The Bell family decided to finally try a Lord of the Rings marathon—all three “special extended cuts” in a row. Absolutely no skipping ahead at any time. Bathroom breaks encouraged, but not mandatory. I’m glad we did it (and boy, did we ever do it), but the experience was torturous enough to have me lower my opinion of the movies en bloc. It isn’t exactly the movies’ fault, though. It’s the excruciating marathon itself (eleven hours, give or take) that’s partly to blame. You see, when Peter Jackson’s elephantine epics were first released, there was a year’s space between each installment during which the viewer could take a breather and gird his or her loins for the next one. Only when all of them are endured in one sitting do Jackson’s limitations as a filmmaker become plainly visible. There’s no denying he’s an energetic talent (and producer par excellence) with a keen eye for landscapes and a real sense of grandeur, but he often paints with too broad a brush, coloring each scene with no more than one basic emotion, usually apprehension (“Something draws near—I can feel it.”), gravitas (“Against the power of Mordor there can be no victory.”), or woe (“I wish the ring had never come to me.”). Rarely is there any deviation from those three. Moreover, his roots as a horror director haven’t fully evaporated. Though he occasionally courts notions of considerable philosophical and theological interest (compliments of our man J.R.R.), the accent is primarily on the gore and the carnage. When the Uruk-hai leader licks the blood from his knife after a fresh kill, you are reminded of the director that made Dead Alive. Still, there are scads of genuinely imaginative touches throughout this expansive saga, such as an arrow that’s followed from elf’s bow to orc’s skull in a single subjective shot in The Fellowship of the Ring, an assembly of dark forces that recalls the Nazi rallies from The Triumph of the Will in The Two Towers, and a shower of human skulls in The Return of the King). I’ll never forget the first time I saw the trailer, sitting in my dorm room, prepping for final exams. To me, it will always be the college movie.
Its flaws notwithstanding, I still consider The Fellowship of the Ring the best in the series and one of the greatest adventure pictures of any year, period. It jangles the nerves, tickles the imagination, and makes the heart swell. It’s a fantasy nerd’s dream come true, an epic of ancient tongues, flowing robes, and unexpected poetry (such as when Gimli wistfully recalls, “I asked for a lock of hair—she gave me three.”). The first half hour is unquestionably the high point, beginning with a lengthy idyll in The Shire and culminating in a grand wizard’s duel that even Ralph Bakshi nailed in his 1978 travesty. (Incidentally, this is where the film most closely resembles Star Wars.)
But the wonders do not stop there. The mythical romance between Aragorn and Arwen, the magisterial appearance of the Argonath, the fiery encounter with the demonic Balrog—these don’t merely provide a magnificent thrill exclusive to the cinematic medium, but they also expand and improve upon Tolkien’s original (in which Arwen is little more than a cameo, and the Balrog sequence scarcely covers two pages). All of this is accentuated by Howard Shore’s thunderous score, a rousing magnum opus that owes more than a little to the popular hymn, “This Is My Father’s World.” Andrew Lesnie’s ‘Scope photography (enhanced by liberal amounts of color grading) is more than just beautiful—it temporarily tricks the senses such that we do not question the authenticity of our surroundings. (“Otherworldly” certainly applies in this case, as does “ethereal” and “wraithlike.”) I admit that a lot of this has to do with the staggering gorgeousness of the New Zealand locations, but even so, Lesnie’s work (shot through with cathedral imagery) is frequently astonishing. Of course, in the acting department, the English players rule the day, with the subtly expressive Ian McKellen (what wise and gentle eyes you have, grandpa!) leading the charge. His absence in the second half is keenly felt.
If the acting, costumes, and sets are just window dressing, then the real meat and potatoes—the reason the trilogy, like all good art, will endure the test of time—are hidden just out of view, for this is an essentially Christian undertaking. Mention the name “Middle Earth” and you immediately invoke a kind of systematic theology. If there are demons below, then there must be a God above, and the characters don’t seem to be casting spells so much as offering prayers. Saruman’s “dark satanic mills” are redolent of an oft-quoted Blake poem, and the whole enterprise smacks of robust, militant Christianity (in which evil must always be fought no matter the cost) that will surely offend tender sensibilities. The hippies, of course, responded to the book’s environmental message, identifying with the peaceful, weed-smoking hobbits over the warlike, tree-snatching orcs.
Simply stated, Fellowship endures because it’s myth writ large (with a metaphor about the allure of sin at its center), and as such, it has the uncanny power to stir something deep inside the soul. It also happens to be one of the most detailed productions in the history of the movies (due credit must go to Richard Taylor, who designed the special makeup, creatures, armor and miniatures), with every prop clicking into place with absolute definitude.
In The Two Towers, the emotional ante is increased with the introduction of the wretched, pitiable Gollum, but the film is nearly castrated by its relentless forward momentum—the viewer is never allowed to pause and take it all in. Because the fellowship is now split into separate factions, the narrative requires a lot of laborious crosscutting between characters, and the pace flags. There’s also a curious emphasis on the human characters this time out, a factor that influenced Roger Ebert’s otherwise strong review of Fellowship.
What’s fun are the myriad kingdoms, each with their own music, architecture, and color scheme. One wishes one could have stayed in Rohan for a little while longer, if only to admire the fields, flags, and flowing flagons. There are felicitous touches, too, like the elfin army turning in unison, the solemn march of the Ents, the resurrection of Gandalf the White, and the unshakable image of the Nazgul riding a winged dragon. But how can the film be anything but the weakest in the series if it doesn’t have a beginning or an end?
The Return of the King proves that you can have too much of a good thing—too many battles, too many dangers, too many speeches, too many creatures, too many names, to many places, etc. What was first exhilarating has now become exhausting—expression has now become oppression. At least the color palette is an improvement over the moldy, mossy-looking Two Towers, a film characterized by its darkness.
If you prepare yourself for the fact that you’ll never get to see Sauron materialize, the movie starts being enjoyable, although the battles have permanently lost their sting. I couldn’t keep track of which ones were being fought and where (not to mention why), and the violence became overwhelming. It got so bad I had to leave the room on more than one occasion. Apparently, the endless procession of cruelty aggravated rather than desensitized me.
There are pleasures along the way, like Gandalf’s speech about heaven (“The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass.”), the lighting of the signal fires, the flaming death of Denethor, the chilling scene in which Gollum is reunited with his “precious,” carrying it all the way into hell with him. But Jackson botches the Witch King sequences (probably the most expendable in the entire film) and drags out the denouement interminably.
And yet there is always a supreme amount of satisfaction in seeing a long journey to its finish. The final scenes are poignant and metaphysically sophisticated, and calculated to bring a tear to those still awake in the theater. Though the plot is simply too unwieldy and incident-heavy for Jackson to handle, the glue that holds the film together—the idea of men of the West fighting to the death for spiritual ideals—is a mighty adhesive indeed.
Sean Astin and Ian McKellan take top honors amongst the actors (Astin, bone-tired yet doting, McKellan, stern, stentorian, yet surpassingly gentle), and the art direction has never been better (Minas Tirith, to my delight, resembles nothing so much as a giant wedding cake).
Though my brain was practically turned to mush (I dreamt of orcs and elves that night, I can tell you), I regret little of my Rings experience, and feel no small amount of satisfaction for having scaled what could well be considered the Mount Everest of modern fantasy. How does the saying go? “That which does not kill me…”
