Subject: Review: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001)

From: Shane Burridge <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 19:44:40 -0000

The Fellowship of the Ring  (2001) 178m 

Like many other kids in high school, I became absorbed in Tolkien's 'Lord of 
the Rings' trilogy.  In fact I was so taken by it that I adapted my own 
320-page homage in comic strip.  I can't really explain the trilogy's 
phenomenal popularity, but I do know that the thing that hooked me at 15 
years old was the pedigree of the product.  Here was one of the few books 
you could read as a teen which included such fare as dwarves, magical rings, 
and monsters - a sophisticated literary package born from a supposedly 
childish genre.  It was grand, epic stuff that appealed to the kid inside 
all of us, and now Tolkien's fantasy cycle can be read as a blueprint for 
countless imitations - the naïve hero/magical 
token/quest/confrontation-with-darkness plotline is rarely strayed from in 
the fantasy fiction that has since followed. 

Then, too, there was BAD TASTE, the Peter Jackson film I saw some years 
after reading LOTR.  Prior to the film's opening at the Auckland Film 
Festival, a scruffily-dressed Jackson shuffled on stage after being 
introduced by the Festival co-ordinator.  This wasn't terribly surprising - 
New Zealanders don't subscribe to a notion of 'celebrities' being any 
different to most other folk.  As if to confirm this stereotype, Jackson 
leaned into the microphone, said "Uh, yeah, if you're gunna throw up try not 
to hit the guy in front of you" and then shuffled offstage again to the 
sound of laughter and some applause.  He was only half joking.  Audience 
members *had* been vomiting at the premiere - a reputation of the film 
perpetuated by one friend of mine who gave away barf bags at his theater's 
ticket counter.  Jackson disappeared from the auditorium leaving me to think 
"Who *is* this guy?".  I had already known that BAD TASTE had been a labor 
of love patched together by Jackson and friends on a minimal budget over a 
few years' worth of weekends, and I enjoyed the film on that basis alone - 
it was an 8mm home-movie buff's dream project finally realized.  I assumed 
that it would be Jackson's sole project, but of course the rest is history.  
Who would have thought that the laconic Wellingtonian on stage that night 
would have gone on to be nominated for an Oscar and then pulled off one of 
the biggest coups in filmdom - directing the long-anticipated screen version 
of LORD OF THE RINGS. 

There were no shortage of LOTR fans in the film industry who wanted to see 
the book on the big screen since its first publication.  Among those 
associated with the project at one time or another were talents as diverse 
as Stanley Kubrick, John Boorman (he made EXCALIBUR instead), and even The 
Beatles (an intriguing idea which would have been fun even if the result 
couldn't have possibly been any good: Paul and Ringo were to play Frodo and 
Sam, George was to be Gandalf, and John wanted to play Gollum!)  The most 
logical way to approach the task of adaptation was to film each volume of 
the trilogy as a separate work, but this was easier said than done - the 
only other film-maker to produce a version of LOTR was animator Ralph 
Bakshi, who in 1978 had gotten as far as squeezing the first half of the 
story together into one movie, a decision that infuriated audience members 
who were expecting the entire book (in one New York screening seats were 
torn up!).  When Jackson got down to finally putting the trilogy onto 
celluloid he opted to shoot the three films back-to-back and stagger the 
release dates, saving both time and money.  Filming on location with a New 
Zealand crew and post-production studio wasn't just cost-effective: it was 
literally the only way the film could have been made. 

It wasn't only the scale and length of the story that had deterred 
film-makers previously, but also the logistics and expense of creating the 
variety of landscapes and lifeforms of Tolkien's fantasy milieu.  These may 
have seemed fittingly 'epic' obstacles, but it was the more basic problem of 
constantly integrating hobbits with men that proved one of the major 
stumbling blocks in past attempts at film production.  As 'halflings' are 
basically half-sized men, distinct from the dwarves they sometimes keep 
company with, it would have been inappropriate to cast real life 'little 
people' (to keep it politically correct) in their roles.  However, with 
21st-century advances in CGI, Jackson was not only able to recreate 
convincing monsters and fantasy landscapes, but was also given the means to 
place 'half-sized' men alongside full-sized adults within the same frame. 

And finally, there is the question of interpretation.  This may seem less 
daunting for the producers than it is for audiences; for are there any among 
us who have not seen a filmed adaptation of a book and felt disappointed 
that it didn't look the way it had first been imagined?  And in the Ring 
Trilogy, there is a lot to imagine.  In some cases it may be safe to go for 
a generic image (The Black Riders appearing as black silhouettes, for 
example) while in others it might be worth taking a conceptual risk.  Just 
going by the book leaves some room for embroidery, and Tolkien's 
descriptions often promote different images in the minds of different 
readers.  The Balrog, a monster that makes a brief but memorable appearance 
in 'The Fellowship of the Ring', is described as a sort of shadow with wings 
(I'd always pictured it looking like the mountain demon in FANTASIA), but 
appears as a more three-dimensional manifestation in Jackson's version.  
Remarkably, and perhaps because of a fusion of images that are generic, 
imaginative, and by-the-book, THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING really does look 
how the book "should", and I would think few Tolkien fans would be 
displeased with it (after laboring for a year on my comic I knew how 
difficult these issues of interpretation could be - Jackson has a photocopy 
of it somewhere - and found it easier to assume that the way I imagined 
everything was going to be the same way everybody else did). 

