WOW

That’s my summary of Lord of the Rings. We went Christmas Eve morning. It’s been at least a couple of decades since I read through the books, but what I saw simply blew me away as a very faithful (usually to the letter, always to the spirit) 21st Century film adaptation of a mid-20th Century fantasy novel.

It was the shortest three hours I’ve ever spent.

Ordinarily I’d sprinkle plenty of SPOILER WARNINGS for those few hapless unfortunates who’ve not yet seen it. But instead, through the magic of Movable Type, I can simply use the “More” function to go into the detail of my review. So if you’re interested, do the “More” thing below …

Various thoughts, in no particular order.

The camera work for this film was incredibily dynamic. The camera was always in motion, it seemed, and in action/battle sequences the effect was dizzying — which is appropriate to warfare, and made it seem much less posed and choreographed than most such works.

Sometimes it got to be a little much, as we had one long, panning shot across gorgeous New Zealand countryside or mountains or rivers after another. Sometimes it seemed that director Peter Jackson spent half his budget on helicoptors.

This effect was used, often, to denote passage of both space and time, as the Fellowship marches or paddles from hither to thither. Good, useful stuff, but sometimes, especially toward the third hour, it began to feel a little bit like a series of (marvelous) set pieces, with the intervals between taken up by panoramic equivalents of “Time passes …” cards in a silent film. It’s the only way they could have fit as much as they did into (a mere) three hours, but I began to feel a little exhausted by the end.

The music was fine. It was not as epic and possibly over-blown as it might have been, nor as sweeping as I would have cared for (being of the Old School of Broad, Sweeping, Epic, Over-Blown Film Scores). On the other hand, it supported the action and pace marvelously, so it did its job in an nice, understated fashion.

The purists, of course, begrudge every cut, every alternation. They mourn over Bombadil, scoff at Arwen’s taking over for a half-dozen other elves in the books during her brief showing, and doubtless piss and moan over any other variety of edits and changes from the original.

For all that, there was very little that jarred or felt false. Where certain sequences are expanded, or others are dropped, I generally agreed with the choices. Even if, by the end of the film, I was feeling like we were racing pell-mell from one Big Scene to Another, I do not know how else I would have done things were I in Jackson’s (or the screenwriters’, or anyone else’s) shoes. Taking a very thick, and rich book and fitting it into three hours is going to be a thankless task in the best of circumstances. I think they did an admirable job of it.

The Shire is wonderful. The individual scenes there all work marvelously. There are times when Hobbiton looked a bit too much like a set — everything a little too perfect — but Bag End (inside and out) and everything else there looked like it was directly out of the best interpretations I’ve seen or thought.

Bree was fine (the humans were all a bit scary, but from the perspective of the hobbits, that makes sense).

I thought the Ring-o-Vision was a tour de force. Spectacular.

Yes, I missed Tom Bombadil. But you know what? He’s not really essential to the story, any more than the Barrow-wight was. There’s nothing he adds to the narrative that is necessary, aside from color and a sense of wonder. I miss him terribly, and I’m glad they didn’t try to insert an abbreviated version of him in.

Rivendell has come in for some criticism, but I thought it was great. First of all, as the “Last Homely House of Elrond,” it is suitably small. And it’s fraying, just a bit, around the edges, feeling empty, a tad worn, leaves accumulating on the walks and balconies, galleries ringing empty. The elves are leaving. Their magic fades, even though Elrond remains, his (hidden) one of the Three Rings maintaining the enchantments there. I thought it was great.

The movie plays up, more than the subtlety of the books, the corrupting influence of the Ring. Part of this is the need in a movie to show, not tell. The scenes with Bilbo all rang true. But I thought the best touch was the argument at the Council of Elrond, where the Ring’s influence is clearer by far than in the books. This pays off later, when it’s made quiet clear (without the need for a lot of inner monolog) why Frodo bails out on the Fellowship.

The passage along the western slopes of the Misty Mountains looked great, complete with the spying of the birds. We’re able to skip the battle against the wolves without much trouble. The struggle against Caradhras was okay — it would be difficult to have as much snow involved as in the books — but I loved that everyone, even Gandalf, was sinking down to their knees, while Legolas strode across its surface without sinking.

I’ve read criticism of LotR (the Movie) for being too violent. There are certainly conflicts and battles expanded or inserted in the movie that are greater than what we read of. But Tolkien’s telling a tale more in line with Beowulf than what contemporary moviegoers are looking for. Tolkien skips over Boromir’s final battle with the Orcs. He passes completely over how Saruman imprisons Gandalf. But by showing these in the movie, I don’t think the moviemakers have hurt the story. It’s more appropriate on film to show, not tell. We might have gotten away without the battle of the wizards … but it also provided a short-hand method of demonstrating that, yes, these guys are Very Powerful, and are capable of more than pretty fireworks.

