Brief Watchmen Review and 'Mediaevalism'

A.

Form and substance are not divorced; 'it isn't as important how you say it so long as you say it' only rings with the tiniest bit of the truth, and just about anyone with sense knows the full truth. I'm particularly aware of this in light of the historical Church - the grace of God conveyed in the Eucharist is never, ever divorced from the particular form it takes.

The same is true, in an extended sense, for movie renditions of books. In the past, I have been one of those persons (and hear these persons often) who complain about movies that aren't 'just like' the book upon which they are based. Of course they aren't, and they won't be; the sheer fact that one thing is a movie and the other thing a book implies two different ars with different ways of communicating. Now, there is such thing as using the movie medium to murder a good book, because there is a sacramental connexion between the book and the movie that embodies a 'pointing back toward' the book - and no lover of the written word desires to ever see this sort of tragic murder take place. However, the very media - film and print - embody messages very different, in their very form.

With all this said, Watchmen was an okay film. It was decently done, and it did reference the book satisfactorily. With this rendition of Watchmen (that is, a rendition of the book), I think Snyder did as good a job as anyone cramming in the book's vast 'essence' into a three-hour movie. As would be expected, sadly, there were a few foul-plays: characters were saying flat, corny things out of character; some of the condensed plot elements didn't make complete sense; and the end of the movie dragged. All in all, though, it's a captivating tale in film, and it may serve as a sort of 'sign' that drives a good many persons into the novel itself.


B.

Because I reminded myself of the poem in the last entry . . .


'Mediaevalism' by G.K. Chesterton

If men should rise and return to the noise and time of the tourney,

The name and fame of the tabard, the tangle of gules and gold.
Would these things stand and suffice for the bourne of a backward journey,
A light on our days returning, as it was in the days of old?
Nay, there is none rides back to pick up a glove or a feather,
Though the gauntlet rang with honour or the plume was more than a crown:
And hushed is the holy trumpet that called the nations together
And under the Horns of Hattin the hope of the world went down.

Ah, not in remembrance stored, but out of oblivion starting,
Because you have sought new homes and all that you sought is so,
Because you had trodden the fire and barred the door in departing,
Returns in your chosen exile the glory of long ago.
Not then when you barred the door, not then when you trod the embers,
But now, at your new road's end, you have seen the face of a fate,
That not as a child looks back, and not as a fool remembers,
All that men took too lightly and all that they love too late.

It is you that have made no rubric for saints, no raiment for lovers.
Your caps that cry for a feather, your roofs that sigh for a spire:
Is it a dream from the dead if your own decay discovers
Alive in your rotting graveyard the worm of the world's desire?
Therefore the old trees tower, that the green trees grow and are stunted:
Therefore these dead men mock you, that you the living are dead:
Since ever you battered the saints and the tools of your crafts were blunted,
Or shattered the glass in its glory and loaded yourselves with the lead.

When the usurer hunts the squire as the squire has hunted the peasant,
As sheep that are eaten of worms where men were eaten of sheep:
Now is the judgment of earth, and the weighing of past and present.
Who scorn to weep over ruins, behold your ruin and weep.
Have ye not known, ye fools, that have made the present a prison.
That thirst can remember water and hunger remember bread?
We went not gathering ghosts; but the shriek of your shame is arisen
Out of your own black Babel too loud; and it woke the dead.

-r