In Reply To

Tolkien at times wrote in terribly vague and abstract terms. It is difficult to represent the ethereal or spiritual in a visual medium without looking silly; your complaint. I think Tolkien writes specifically about shadows and something vague in the wind. And that's all you get to work with. What do you do - literally play Dust in the Wind by Kansas over a scene with a dust devil? There is simply nothing grounded, nothing concrete for a screenplay writer to grab onto. Nothing will satisfy and it will usually look unimaginatively literal. Writers of original material for this kind of thing really could do better. They might say "I wanted to leave it open to the reader's [or viewer's] own interpretation." When I hear that, I hear cop-out.