strange and random happenstance

Tales from Earthsea
Based on the book by Ursula K. Le Guin
Starring: Brian George, Susanne Blakeslee, Kat Cressida, Matt Levin, Timothy Dalton, Cheech Marin, Jess Harnell, Blaire Restaneo, Willem Dafoe, and Mariska Hargitay
Release Date: July 29th, 2006
Rating: ★★
To Buy

The balance of the world is out of order, even the majestic dragons are killing each other. Young Prince Arren, driven by some unknown force, kills his father the King. Taking his father's sword he flees. On his desperate journey he runs into the Archmage Sparrowhawk who is on his own journey. Sparrowhawk has felt the world going out of kilter and has gone in search of the source of this wrongness. Sparrowhawk invites young Arren to travel with him. They encounter village after village destroyed, farmhouses burned and crops gone to seed. In Hort Town they finally find some kind of life, people wasting theirs taking the drug Hazia and slavers scouring the town for merchandise. Arren rescues a young girl from the slavers, but he incurs their wrath and when they find him asleep on the shore they enslave him. After being rescued by Sparrowhawk the two journey to the farmstead of Tenar, an old friend of Sparrowhawk's. There Arren meets the girl he rescued, Therru is the ward of Tenar. On the farm Arren is given time to heal from his ordeal while helping Tenar with the chores. But Sparrowhawk's mission isn't completed and soon it becomes apparent that Arren's ordeals are connected to the chaos in the world which now has a name, thanks to the slavers who work for him. The wizard Cob is destabilizing Earthsea in his quest for eternal life. Will the young Prince be able to make amends for the wrongs he has committed by stopping Cob? Or is all Earthsea doomed?

From the title of this movie I assumed that the plot would be taken from Le Guin's fifth Earthsea book, Tales from Earthsea. Well, you know what they saying about assuming things... because I was very wrong. Instead this is a weird amalgamation of the third and forth books in the Earthsea cycle, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu, without really ever being either of those books or it's own story. It doesn't really have it's own identity, feeling so piecemealed that a cohesive whole is hoping for way more than this film has to offer. I seriously don't understand what it is about Le Guin's Earthsea cycle that leaves it so hard to adapt. Each of the two adaptations has gotten key elements wrong, mainly whitewashing all the characters, which seriously baffles me in this instance because this wasn't made by white males this time around. But at least the Sci-Fi channel's adaptation was able to stand on it's own, being so different as to embrace those differences and create it's own mythology. Here there's so much actual mythology from Earthsea jammed incoherently into the story that I just can't even. I mean sometimes the dialogue doesn't actually make any sense. And as for Disney releasing it... I was raised on early eighties "children's" films, so I know violence, but OMG, the violence in this is so random and brutal and I don't think they ever really addressed the whole "slavery is evil" issue. Apparently it's the first and only PG-13 animated film Disney has ever distributed. Tales from Earthsea, the film, is just wrong on almost too many levels to count.

But apparently this production was plagued from the beginning. My brother informed me that while this is a Studio Ghibli film it wasn't done by Hayao Miyazaki, but his son Gorō and thus did the drama begin. Hayao had for years and years been wanting to adapt Le Guin's Earthsea cycle and had always been denied. Only after winning an Oscar for Spirited Away did Le Guin give her permission. Permission given which I think she later regretted despite claiming to like the end product though admitting that it wasn't in the least like her book. I'm not surprised in her being disappointed. Hayao, being too busy working on Howl's Moving Castle, the studio decided to let his son Gorō direct this as his first film. A move which his father not only disapproved of but actively argued against. So whether it was this tension or his inexperience, Le Guin's world didn't get the treatment it deserved and instead we are left wondering what might have been. As for the American release... I never really envisioned Sparrowhawk as say Timothy Dalton, because, you know, whitewashing, and his voice is almost too regal, he doesn't sound like he's ever shepherded goats. As for Willem Dafoe, yes, he's the perfect voice actor for villains, but the lackluster feeling of the film seeped into his performance. It felt like he read the lines in one take and that's all she wrote. In fact by the end of the film it's like all people involved had given up any hope for it, what with the closing theme song not being redone in English or even subtitled. I don't think they expected anyone to make it to the end.

