The Book of Maev

I love Jason Isaacs as an actor, but I really struggle to picture him as Louis. He has such a confident, masculine presence on screen…whereas Louis always struck me as being more in the Woody Allen mould (specifically, the quality Orson Welles objected to, the egotism of making his own neuroses everyone else’s problem). Instinctively, he feels like a better fit for Prior - I bet young Jason Isaacs could have dragged it up beautifully.

Daniel Craig as Joe Pitt however I can completely see, no problems with that whatsoever.

Which is to say, yes, it is hot. The long lingering eye contact is very Daniel Day-Lewis in Last of the Mohicans, which may be the most capital R Romantic movie made in the last fifty years. (And I think Day-Lewis was one of the actors considered for Aragorn - which I can see, though he’d probably have driven everyone mad behind the scenes).

But poor movie Éowyn - no wonder she misread his intentions with this kind of nonsense going on. People have a tendency to read their interactions as totally one sided, but I don’t think that really stands up - he’s very clearly interested by her from the moment they meet…when it gets to the point in the third film where he’s investigating her saddle bags and tucking her into bed, I don’t think Éowyn (or Théoden) can be faulted for inferring romantic intentions.

I actually think movie-Aragorn’s actions make most sense if you just assume he’s a love-at-first-sight person all the time, instead of just with Arwen - he’s like that with the hobbits and Éomer and one could even make an argument for Boromir - and his whole “I have wished thee joy since first I saw thee…” thing with Éowyn would line up with that.

An Aragorn who feels this instant connection with Éowyn and truly, deeply cares for her, works so much better for me, because it makes the way their whole relationship plays out so much more painful on both sides.

Like, how awful would it be to genuinely love someone (platonically but sincerely) and hurt them as badly as Éowyn winds up being hurt by their relationship (and Miranda Otto plays her heartbreak very convincingly)? If Aragorn is half as good a man as Mortensen plays him, that’s the kind of thing that would haunt him for years to come.

Their relationship in the books is a lot spikier - but there’s no version of it where I am not intrigued by the idea of how their relationship played out after the war, because I don’t see any way it could possibly be easy.

Whatever Latin speaker came up with the word Cattus, nailed it.

You look at the words for dog in various languages, and they bear no relation to each other - but whether in English, Irish, French, Welsh, Polish, Dutch, Swedish, German, Russian, or Italian, a cat is a cat (the spelling occasionally varies, but the sound is the same).

If they get knocked out on penalties, I am going to be very annoyed.

On the other hand, I am quite looking forward to watching France tear Paraguay apart, because that was a shameful performance last night, ridden by diving nonsense and blatant fouls. Not to mention a goal disallowed for ludicrous reasons.

Disclaimer: the following post is written by an agnostic with absolutely no expertise in theology.

Maybe, it has been appointed so, that by my loss the kingship of Men may be restored. Therefore, though I love you, I say to you: Arwen Undómiel shall not diminish her life's grace for less cause. She shall not be the bride of any Man less than the King of both Gondor and Arnor.

This quote by Elrond always fascinates me. Fate, the will of Erū Ilúvatar, are facts of life in Tolkien's Middle Earth. Elrond's speculation that Arwen was appointed to bring about the restoration of the kingship of Men is highly probable. It puts Elrond's words into a new light, less that unless Aragorn is king, he is not worthy of Arwen, and more, if Aragorn is not king, then there would be no reason for Arwen to give up her immortality. Arwen's purpose is to give up her immortality and reconcile the race of Men to the Valar and Eldar, which is to be accomplished by marrying the King of Men. If Aragorn is not the King of Gondor and Arnor, then marrying him will not accomplish this goal.

Numenor fell, in large part, because it turned towards worship of Melkor, and away from the Valar and the Eldar. The break between Man and elves was a fall from grace from Man, and the flooding of Numenor is reminiscent of the Great Flood and Noah's arc, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Arwen's role was to reunite Man and elf. Her child with Aragorn, Aragorn's heir, is called Eldarion, and he symbolises that reunion.

Arwen's beauty, and her fate, is often paralleled in text with Luthien, so much so that when Aragorn first saw her, he had been singing about Luthien, and cried out Tinuviel as Beren did.

If we consider Arwen predestined for this fate, then Arwen's beauty itself seems something that was given to her for that purpose. She was made beautiful that the one true king of Men would fall for her at first sight, and that the beauty she possesses will create in her mind and the mind of others parallels between herself and Luthien, from whom she inherited the choice to live or die. She was given Luthien's face because she was chosen to have Luthien's fate.

