours
i yearn away, i burn away, i turn away the fairest flower of love, 'cause darlin . . .
love is a garden of thorns, and a crow in the corn
and the brake growing wild
cold when the summer is spent in the jade heart's lament
for the faith of a child
my body has a number and my face has a name
and each day looks the same to me
but love is a voice on the wind, and the wages of sin
and a tanglewood tree
Thank you for making me think this through on paper. This and the tarot card that Chris posted today may very well have taken down the last wall that was holding up the story I've been trying to write.
I am: reveling in the difference between Inflammatory and Incandescent --