What I hoped would redeem any lack in plot would be visual splendor. Because there's one thing that is "usually" a given with Studio Ghibli films and that's impactful imagery that will be on shirts and dorm rooms for years to come. The problem is that it's just not. The imagery is never it's own, it always feels so referential to specific things that all I did was think over and over again about those specific references while realizing how much better they were. The look was literally Legend meets Labyrinth meets The Addams Family meets Gummi Bears. You might laugh a bit at the Gummi Bears one while admitting the validity of the others, but seriously, the entrance to the castle is completely the entrance to Castle Dunwyn. Especially as depicted in my Colorforms play set. And also I REALLY need to watch Legend again, it's been too long. Aside from these specific filmic references the overall look the film went for is Persian. Which baffles me. You whitewash the characters and strip any racial identity that is in the books and give them a new one? What!?! And the thing is, I'm a really harsh judge when it comes to this because of my love of Kaoru Mori's meticulous and magnificent Manga series A Bride's Story. So if you're looking for racial confusion and memories of better films, you can't go wrong with this here film.

Unless you like strong women. Because, this is seriously a deal breaker. The strong, independent, and frankly amazing characters of Tenar and Therru her become nothing more than characters that have one purpose, to serve in advancing the stories of the men. Because obviously the only purpose of having women be in a film or story is to prop up the male narratives. Can you hear that growling? Oh wait, that's me. And it's not my stomach. It might partially be my teeth grinding, but there are other reasons too. The women get captured and get endangered and need men to rescue them. Tenar didn't escape from the Tombs on her own, rescuing Sparrowhawk whom she help prisoner. Oh no, she was the prisoner rescued, who must AGAIN be rescued as she has become a lure for Cob to trap Sparrowhawk. Oh, poor women. The scene when Sparrowhawk and Arren do all the work at the farm because the poor womenfolk wouldn't have gotten along unless they showed up!?! WTF!?! How are they running this farm then without the help of these men the rest of the year? I'm surprised that at this point Le Guin didn't ask for all association with the film to be severed. First the whitewashing and now the sexism! If there's any sexism in her books it's to show the plight of these strong and independent women! Who can run farms on their own! But the scene that made me want to spit fire? When Therru finally turns into a dragon the moment of majestic beauty is take away from her as it's given to Arren who rides her. HE FREAKIN' RIDES HER!

And buried, somewhere within the film, they tried to comment on the duality of humans with Therru and Arren. But instead of focusing on the more obvious with Therru being a freakin' dragon as well as a little girl, they go this weird ambiguous route that I'm still not sure I grasp. Somehow Arren was split in half either by killing his father or by the evil that plagues Earthsea. He now has a "light" and a "dark" side. The dark is all, well, it's the Arren we see most of, broody and boring. The light side appears to be trying to kill Arren, which makes no sense because it's the light side. Good should be trying to help evil not kill it, right? Or you know, integrate it somehow? Bring the two halves into one whole? The sloppily handled duality is just there and baffling. I really don't get what it's point is, was, or will be. It's like they were searching for some higher meaning and instead of taking meaning from the books they made their own half-assed mythology about splitting a human into light and dark and seriously, if it's beyond me I'm thinking a kid wouldn't get it either. But then Tales from Earthsea is continually taking these little bits and pieces from the books that in the context of the books make sense, but here are just baffling. Why does Therru knowing Arren's real name supersede the power of Cob knowing it? Why do they just explain the whole people can be dragons as quick backstory to a mural? Why is Therru made into a whiny stomp your feet girl? I guess I'll forever be wondering why.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: A Bride's Story, Anime, Gummi Bears, Hayao Muyazaki, It's a Kind of Magic, Kaoru Mori, Labyrinth, Legend, Studio Ghibli, Tales from Earthsea, Tehanu, The Addams Family, The Farthest Shore, Ursula K. Le Guin

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
Published by: Saga Press
Publication Date: 1990
Format: Paperback, 252 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Tenar didn't choose the life she was destined to live, nor did she choose the life that Ged and Ogion offered her, instead she chose her own life, marriage to the farmer Flint and two children, a son and a daughter. A life much like her mother lived in Atuan before Tenar was taken away to serve the Nameless Ones. The wizards might look down on her for choosing the life of a typical female, but it's a life she never thought was in her grasp. It's been twenty-five years since she made her choice, since she moved to Oak Farm on Gont and raised her family. Her children are now grown and gone and her husband is in the ground. But she has no regrets. She has made a life for herself as Goha, a pillar of the community, one whom others turn to. They turn to her when a young girl is left by vagrants badly burned and on the brink of death. Tenar helps save the child's life and takes her as her own. Therru is her third child and as she's so young she takes her to Re Albi when she gets word that Ogion is on his deathbed.

