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ariadnes_stringI was going to wait and see The Eagle with my boys, but they aren’t here this weekend, and on impulse, and out of the fear that it wouldn’t be around next weekend, I took myself off to see it this afternoon.
And you know what? Aside from a few really annoying things, I enjoyed the heck out of it. There’s enough mud and shirtlessness to satisfy anyone, and, yes, the surgery scene is worth the price of admission alone. Plus, I am a sucker for windy heaths and snowy mountains.
Plus, there is a rat scene right out of an episode of Merlin
If it is around next weekend, I expect I’ll take the boys and see it again, if only because they will get such a huge kick out of hearing someone actually say “Formate testudo” and people actually making the famous Roman battle tortoise with spears and axes flying all over the place. Not to mention the moat of burning pitch.
**spoilers for the book and the movie**
As expected, Jamie Bell is a perfect Esca. He looks fabulous. He speaks whatever version of Gaelic or Erse or Hungarian they have standing in for ancient Pict with aplomb. He does all the intense staring/ eye-fucking gorgeously. They didn’t cut nearly as much of h/c stuff from the end as I expected, and JB does competent!Esca hauling Marcus through the streams and rocky glens beautifully.
Channing Tatum? I can’t say I’m familiar with his, um, body of work. He can be quite an expressive actor as long as he keeps his mouth shut. Long speeches, however, are something of a problem. But he really does pain, fever and exhaustion far better than you’d expect for someone who looks like an incomplete attempt to carve a man out of a large, square chunk of granite.
The main difference between the movie and the book, and I found this pretty interesting, was the very different pictures the two painted of the relationship between occupiers and occupied, between conquerors and conquered. The movie paints the relationship between the Romans and the Britons as one of hostile and irremediable difference, whereas the book paints a much more fluid (and at times more disturbing) picture of assimilation and accommodation.
For example, whereas in the movie, the attack on the Roman fort comes out of nowhere, and you, as a viewer, are left thinking, who are these crazy-haired people yelling about how unfair the Romans are?, in the book, the attack comes only after Marcus has spent a fair amount of time in the village near the fort, and the person driving the chariot that runs him down and cripples him is someone he has hunted with, and whom he considers a friend.
The situation is then queasily replicated when (again, unlike the movie) Marcus and Esca live with the Seal people for weeks and gain their trust, before (arguably) betraying them by stealing (back) their religious object (aka the Eagle). There's a lot of gray, and fretting over the rules of hospitality in the book.
Which leads to the two things that really bothered me about the movie. First, that Marcus never learns the native language. In the book, he does so immediately upon assuming that first command and actually mostly converses with Esca (and others) in British (as the book makes a point of letting you know). To have him not learn anything makes him seem stupid, or arrogant, or both, in a way that book!Marcus does not.
And second: the return of Guern and the Legionaries who had deserted to have a second pitched battle with the “natives”—with Esca fighting with Roman weapons this time around. Not only did the scene confirm the “savagery” of the Seal People by having them slit the boy’s throat in front of everyone (a direct contrast to Marcus gaining their trust by curing a boy in the book), but it also confirmed that everyone’s cultural identity was absolute and unchangeable (except for Esca, I guess). Both sides are equally ruthless—Marcus, after all, wanted to kill the boy in the first place—and only one can win.
Whereas, in the book, Guern neither dies nor wholly reaffirms his Romaness-- but rather, when offered the possibility of returning to Roman Britain, chooses to stay with his British family. The eagle itself is “buried,” the Ninth Legion will never be reformed, Marcus will never be the soldier he planned to be, and Esca will never return to his tribe—all those identities are things that (must) fade away. And so, at the end of the book, Marcus, who has been dreaming of returning to Italy the whole time, decides to stay in Britain (with Esca, of course).
To be fair, the movie does a little bit of this—including the rat scene mentioned above—but it is all confined to Marcus and Esca’s relationship, everyone else seems stuck where they are.
It’s tempting to ascribe this difference to Sutcliff’s 1950s understanding of the fading of the British Empire (as Roman herself had once faded), and nostalgia for its glory, as compared to our own understanding of the “endless war” of occupation. Sutcliff’s Roman Britain is like the last years of the British Raj; the movie’s Roman Britain is more like the Palestinian territories in the grip of the second Intifada.