While we have only FELLOWSHIP to view at present it is a certain indicator 
of the films to follow.  The most consistently exciting of the three 
volumes, 'Fellowship' begins several decades after Tolkien's earlier book 
'The Hobbit' left off (we would hope that anyone planning a film version of 
this prequel would get Ian McKellan and Ian Holm to reprise their character 
roles of Gandalf and Bilbo for the sake of completeness).  The power of the 
Dark Lord Sauron has been reawakened after an era of peace and a 
representative group of the free races of Middle-Earth (dwarves, men, elves, 
halflings) are dispatched to take the key to his power - a magical ring - to 
the heart of his domain in order to destroy it. 

Jackson's film sees the book brought to vivid life, and makes the old and 
archetypal seem revelatory and new.  Some story material has been pruned to 
accommodate the cinema translation, but writing novels and writing 
screenplays are two different arts, and the editing works in favor of the 
film experience (I always thought the chapter with Tom Bombadil was a hiccup 
in the first book anyhow).  While some characters are excised or reduced in 
the film, the roles of Arwen and Saruman get beefed up.  You can already 
sense the strategy of the screenplay molding the arc of the book to audience 
expectations: the romance of Aragorn and Arwen is highlighted so that their 
wedding at the trilogy's conclusion will seem more of an ante-bellum reunion 
and less of an arbitrary decision; meanwhile Saruman is being groomed to 
represent the Dark Lord by proxy, and is established as the most visible 
enemy of the Fellowship (in the trilogy there is no final confrontation with 
Sauron, and we know how audiences love to see the villain get his 
comeuppance in the final reel).  These roles are ably played (by Liv Tyler 
and Christopher Lee, respectively) and add to the varied cast that brings 
FELLOWSHIP to life.  The performances cannot escape mention: Elijah Wood, 
Sean Astin, Orlando Bloom, McKellan and Holm inhabit their characters 
utterly, creating a depth of 'humanity' that prevents the film from becoming 
nothing more than a smorgasbord of effects technology.  The one-on-one 
moments between Bilbo and Frodo are just as involving as the film's many 
dramatic action scenes (the whole 'Moria' chapter is a show-stopper).  The 
film is a fantasy; yet it is real, just as real as the geography of many of 
its epic landscapes.  The menace of the dark forces is persuasive, and the 
One Ring impresses itself as wholly malevolent.  When Boromir  (Sean Bean) 
weeps for 'his people' at the end of the story we believe his conviction, 
just as we are ready to believe in the history of this entire world (this is 
revealed effectively throughout the narrative in stunning flashbacks, and it 
doesn't hurt that we get three hours of immersion into the story, either).  
We accept it because Jackson never tips us a wink and jolts us out of the 
story - he treats the tale as seriously as the characters within it. 

I imagine there will be two types of nitpicking performed upon this film.  
Firstly, there will be the Tolkien cultists who will complain that somewhere 
in the film they heard a character mispronounce an Elvish consonant - 
although they would do better to notice some of the subtle, unspoken 
detailing that demonstrates this film was made by those who care (Legolas 
can stand on snow; the Uruk-hai wear the White Hand as warpaint; the hobbits 
rest in the shadow of three petrified trolls) and remember that it is nigh 
impossible to adapt books for the screen in their entirety (I can think of 
only one offhand that succeeded, and that was James Dickey's slim novel 
'Deliverance').  The other nitpickers will be film critics - God forbid one 
of them should be crossbred with a Tolkien fanatic - and in this area I'm 
sure there will be some grumbles about narrative or miscasting.  My personal 
peeves are so minor I'm almost embarrassed to mention them - but I did find 
that bucolic pseudo-Celtic tootling on the soundtrack distracting (it got an 
Oscar for TITANIC, so why not?); the comic relief offered by Merry and 
Pippin falls flat, but is at least short-lived; and the Black Riders make 
squeeching noises that sound too much like the pterodactyls in old 
Hanna-Barbera cartoons.  And if I had to pick a vote for miscasting, I'd go 
for Cate Blanchett, who appears hell-bent on making her Elvish queen 
Galadriel as mysterious and aloof as possible, short of waving her arms and 
making "wooo-ooo" noises. 

It's good that my only quibbles are paltry: it's a clear indicator of how 
satisfying the film really is.  FELLOWSHIP is a faithful retelling of a 
modern classic; a fine work of cinema that whets our appetites for the next 
two films, in which we can look forward to seeing Gollum, Shelob, 
oliphaunts, ents, Helm's Deep, and Mordor.  There will be the usual glut of 
trading cards, picture books and sneak previews for those who can't wait, 
and want to catch a look ahead of time.  I want to see Parts 2 and 3 even 
more badly than that, which is why I'm content to stay ignorant until they 
reach the cinema in their own good time. 

[email-masked]

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