Ogion was like a father to Tenar and she wonders what her life would have been like if she had stayed, if she had learned magic. His final words to her though are in regards to the power residing in Therru and the change that has been wrought in the world. All has changed. Because unbeknownst to Tenar Ged has defeated the evil that was infecting the world, the evil that lead to Therru's disfigurement. There is to be a king in Earthsea again. A king that very much hopes that Ged will be at his side. But Ged has returned to Gont on the back of a dragon, powerless and ill. Tenar must return him to health and hide him from the crown. She had seen them all living at Re Albi, but evil magics push her and Therru away and Ged goes off into the mountains. Back at Oak Farm life returns to normal, or the new normal as it were. Though there is still danger. Those who attacked Therru want her back and other villains aren't very much in favor of the new king and his rule. Will Tenar and Ged be able to defeat the evil on Gont? Or will their age and diminished powers need help from another source?

Almost two decades after The Farthest Shore Le Guin came back to Earthsea with Tehanu. What's interesting in this is not the length of time she took to write it but in that it picks up Ged's story almost minutes after we last saw him. And yet, this isn't Ged's story. This is Tenar's. As a woman I felt far more of a connection to Tenar than I ever did to Ged. Tenar is his balance. The magic of Earthsea is all about balance and equilibrium so therefore it makes sense for Ged to have a strong female counterpoint. Yet I felt that by bringing these two characters together sexually as a couple it almost undid all that came before. It made Tenar's decisions to turn her back on magic and take on the traditional role of a female as just all backstory for when she finally got Ged. As for Ged, he's broken, so she's only allowed to have him because he can no longer be what he was? Yeah. Nope. While after I read The Tombs of Atuan I might have thought what if, sometimes it's far better to have that "what if" never acted on. How many times has the eventual consummation of a relationship destroyed a narrative Moonlighting style? The number is probably too numerous to count, so yeah, I just wish Le Guin hadn't gone there.

In fact, judging by her afterward I think there's a lot about this book she would second guess if she were to write it again. What I find interesting is that what readers seemed to object to most was the diminishment of Ged and the embracing of feminism. Firstly, this isn't Ged's story, so get over it. Secondly, I wouldn't call this book feminist, I would just say that it successfully shows a woman's POV, and given that this is Tenar's book, that makes total sense. I mean, yes, you could call any book with a female lead feminist, but what I particularly love about Tenar is that she embraces the true meaning of feminism, in that you don't need to be militant to be a feminist, you can be a warrior in your own way. You can be a feminist while still embracing the more traditional role of females of hearth and home. She's true to herself, and if that is feminism, well, I'm glad this book is such. Tenar gets the life she never thought she'd have by turning away from magic and that knowledge, and finding different knowledge and truth in herself while being vocal about what it is to be a woman.

The truth that's spoken about being a woman is that it is dangerous to be female. When people talk about living in a society that at this moment doesn't feel safe, the thing about being a woman is that you never really feel safe. And maybe it was being shown this truth that readers objected to. Yes, you can try to harness your power, marshal your resources, but any time you're out walking and you hear something or see someone coming towards you from a distance, you worry. You think, this is danger. With society taking more and more rights away from us and with danger lurking around an innocent looking corner, I think this book needs to be read by more people. It gets into the psyche of what it is to be female, but also, how to live if the worst does happen to you. If you're burned and raped and left for dead. Therru's journey is inspiring. She takes back her power and survives and, in the end, thrives. So once again, if this is considered "feminist" then so be it. This needed to be said, this needed to be seen. And if you're a reader who can't get past a label of "feminism" that doesn't really bring to the forefront the complexities Le Guin is dealing with, than I'm really sorry for you because you're missing out on so much.

Which brings me to Therru. Therru is awesome. But. Yes, you knew that "but" was coming. The problem is Therru's story feels only half told. She is a young girl destroyed by family through violence and fire. She is rehabilitated through Tenar's love. At the end she shows her true power, linking her to a story Ogion used to tell Tenar about a woman who was a woman and a dragon at the same time. Yet her backstory isn't fully explained and her future is left up in the air and is hopefully explained in the final to books in the Earthsea cycle. As for that left unanswered? Her father/uncle, the man who was the most concerned with her of her abusers keeps returning and trying to claim her. Why? Was it because he was drawn to her because of her innate power? Was it because he wanted to silence her forever? Was it because her power scared and thrilled him and that's why he would attack her but also wanted to be near her? The motives are NEVER explained. As for Therru and her relationship to Ogion's story... was she always part dragon? Hence the power drawing those to her? Or was her attack and near consumption by fire what gave her power? Made her have a new affinity for fire? I just feel that Therru even after a couple hundred pages is just as much a mystery as she was at the start and I NEED more of her story.

