quote from Ursula K. Le Guin

I expected that the greatest difference between the book and the film might be a difference of pace; and it is...

Watching once again the wonderful old film Chusingura, which takes four hours to tell the (comparatively) simple story of the Forty-seven Ronin, I marveled at the quiet gait, the silences, the seemingly aimless lingering on certain scenes, the restraint that slowly increases tension till it gathers tremendous force and weight. I wish a Tolkien film could move at a pace like that. If it was as beautiful and well written and well acted as this one is, I'd be perfectly happy if it went on for hours and hours.... But that's a daydream.

And I doubt that any drama, no matter how un-whiz-bang, could in fact capture the singular gait that so deeply characterizes the book. The vast, idiosyncratic prose rhythms of The Lord of the Rings, like those of War and Peace, have no counterpart in Western theatrical writing..

So all I wish is that they'd slowed down the movie, every now and then, even just held still for a moment and let there be a rest, a beat of silence.... 

from "Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord the the Rings" (106-07)