That said, there is a fair deal of significance placed on Arwen choosing to give up her immortality to be with Aragorn, her decision is described as the "choice of Luthien".

This is reminiscent of the passage in Luke 1:38, where Mary accepts that she will have Jesus.

And Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Arwen as a Madonna figure has already been explored in some degree. Aragorn is the "King of Men", just as Jesus is Biblically considered to be so. However, while Mary heralds Jesus's divinity more than grants it, Jesus is the divine figure, but that he was born to a virgin reveals that divinity, it is Arwen who, descended from the Eldar, is closer to the divine than Aragorn. She is the one whose presence is restoring grace to the Race of Man, and she is the one who is sent to Man to die for them. She, an elf, could have lived an immortal life, but for Man to be redeemed, she has to become immortal, and die.

My theory is that she took this love for Aragorn to be a sign that she was chosen to give up her immortality and make the choice of Luthien, and she agrees to do so as an act of faith to The One. Arwen's contempt for the Numenoreans and how they caused their Fall reveals the depth of her own faith and devotion, and also explains why she would give up her immortality for love, if she believed it to be her appointed duty. Arwen fell in live with Aragorn not on first sight, but on second sight, when she saw his dressed as an Elven King.

"I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive."

It kills the emotional stakes, because Tolkien doesn’t explain any of it until very late on, and the way it’s presented makes Aragorn seem incredibly shallow. (Tolkien may have found falling in love at first sight because someone is beautiful emotionally compelling - he must have, because it shows up in the stories constantly - but I do not, though it’s less irritating in the Silmarillion because the register of the book is so different).

But…the one point where I like Arwen is where her “rage, rage against the dying of the light” side comes out. It’s Tolkien the writer outpacing himself a bit, I think - he positions Arwen as the perfect woman at home (beautiful and essentially passive) and then, for just a moment, something Miltonian (even, dare I say it, Feanorian) slips out.

I kind of think the Aragorn-Arwen romance would be more compelling if he’d leaned into the sense that there was something kind of fucked up about it. That Arwen, fundamentally, does not want to die, does not want to be anything other than an elf, and yet finds herself succumbing anyway.

It’s radically anti-Tolkien, but Arwen as Milton’s Satan, fighting her destiny all the way and furious that it’s been given to her, would be far more interesting to me than the sexy sewing machine*.

Admittedly, I don’t know that you can draw as straight line between the two - there were a lot of strands to the Irish revival. It included people teaching themselves the Irish language, collecting traditional Irish music and stories, founding the GAA to promote Gaelic football and hurling (probably the most successful aspect, to be honest - each year the All Ireland finals in football and hurling are two of the biggest sporting events in all of Europe).

It also included the foundation of a theatre, and the production of overtly nationalistic Irish plays. Now, I happen to think that most of Yeats’ plays are nationalistic bilge (there’s a reason they haven’t been revived), though I have time for Synge.

But it illustrates how potent cultural products can be. Which is a hell of thing for an artist to live with.

Think about how Yeats must have felt when wrote “Did that play I wrote send out men the English shot?”

That’s an awesome responsibility. And one I’m not sure any artist should aspire to. It’s border line immoral.

Jeffrey Wright as Belize in the original broadway production of Angels in America in 1993

Compared to the 2003 HBO miniseries he reprised his role in

I’d also point out that there’s a 10 year gap between Wright’s first appearance in the play, and the release of the film, and I think that inevitably affects the audience’s interpretation.

He would have been in his late twenties when first in the play, versus pushing forty in the film. And I think that particularly lethal, focused anger he expresses in this scene reads differently coming from an older man. Which, to OPs point, isn’t necessarily better or worse - it’s just different. The film version of Belize feels more toned down, like he has been through it in a way the theatre version maybe doesn’t - but that makes sense with an additional ten years (ten years of the AIDS crisis at that).

It’s an incredibly influential performance either way. I’ve seen the play twice, (which is how I realised that the middle section of Millennium Approaches is a bit of a slog to sit through), and Wright’s is the performance that other actors cannot seem to escape. There’s room to manoeuvre with Roy Cohn or Prior or Joe Pitt (though I’ve never seen a version of Louis that could hold the audience’s sympathy), but both the actors playing Belize seemed tied to Wright’s mannerisms and line deliveries.