But then again, I've noticed that Le Guin isn't very deft with handling endings. She tends to rush straight into things and everything ends in a jumble. Here just a paragraph or three of degradation for Tenar and Ged at the hands of a wizard and then Therru and a dragon to the rescue. Literally this book is drawn to a rapid conclusion in only twenty-five pages! And also, I kid not, ends on a cliff. It's like, despite at the time calling this "The Last Book of Earthsea" she already knew there was going to be more and a cliffhanger might be funny. Yeah, cliffhangers are the last bastion of those who are a little bit lazy when it comes to being storytellers. They torture their readers by employing this device, so I guess the fact that she hinted at it but didn't actually do it should be considered a win for us readers? I think my main problem is that Le Guin has created this vast and complex world and yet likes to leave it a little messy and unresolved. Yes, this makes it more realistic, but this is fantasy. Fantasy is allowed to have everything handed to you on a platter with a nice neat bow. Her approach might not be as satisfying, but personally, I could have used a few more answers and a few less "until next times."

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Dragons, Earthsea, Feminist, Ged, Gont, It's a Kind of Magic, Magic, Moonlighting, Rape, Resolution, Tehanu, Tenar, The Farthest Shore, The Tombs of Atuan, Therru, Ursula K. Le Guin, Women

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
Published by: Houghton Mifflin
Publication Date: 1972
Format: Hardcover, 422 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Arren, the young Prince of Enland has come to the island of Roke to speak to the Archmage. He has been sent by his father, who is a wizardly man, to tell the Archmage that magic is dying, Earthsea is in danger. There is a sickness throughout the land, a malaise. Crops won't grow, spells are forgotten, and yet people don't care. On Roke they are ignorant of these changes in Earthsea, being protected by their magics. The Archmage, Sparrowhawk, sees the danger and vows to discover the source. Having grown up hearing the exploits of this great man Arren offers himself as his traveling companion. His sword. It is Arren's greatest desire in life to go on an adventure with his hero, though little does he know that adventures might sound wondrous in song, but are often arduous journeys where your survival is often a question. They leave Roke in Lookfar, sailing to Hort Town. A wizard there, while almost killing them, provides the first clues to the sickness. There is a wizard whose malign influence is tainting the world, trying to upset the balance between life and death. Earthsea depends on this balance, by shifting to the dark the will to live is draining out of the world. The two travelers see this again in Lorbanery, famous for dying silk, but they dye silk no more. Soon the malaise starts to effect Arren and Sparrowhawk almost dies because of his apathy. Yet they are spared once again and the dragons lead them to the final battle between good and evil. Will good triumph and an old prophecy be fulfilled? Or will evil win and strand the two adventurers in the land of the dead?

After how deeply I connected to the second book in this series, The Tombs of Atuan, there was almost no way that the third volume could spark that kind of devotion. But I was willing to have an open mind. Because the truth is, I was wary about The Tombs of Atuan and then it eventually not only sucked me in but won me over. So heading into The Farthest Shore my mind was open, I was ready for the next adventure of Ged and well... I was left cold. Like I was dumped out of Lookfar in some remote inlet and just left there. There were many reasons for this disconnect, the time jump, the earnest Arren, the meager plot, the truth is The Farthest Shore just didn't feel substantial enough when compared to the previous two volumes. I mean they are on land for little if any of the book, not that I'm saying a book set on a boat is boring, just this book set on a boat. Because when they're in the boat they just sit there. Occasionally move from one end to the other, there's the random swimming, oh, and the boring food that at least sustains them... so the whole book is on a boring boat, where not much is happening, they land, there's an angry mob, yell, yell, shout, attack, attack, back in the boat, sail some more, land again, oh look the evil ennui is here too, shout, attack, flee to boat, repeat again and again, until the lassitude infects Arren and he sits in the boat watching Ged die. Yeah, this is one happy book!

