Whatever the value of the polls that have ranked The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) as the greatest book of the century, or even the millennium, it has without question established itself as a classic among a broad demographic that manages to span Ye Olde England tree-huggers to hard core "Dungeons and Dragons" gamers. It was a venture fraught with risk, the stakes having been considerably raised after the commercial failure of the 1978 US$18 million film of the same name. The word was out: the imaginary world of LOTR fans was not to be trifled with. Given the trepidation with which fans approached the film, Peter Jackson has come out pretty well, and the story is likely to be completed.
Attention to certain details of the story has saved the film for many devotees, but on the whole, while superficially faithful to the book -- with the help of many fine performances from the cast -- he has omitted the complex and often tangled belief system that has made LOTR such a great book. It is possibly naive to ever have expected that it could have, but certainly I went to the film with the expectation of seeing something more than swords-and-sorcery adventure, which in its essentials is really no different from the early Schwarzenegger adventure Conan the Barbarian (1982) -- a bunch of funny looking characters set off on a journey on which they endure many adventures, the goal of which is to steal, save, destroy a thing or person, meanwhile having the chance to whack a number of bad guy's dressed in black.
The first book of LOTR, The Fellowship of the Ring tells the story of Frodo, who is left a ring by his uncle, which turns out to be a ring of great power, one on which the fate of the world depends. He must take the ring to Rivendell, a place where the wise and good will deliberate what to do about it. Fearing enormous power of the ring to corrupt even those who use it with the best intentions, it is decided to take the ring into the realm of Mordor, there to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom where it was first forged. Frodo is helped by the wizard Gandolf and other characters, and at every step is pursued by the forces of evil, which seek to overwhelm him. This is a basis for some B-feature with people with funny ears, strange hats, and a pseudo-biblical style of speech, a fact that has also kept the book from academic respectability until very recently.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA
The fact is, much of LOTR could, and in fact has, served as the basis for various adventure games, not least Dungeons and Dragons, which itself has transformed itself to innumerable PCs and an execrable film made in 2000. Its enduring popularity is because it also has very much more, which gives a rich human substance to the story of elves, dwarves and halflings, but most of this has been left out of the film. The whole exercise smacks of a computer game, with the achievement of goals elevated to the highest importance and the tragedy of living in a magnificent world tainted with evil made a barely distinguishable sideline.
A comment made about the recent Harry Potter film comes to mind in this regard: "that the film was too faithful to the book," becoming, in a sense, a visual retelling of the book, falling back on the narrative techniques of books rather than on the visual language of film.
In many superficial aspects, the film is true to the book, so much so that it becomes a trivia quiz for fans, but many of these details can only be lost on those relying only on the film for their first rendition of LOTR. The two-to-three hour format of film necessarily means much is left out, and what is put on screen are the flashy scenes, making spectacular use of modern technology but failing to create a satisfying cinematic experience. This is all the more pity with LOTR given the wealth of talent that it was able to draw upon.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MATA
Elijah Wood deserves great credit for his performance as Frodo, managing to avoid any hint of cuteness in the halflings and in portraying the deepening sorrow and maturity that the hobbit acquires as he struggles with the burden of the ring. Ian McKellen as Gandolf is magnificent, but acting is made secondary to graphic manipulation, so that the technique of "forced perspective" used to give him his great height (and reducing Elija Wood to more diminutive proportions), is also used to represent his massive presence, something that could be more effectively achieved through more conventional means.
The same overuse of effects can be seen in the chase through the Mines of Moria, which becomes a Super Mario obstacle course with characters jumping from tumbling staircases, effectively destroying any more subtle atmospherics. The imperious narrative pushes the story forward at breakneck pace, and there is no time to dawdle over scenes that lack spectacle. Moreover, there is no excuse for the spider-like scurrying of orcs along the walls of Moria, an effect that had my mind jumping straight back to The Mummy Returns (2001), which had the decency to manage such effects in terms unique to itself.
Perhaps one of the most despicable bits of tampering with the story is the bringing on of Liv Tyler in the role of Arwen early on in the film and compressing the complex history of elves and men into an absurd romantic dialogue about who should give up immortality for whom. Obviously Tyler brings considerable star power to the film, but in doing so shows up the greatest flaw of such big-budget features compared with the work of one man's imagination working on material that he cares about intimately, and puts paid to any claim that LOTR the film can make to greatness.
The action is most effective when it works within the simple paradigm of the swords-and-sorcery adventure, and the rivalry between Aragon and Boromir, two men with a claim to mastery of the same city, is convincingly played, though the reason seems to spring more from jock one-upmanship, for the background has been shorn away in the interests of keeping the film under three hours. As it is, there is still plenty of exposition that needs to be done, and with the exception of the Arwen/Aragon scene, it is generally skillfully done.
While it is hoped that the film may bring more people to the books, the film itself is unlikely to satisfy fans of Tolkien's mythopoetic vision, or for those looking for a more down-to-earth fantasy adventure. The fight scenes are too brisk, failing to give characters a chance to display their unique fighting skills -- important to the D&D and PC gamer set -- and the effects are lackluster compared to what is now possible in fight choreography.
Ultimately, Peter Jackson's heroic struggle with LOTR is a magnificent failure. Not all the beauty of the New Zealand landscape, fine acting in the most restricted of circumstances -- complex relationships between characters need to be conveyed in scenes lasting just seconds -- and the rich possibilities of computer graphics can save it from being a pale imitation of the book rather than a work of art in its own right.
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