FINALLY.
Phew. 
I’ve read the book, and I really, really disliked it. In my brain it was all winge winge winge and too much like religious politics today – you aren’t listening to me, no you aren’t listening to me, I’m right, you’re wrong, I’m scared, fight fight fight – and it went on and on and on. I felt it was a lot like Arthurian Desperate Housewives – if they stopped being dishonest and manipulative and scared and just talked to eachother, everything would have worked out fine, no-one would have died, and a very long book would have been a happy 300 pages shorter and I wouldn’t have had to spend so long shouting at the characters for being stupid and not listening to eachother.
But the film was awesome. I loved it. I loved all the priestess stuff. I loved the character of Morgaine, I loved the medievalness, the cheesy painted sets, all the cast were fab, loved loved loved it. It was gorgeous, it was realistic, it was well done…. Sigh. I really didn’t expect to like it so much.
I doubly liked Morgaine after I twigged the gorgeous actress also played Nina Broderick in Scrubs. This is her. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDOXLpqdl7A%5D
But it’s great – readers, go forth, que up thy Netflix and watch thee Mists of Avalon.
Here’s the beginning on Youtube to get you started. It comes with additional Portueguese Subtitles, so you can learn as you have fun. Yay!!!
‘Arthurian Desperate Housewives’… LOL! Never thought of it like that before! Will def try & check out the film 🙂 xx
My thoughts on the book and film are at complete opposites to yours. I found the film version of Morgaine to be whiney and very un-priestess like most of the time. Morgause was much more vicious in the film than in the book and overall, it felt like they took a book that leant towards feminine perspective and turned it into a patriarchal male dominated film that stripped the female characters of their deeper layers, making them shallow. The women are either catty and kniving with their own agendas or they’re portrayed as weak, whiney and helpless. They turned Avalon into an island of stone and completely made it seem that Morgaine spent the rest of her life cast out of Avalon and living in a monastery. The book had its flaws, but I liked it better because it showed the various facets of the characters, something I appreciate is challenging to do in a film, but not impossible. Depends on how it’s done.
I like both in their ways, but I’m not married to either. I’ve often said that someone like Peter Jackson needs to create a big screen version that is truer to the book. If nothing else, he would get the cinematography right!
Exact opposites – I agree Morgause was so much more bitchy in the film, but in my opinion everyone else was scaled down a bit and less calculated and wingey than the book. And I understand the island of stone thing, because I am sure when American audiences think of spiritual england, they think of Stonehence, which is all about the stones.
He’d get the cinematography right for sure! But he likes to mess a lot with his story lines too… I don’t think we’d get much better. He’d need to put loads more epic confrontations and CGI in there to be a happy chappy.