I’ve just started reading “A Landscape With Dragons”. Mostly it sits well with me, but there is something I can’t put my finger on that is bugging me about the book. I need to read further and see if I can work it out. Anyway, one of the things he mentions is the use of symbol and its recession from modern-day literature on the whole, and in particular, the changing meanings being attributed to long-accepted symbols.

Having visited the video store on Sunday night to pick up a John Grisham movie-from-the-book that father-in-law had mentioned (by the way, he advises you to just read the book – it’s far better than the movie – “Skipping Christmas”, if you’re interested), I ended up getting *five* DVDs…five for ten dollars, you know! A bargain.

Robin Hood was one of them. The 1938 movie version, to be precise. And what’s more, there was an additional DVD with documentaries about the making of and glorious technicolor and Robind Hood through history etc etc. We previewed them and decided the movie would be fine for the children to watch and the docos would be somewhat lacking in interest-factor, being not much more than interviews with rather stuffy old knowledgeable people.

As I told the children about the documentaries, they seemed Entirely Interested and so I turned my misgivings out with the rain that had been falling steadily all week, and let them watch. This was one time I was going to allow the use of the word *boring*. But I can just say, “I was wrong.” Over the course of two evenings, they watched all the interviews, not fast-forwarding through any!

Today they were rewarded with The Movie.

In one of the near-the-beginning scenes, a cup of red wine was spilled, and stays in the picture for some times dripping to the floor. My mind raced to “A Landscape With Dragons” SYMBOLS We paused the DVD and chatted about red liquid, foreshadowing,  symbols. Could they remember any such instances in the recent television series they watched a lot of? No.

On we watched……until the point at which a candle was extinguished as someone died. We paused and discussed again.

Then we just enjoyed the rest of the movie, with occasional doco-inspired-comments:
*they brought those rocks in from afar*
*those leaves are sprayed green*
*the colours really are amazing, aren’t they*
*that’s not really him climbing that rope*
*there’s that famous horse*

And one heartfelt response from L7:
“This is waaaaaaaaay better than the tv one”

It was certainly more faithful to the story, less sophisticated, legend-ish rather than realistic, with better castle scenes (although the painted backdrops appear fake to the modern eye!), less gruesome and much more funny.