A film can have a "mythic" look and feel to it, but when translating a written myth to screen, you're inevitably going to lose something due to the requirement that all visual details be nailed down. To quote the article again:Passdagas the Brown wrote:It's a good review, and sums up some of my feelings (though I disagree strongly with the assertion that when myth goes from the page to the screen, it becomes "fact," and that this automatically diminishes it - there are excellent filmmakers out there, IMO, who are able to maintain the flavor and essence of myth, without degrading it to the degree that PJ has). After all, by her argument, one could conclude that the "written" myth is also a degraded and more "factualized" form of the "oral" myths of our ancestors. And while one could make a case for that, I don't think it's a strong one. I also disagree with her objections to the many plots left unresolved, as I didn't have a problem with that. But generally, she makes some important points.
When you commit a scene to film, you collapse all the myriad possibilities it offers down into a single point of visual, aural, and temporal actuality. Tolkien's argument against allegory applies here--the viewer, instead of being free to apply his or own concepts to the scene, is suddenly forced by the filmmaker to visualize things in the one particular way that he intends.the filming of any given scene puts it into the particular: into one specific setting of landscape, weather, lighting, music, staging, blocking, and so forth
Of course, for total applicability you shouldn't tell a story at all--just let everyone imagine their own! It's a continuum, and each point has its own benefits and drawbacks.