The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
                      2001

 

Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood

Director: Peter Jackson Writers: J.R.R. Tolkien, Frances Walsh,  Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson Note: Winner of many BAFTA awards, including Best Picture. Nominated for 13 Oscars in 2002. Setting: Middle-Earth, at the end of the Third Age Cast: Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee,  Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, Viggo Mortensen, John Rhys-Davies, Liv Tyler, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood,  and Alan Howard. The Story: When Hobbit Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring of Power, he is forced to leave his home in The Shire and embark on a quest to destroy the ring by taking it to Mount Doom in the heart of Mordor.

Why I like it: Because it is full of history (even though it is fantasy) and heart.  Because the movie is a worthy representation of the book.  Because I like the way Strider fights Orcs.

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Review of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”  Like many people, I discovered The Lord of the Rings in my teens and like many people, was profoundly affected by it.  I reread it several times over the next decade.  Its effect on my psyche was deep, encouraging my passion for languages and for medieval history.  Yes, it’s fantasy, but I learned more about history and historicity from that book than from any other single source. Previous film or radio versions of The Lord of the Rings hadn’t impressed me.  They tended to make the Hobbits too cute and the non-Hobbit plotlines tended to fade into the background, so that instead of the history of the fall of the Third Age of Middle-Earth, we got the Adventures of Frodo. Could Peter Jackson do better?  I doubted it, but he could and did.  A movie of which I hardly dared to have hopes at all not only exceeded my greatest desires, but exceeded my imagination.  So, putting aside all rational considerations for a moment, this movie was not only good, it reduced me to wordlessness except to say, “When can I see it again?” But I can articulate some of the reasons I think it is a superb movie.  The first reason is a good understanding on the part of the screenwriters and the director, Peter Jackson, regarding what was important in the story and what was not.  The features that are intrinsic to the novel were retained and even exaggerated, especially with characterization: the wisdom of Gandalf, the innocence of Frodo, the faithfulness of Sam, the courage of Aragorn.  With this went appropriate casting of actors suited to each part and each with considerable acting talent.  This is a movie in which different characters of different races move differently, and each actor reflected that consistently. The next skillful bit of movie-making magic was to successfully recreate Middle-Earth.  Partly this was done through visual effect - the scenery of New Zealand made an excellent backdrop for the dramatic and often complex sets: the cosiness of Bag End and of Hobbiton, the airiness of the Elvish realm of Rivendell, the sylvan majesty of starlit Lorien, and the jagged darkness of Mordor and Orthanc. Sometimes a detail of unspoken business, or a prop or background device made the sense of reality greater.  Bilbo’s stone trolls near Weathertop were never mentioned, but they leered over a significant scene.  Hobbit’s large fuzzy feet were taken for granted, never unduly emphasized by the camera.   Aragorn’s heirloom ring of Barahir was visible on his finger, but never mentioned.  Boromir may have been tough and graceless, but wore delicate embroidery on his sleeves, over his shirt of mail. Visuals were only part of the illusion, however.  The use of the Sindarin Elvish language, the scenes from Middle-Earth’s history, and other allusions kept alive the sense of divergent cultures that were much broader and deeper than anything we ever saw.   The Hobbits are homey and familiar as an introduction to Middle-Earth, followed by the Men of Bree and of Gondor - by turns friendly and frightening.  Then the elegant Elves of Rivendell, welcoming to strangers; and the magisterial Elves of Lorien, more remote and consequently more dangerous. The villains were convincingly evil.  The Ringwraiths were eery with their high-pitched screams, and though Orcs seemed overdone in their ugliness, it is a fair artistic interpretation considering that Jackson had violence codes to contend with and was wise to avoid anything that might imply the heroes’ wholesale slaughter of human-like beings.   I preferred the more insidious hints of evil such as the Ring’s corruptive influence at the Council of Elrond, when Elves, Men and Dwarves began arguing among themselves just as Sauron would wish, rather than uniting against him; or the sight from atop the Tower or Orthanc of the trees falling in darkness on the ground far below. Turning a long book into a movie involves considerable rewriting, and usually this was done effectively.  Events were speeded up, and happened more quickly.  Conversations that took pages in the book happened in a few brief lines, and, mercifully, most characters and places were given only one name rather than several each. One of the most obvious changes was to take the role of Glorfindel and transfer it to Arwen.  Since she will marry Aragorn in the end, it seemed fair enough to give her a noticeable role in the first of the three movies, and I found her considerably more interesting in the movie than in the book, both in herself (offspring of a line of powerful warriors) and in her role as the first Elf to appear onscreen.  She made her Elvish lines suitably beautiful speech. Some touches exceeded the book, such as having the Ring, at the Council of Elrond, recite the “one ring to rule them all” rhyme in the black language of Mordor, or to call aloud the names of those it wished to address and corrupt, particularly near the end of the movie, where it called twice to Aragorn by name, and then, failing to corrupt him so easily, addressed him as Elessar. So the movie captured for me the strength and power of the book, and its lapses tended to be the few places where the book itself failed to impress me.  I always found the Balrog to be an anti-climax with or without wings, and so he was here as well.  I would have liked to see a Galadriel who could inspire awe and love in me as she does in the other characters, but found Cate Blanchett’s version to be an enigma just as she was in the books. This is the first movie I have seen in decades where the heroes smoke and the villains do not, which in itself is a sign of a movie with a mindset that is foreign to our own time and place.  For the first time in year, I think a movie has received an Oscar nomination that deserves it. February, 2001

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