There’s also more personalizing of the battles than in the books. Saruman and Gandalf duke it out. The Cave Troll is a major opponent. The head Uruk-Hai provides a particular bad guy to hiss at (and to provide some sense of small victory in what is generally a very depressing ending (Frodo flees into darkness, Boromir’s dead, Gandalf’s dead, the Fellowship is broken, evil looms from all sides). This is a visual short-hand that works in movies, in a way that Tolkien’s declaiming speeches (“Elendil! Anduril for the Dunedain and the Westernesse!”) would not.

(Indeed, the wise decision was made to keep the singing and poems to a minimum. We get a few snatches of “The Road Goes Ever On and On,” but that’s about it. Wise. I mean, I love the stuff, but it’s a different genre.)

The fights, I think, are excellently done. Really. I’ve read reviews that say otherwise, and damned if I know why, unless it’s because folks can’t follow along every motion and where everyone is standing at every moment. Guess what — that’s reality, and the confusion of these battles is not a sign of poor movie-making, but a sign of the reverse. Speaking purely as a D&D geek, the fight scenes rocked.

Moria was wonderful. While it’s not clear why the dwarves would build narrow bridges and stairs in the middle of bottomless pits (the Bridge, as a defense, makes a certain measure of sense, but not the stairway), there were plenty of scenes that looked like they were ripped right out of my imagination, including the huge caverns supported by forests of pillars, and the chamber where Balin was buried). One of my few regrets here is that more of the chronicle of the dwarves of Moria was not read — one of the most spine-chilling passages in the book (“We are trapped. We are trapped. …”). It probably wouldn’t have worked on film, but, still …

The Balrog was good enough — I don’t think anything could match the dark, shadowy, flaming terror that Tolkien very intentionally avoids describing in detail. But for my money, the Nazgul take the brass ring, so to speak, for sheer, spine-chilling terror. They sniff. They loom. They menace. Every movement is in horrifying slow motion. When they act, they act either bestial in their brutality, or else in ritualistic mindlessness (as in both cases where they draw their swords, first in Bree, then on Weathertop). Frodo’s view of them when he was wearing the Ring was perfect.

I am agog.

And then, zip, we are in Lorien. I knew I had lost some my geekiness when I realized I couldn’t remember the name of the trees that the elves used as bases for their city there. But Lorien was … well, almost too otherworldly. That’s a similar sense from the book, but the place, as a whole, felt too much like a set, not enough like a location. Lorien gets 7.0 out of 10.

Galadriel, though … she was not etherial enough, but she had a passion about her that made up for it. And I thought the scene where she is tested was marvelous — almost verbatim out of the book, and a very terrifying bit of sfx. (Similar to it was when Gandalf lets some of his aura leak out in anger toward Bilbo, earlier in the movie. These are powerful beings, make no mistake of it.) The whole of the Lorien scene was too short, and I found myself missing, terribly, Gimli’s attachment to the Lady, especially after he’s badmouthing her on the way in.

Then zip, off we go again, down the river, past the Big Honkin’ Statues (which were wonderful, but should have had a sentence or two of explanation associated with them), and into the final scenes. Here we play the loosest with the original (much of this actually comes from the first chapter of The Two Towers). My only real regrets here are that we get no sign that Gollum is still on Frodo’s trail — he will be a much more significant character next film, and his very brief mentions in this one will be missed them.

(Peter David, by the way, made the excellent observation a week or two back that we should be very happy this movie was not released a year earlier. Can you imagine a studio executive willing to release a film titled The Two Towers right now?)

Okay, that’s the movie.

The actors were, by and large, wonderful. Regrets are only that, with so much story to advance, we were unable to get much into enough of the characters’ heads. Between the Nine, plus the ancillary characters, it would be impossible — and, to be sure, sometimes Tolkien lets story get beyond the humanity (so to speak) of his players. But the regret is there nonetheless. I would have sat through a five hour movie … really.

Ian McKellen is Gandalf. I had my doubts (I saw him as more of a Saruman, originally), but he is The Man. In many ways, he is here the protagonist, overpowering even Frodo in his humanity and charm and presence. Alternately endearing and terrifying, McKellen does a fantastic job here, physically and dramatically. Not many people could make the final speech at the Bridge at Khazad-Dum ring true. McKellen does.