And you know what? Aside from a few really annoying things, I enjoyed the heck out of it. There’s enough mud and shirtlessness to satisfy anyone, and, yes, the surgery scene is worth the price of admission alone. Plus, I am a sucker for windy heaths and snowy mountains.
Plus, there is a rat scene right out of an episode of Merlin
If it is around next weekend, I expect I’ll take the boys and see it again, if only because they will get such a huge kick out of hearing someone actually say “Formate testudo” and people actually making the famous Roman battle tortoise with spears and axes flying all over the place. Not to mention the moat of burning pitch.
**spoilers for the book and the movie**
As expected, Jamie Bell is a perfect Esca. He looks fabulous. He speaks whatever version of Gaelic or Erse or Hungarian they have standing in for ancient Pict with aplomb. He does all the intense staring/ eye-fucking gorgeously. They didn’t cut nearly as much of h/c stuff from the end as I expected, and JB does competent!Esca hauling Marcus through the streams and rocky glens beautifully.
Channing Tatum? I can’t say I’m familiar with his, um, body of work. He can be quite an expressive actor as long as he keeps his mouth shut. Long speeches, however, are something of a problem. But he really does pain, fever and exhaustion far better than you’d expect for someone who looks like an incomplete attempt to carve a man out of a large, square chunk of granite.
The main difference between the movie and the book, and I found this pretty interesting, was the very different pictures the two painted of the relationship between occupiers and occupied, between conquerors and conquered. The movie paints the relationship between the Romans and the Britons as one of hostile and irremediable difference, whereas the book paints a much more fluid (and at times more disturbing) picture of assimilation and accommodation.
For example, whereas in the movie, the attack on the Roman fort comes out of nowhere, and you, as a viewer, are left thinking, who are these crazy-haired people yelling about how unfair the Romans are?, in the book, the attack comes only after Marcus has spent a fair amount of time in the village near the fort, and the person driving the chariot that runs him down and cripples him is someone he has hunted with, and whom he considers a friend.
The situation is then queasily replicated when (again, unlike the movie) Marcus and Esca live with the Seal people for weeks and gain their trust, before (arguably) betraying them by stealing (back) their religious object (aka the Eagle). There's a lot of gray, and fretting over the rules of hospitality in the book.
Which leads to the two things that really bothered me about the movie. First, that Marcus never learns the native language. In the book, he does so immediately upon assuming that first command and actually mostly converses with Esca (and others) in British (as the book makes a point of letting you know). To have him not learn anything makes him seem stupid, or arrogant, or both, in a way that book!Marcus does not.
And second: the return of Guern and the Legionaries who had deserted to have a second pitched battle with the “natives”—with Esca fighting with Roman weapons this time around. Not only did the scene confirm the “savagery” of the Seal People by having them slit the boy’s throat in front of everyone (a direct contrast to Marcus gaining their trust by curing a boy in the book), but it also confirmed that everyone’s cultural identity was absolute and unchangeable (except for Esca, I guess). Both sides are equally ruthless—Marcus, after all, wanted to kill the boy in the first place—and only one can win.
Whereas, in the book, Guern neither dies nor wholly reaffirms his Romaness-- but rather, when offered the possibility of returning to Roman Britain, chooses to stay with his British family. The eagle itself is “buried,” the Ninth Legion will never be reformed, Marcus will never be the soldier he planned to be, and Esca will never return to his tribe—all those identities are things that (must) fade away. And so, at the end of the book, Marcus, who has been dreaming of returning to Italy the whole time, decides to stay in Britain (with Esca, of course).
To be fair, the movie does a little bit of this—including the rat scene mentioned above—but it is all confined to Marcus and Esca’s relationship, everyone else seems stuck where they are.
It’s tempting to ascribe this difference to Sutcliff’s 1950s understanding of the fading of the British Empire (as Roman herself had once faded), and nostalgia for its glory, as compared to our own understanding of the “endless war” of occupation. Sutcliff’s Roman Britain is like the last years of the British Raj; the movie’s Roman Britain is more like the Palestinian territories in the grip of the second Intifada.