The flaw of the book is that Ged isn't the hero. Yes, he wasn't the hero in The Tombs of Atuan, but at least there he felt integral to Tenar's journey, here... here he's just an old man that doesn't really do much and the burden is shifted to the slight shoulders of Arren. When you look at Arren's arc as a whole from naive youth to the future king that will reunite all of Earthsea, it makes you not so hasty to judge him. But this is knowledge obtained after you've read the entire book, so for most of the book you're stuck with the trouble of Arren. Arren is just too naive and his hero worshiping of Ged, it's too much. He's a sycophant. He makes Beatlemania seem tame. It's actually nauseating. Heck, I'm not anti Ged, it's just, because of the timelapse, well, we don't know ALL of his adventures, unlike Arren who probably had a scribe laboriously write them out and have them bound in the finest calfskin. Logically I know that Le Guin wrote Arren to this extreme to contrast with his late apathy of Ged in the boat dying of a spear wound, to show how deep the sickness that has gripped Earthsea really goes, but still. Just no. There's just something about this blind optimism for adventure that is just too naive for me, especially considering how much danger and hate they encounter along the way.

Of course if there was still a connection between the reader and Ged then perhaps Arren's fanaticism could have been overlooked, but there's just too much time between the previous volume and this one. We saw Ged become a wizard and overcome a dark shadow and reunite the halves of the ring of Erreth-akbe but as we learn in Tehanu, that was twenty-five years previously, despite there only being two years between the publication of The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. During that time Ged must have had countless adventures, all known by heart by Arren, but unknown to the readers. We join him as Archmage of Roke, and we no longer know him. He's a stranger. This forces the narrative onto Arren's shoulders, and as I've already said, this doesn't work. Ged was who we started this journey with and it should be through him that we "finish" this journey. Instead he's enigmatic, remote, withdrawn, nothing like what we've seen before. Yes, having already started reading Tehanu I know the whys and wherefores, but the problem with Le Guin's series is that sometimes she is willing to sacrifice aspects of the current story in order to serve the overall story. While this is the way successful series are built, I still want each volume to work on it's own. I want each part of the story to be satisfying, not a placeholder to get to the next arc.

But the other thing I have to wonder is how long does it take to set Earthsea to rights? Because at the end of The Tombs of Atuan the two halves of the ring of Erreth-akbe were reunited and therefore peace was to be restored to Earthsea with the ascension of the rightful king. Um... it's been twenty-five years, literally almost a generation and things have just gotten worse and worse. I know it takes awhile to jump start the whole fixing a world but a generation!?! As I said, having jumped to the next story there are hints at other reasons this is happening, but just for the here and now, well, it's sad and depressing. This great victory for good and Ged and yet he goes off to be Archmage and shuts himself off from the world thinking what, that the world would just right itself? That his work was done and it was time to train up a new generation of wizards? Not only does it seem unfeasible, but it seems wrong of Ged. He literally turned his back on the world and now everything is shit. In fact when it's revealed that Ged knew the dark wizard who was behind the unbalancing of Earthsea, don't you think if he had stayed a little more connected, a little more invested with seeing through this peace he hoped to bring about that all this wouldn't have happened? Just saying, Ged, you dropped the ball and you SO don't deserve the worship of Arren.

Though in the end it was the magic leaving the world and the lassitude taking over Earthsea that made the book lackluster. Because that malaise permeated every page of this book and literally made me not want to pick it up. Whereas I devoured the first two books literally in a couple of days, it almost took me a week to struggle through until I reached the farthest shore. The ennui became a part of me. Perhaps I should tip my hat and say that Le Guin is such a successful writer she made the pervasive mood of the book literally jump off the page and into my life, but that doesn't take into account my desire to just set this book aside and never bother finishing it. If Arren can sit by and watch Ged die, why do I have to sit by and read about it? Why don't I move onto something a little more upbeat, a little less, everyone is going to die and we don't really care one jot. Or I could just sit in this chair and stare at the wall. Walls are nice. Walls are restful. Yes, I might have read this book in the middle of an illness, but I read the other two in the exact same condition. It's rare when I think sleep is the better option than reading. In fact choosing sleep over reading is usually detrimental to my mental health, needing a little escape before bed, but I would totally choose a nice nap over ever having to read this book again.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Wizard of Earthsea, Archmage, Arren, It's a Kind of Magic, Magic, Malaise, Peace, Sycophant, Tehanu, The Farthest Shore, The Tombs of Atuan, Timelapse, Ursula K. Le Guin