(I have a special fondness for Gandalf, having played him in a high school production of The Hobbit. I labor under no illusions that I did one-thousandth the job that McKellen does.)

Elijah Wood does a fine job as Frodo. Frodo starts as a jolly gadabout, goes through a lot of rapid maturing, and eventually becomes almost Christ-like in the burden he carries (there are a lot of similarities in emotional tone between Frodo bearing the Ring into Mordor and Jesus carrying his Cross toward Calvary). He’s already showing an etherial tragic sense about him, and Wood pulls it off marvelously.

A word here about the most understated (I certainly haven’t heard a lot of crowing about it recently) technical achievement of the film — the digital “shrinking” of the smaller characters — the hobbits, the dwarves — versus the human/elvish characters. It’s this trick that allows the movie to not have to use Little People, or children, in so many key roles, and, damn, it works marvelously. There are a few scenes early on where Gandalf’s gaze doesn’t quite track Bilbo or Frodo right, but by and large the tech works marvelously, combined with other cinematographic tricks to avoid having to use it whenever possible.

Viggo Mortenson’s Aragorn is the “third lead” of the movie. Aragorn here plays more human than Tolkien’s Heir to the Throne of Gondor, who rapidly moves from being the shady Strider to (willingly) becoming the Lost Heir of Isildur. Mortenson’s Aragorn is a reluctant Heir, for reasons that are hinted at without too much heavy-handedness. His scenes with Liv Tyler’s Arwen are slightly awkward, both because of the nature of the characters’ relationship, and because the scenes are largely composed by the screenwriters (Arwen playing a much smaller role in the books). I missed the reforging of the Sword That Was Broken (if that’s the blade he’s carrying around the rest of the film, I certainly couldn’t tell). Mortenson does a good, if not spectacular, job.

Sean Bean’s Boromir hits every mark. I really like Sean Bean (ever since his role in Goldeneye), and he plays the brave, flawed, but ultimately redeemed character just fine. I’m going to miss not having him in future films, unless they recycle the actor as his brother, Faramir. (A quick look at the IMDB page for the movie indicates otherwise.)

Orlando Bloom’s Legolas doesn’t have much drama, but is a dynamic presence in the action scenes (man, I want a D&D character who can battle in melee with a frickin’ bow and arrow as well as he can). John Rhys-Davies’ Gimli has some great lines, but that’s about it — the character is largely wasted, aside from our learning that he hates elves and is proud of the dwarves.

Christopher Lee plays a marvelous Saruman. The demeanor, the voice, the visage, are all perfect. ‘Nuff said.

Sean Astin’s Samwise is solid, if not particularly inspired (more opportunity for that next time out). The other two Fellowship hobbits, Billy Boyd’s Pippin and Dominic Monaghan’s Merry, are great comic relief (in keeping with their roles in the books).

I’ve already spoken of Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel — my only other comment is that her face kept looking different from shot to shot, as I tried to decide if she looked “elvish” enough. Again, I thought that, with the limited screen time she enjoyed, she did fine. Liv Tyler’s Arwen is fine, even if she doesn’t add much of substance — her actions in the books are made by a number of other elves, and her romance with Aragorn is played up here much more than in the original.

Special notice has to be given Ian Holm as Bilbo. Bilbo’s character labors under the disadvantage here (as opposed to in The Hobbit) of being less than heroic. He is past his prime, he’s been slowly warped-from-true (though not irredeemably) by carrying around the Ring for decades, and serves merely to set wheels in motion. Ian Holm does excellently at all of these, and if he’s not the actor I would have thought of to play this role, he’s who I’ll think of now.

Overall evaluation: 8.9 out of 10.0. I was wildly entertained. I was very impressed. This movie did not change my life, but it enriched it. It enhanced its inspiration. It gives me something to look forward to for two more Decembers.

It is not without flaws. It is not profound. It is not a classic like Lawrence of Arabia or Citizen Kane. But it is a classic like The Wizard of Oz.

Would Tolkien have liked it? I think he would. He’d have missed the music (in prose and poetry) from the original, but he’d have marvelled at what they’ve done with the story as a whole.

I will see this movie again. And someday I’ll get to see it with my friends, and we can all sit and kibbitz and quarrel and enjoy it together.

I will write more, I am sure. But I think that will do for the moment.

And for a closing thought:

“Geeks sit through the credits. Uber-geeks walk out of the theater scribbling notes on their Palm to use in their blogs.”
   — Margie Kleerup, as we walked out of the theater