So the film reminded me of one particular session in my Nature Writers class. We were discussing e. e. cummings' "In Just" when one of the girls in my class found that the poem took on deeper shades of meaning--and was way creepier--when she read it in the voice of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings films. Imagine the desperate, schizophrenic, terrified, gritty voice of the balloonman uttering the following lines
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
(To illustrate her version of the poem, she drew the picture above)
This reading always made me wonder if Gollum and the baloonman are similar in some other way, since the voice of one seems to lend insight to the character of another. When the poem is read as cummings wrote it, pausing at the larger spaces and hurrying through words squashed together, it seems that the children are moving with the speed of youthful excitement, but the (lame/queer old/ goat-footed) baloonman trudges behind with the determination of a killer in a horror movie. No matter how fast the children run, he knows he will catch them. He whistles eerily as he goes, confident he will get what he is after in the end. The poem itself does not indicate that the baloonman is moving at all--I didn't get that idea until my classmate read in in Gollum's voice. Now I picture the baloonman following the children as Gollum follows his Precious. And what is the baloonman's Precious? It's dancing, laughing children in springtime. It's innocence.
and
the
goat-footed
baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
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