Ring Ring... musings on LOTR

[Tabouli]

Ah!  Back to my delightfully squalid flat once more, having seen the famed LOTR last night (opening night in Australia, sigh.  Is there some good reason behind these staggered international release dates lark??)

Well (and SPOILER WARNING, strong for those who haven't seen the film, mild for those who haven't read the book).

Some films I walk out of with a definite opinion, good or bad, some films I walk out of with my mind a blur of no concrete opinion.  FOTR-LOTR was of the latter category.  This tends to happen for me a lot more when I'm watching a film of a book I have read: I get too fixated on looking at how the film-maker has interpreted the book to come up with an assessment of the film as a film.  I take the film to pieces, weigh the set, the actors, the script, the soundtrack in my hands and muse on each, instead of being able to comment on it as a whole.  I also gather a little collection of musings on aspects that really made an impression on me.

One such thing was PJ's depiction of the power of the Ring, which I thought was interesting.  He's taking the 'drug of addiction' angle, a good one to use in a film where the struggles of the Ringbearers need to be depicted visually.  A friend of mine once commented that by the end Frodo is a washed out old junkie, and I thought this quite an inspired analogy... Bilbo kicks the habit but with difficulty; Gollum, a much longer-term user, is ruled by his cravings until the end of his days; the Nazgul are slaves to their addiction, and so on.  On-screen we therefore have classic withdrawal symptoms - Frodo breaking out in a sweat, wracked by the desire to put on the Ring, even though his rational mind knows it only makes him more vulnerable, Frodo being carted off to Rivendell blank-eyed and stiff and staring at a world no-one else can see (all those 60s flower children sigh reminiscently?).  Hmm.

Wasn't as sure about the hallucinatory wraithworld Frodo enters when he puts on the Ring (where he evidently cannot see where he is going etc.etc.), though.  Effective, but um, doesn't that make the Ring more or less useless as a tool of concealment?  How did Bilbo manage to sneak back into Bag End after his disappearance if all he could see was wraithish shapes and the Eye?  Kind of scuppers the idea of filming The Hobbit (speaking of which, I LOONishly noted that invisible Bilbo had no shadow when he snuck home... what of the famous line "may your shadow never grow less"?).  Wouldn't wraithified but still functional have done the job?

As for the script, I agree wholeheartedly with those who chimed in with their jealous whinges.  How is it that HP, which actually *is* funny, got so much of the original humour chopped out, whereas LOTR, a solemn tome if ever there was, managed to slip in quite a few laughs (mostly at Pippin)?  Huh.  Yup, sad to say, I thought LOTR's script was far superior to HP's, aside from the silly "Let's hunt some orc" Hollywood touch (millimetres away from "Let's kick some butt"... in Tolkien?  Ick.)  Though I can't help thinking someone who'd never read the book might have been struggling to figure out and remember all the characters' names.  O well.

(Tabouli resists the temptation to dwell darkly on the omission of Tom Bombadil, and, indeed, the entire Old Forest sequence.  Hmph)

Acting?  Y'know, I could feel a few parallels between the HP and LOTR leads.  Smooth, angelic, blue-eyed boyish faces... I like Elijah's performance, though I sometimes thought he was almost *too* young and pretty for the role (sacrilege, I hear the drooling fans cry?)... he certainly had this almost regal bearing about him, calm and noble and wise, whereas the other hobbits were comically rough around the edges.  Which is, I suppose, exactly what Tolkien meant, though for me reading the books the regal yet kindly air wasn't that apparent until after Book I, once he teams up with the kowtowing Sam and the snivelling Gollum.  Was fairly indifferent to both the female cameos... I'm not a huge Liv fan.  I though Boromir and Gimli were well done, though I agree that the initial distrust of Aragorn warranted a bit more time, and could have done without the one man wins against 50,000 orcs by sheer skill and courage battle scenes (come on, Peter, this is Rings, not Rambo).  As one of the people I saw it with commented, in the book you get a bit of lull between the chases and attacks and daring escapes, whereas the movie hammers them into you one after the other without respite (I say chop the gratuitous cave troll scene and Bring Back Bombadil, myself)... I'm sure Peter loves dem battle scenes and does 'em well, but I personally would have preferred a touch less of 'em.  Same with the special effects when Galadriel and Bilbo saw the Ring again... I wouldn't have gone so far, just some creepy camera angles and effects with acting would have done me.  Plenty of time for special effects later.

Visually stunning, of course.  The sets... phew.  Impressive.  They didn't hold back, eh?  I thought Hobbiton was particularly charming, and liked Rivendell, though I wasn't into Lothlorien - too different from what I'd imagined (too *artificial*, somehow... I wanted something lighter, more leafy and open-air, fairy-woods, pergolas, airy bridges over singing streams).  Loved the long, droopy, silky-white Saruman hairstyle.  Garlands for the stylist.  I also mused that the curlers must have been out in force for all the extras in the Hobbiton scenes!  I might chuck a lei around the neck of the costume designer too... lovely work.

I was wary about the prospective monsters, having been *revolted* by 'Meet the Feebles' (yiicccch!  Blee!), but I didn't mind the Orcs (I see the Tolkien troll came from the same casting agency as the Potter troll).  The Balrog looked a bit origami for a demon to me.  One misgiving: they haven't chopped the Gollum as mutant hobbit sub-plot, have they?  Surely not!  He'd better have done a good job on Treebeard...

Insofar as I noticed the soundtrack, I liked it, which probably means that it accompanied the film comfortably without dominating it.  As the final credits were rolling, I finally realised why the echoey singing was ringing bells... Enya, of course, how did I not realise this?

So there we have it.  All you rabid LOTR film lovers who see finding any fault with it as blasphemy, don't think I'm not ready for you...

Tabouli (discreetly fingering the mithril vest under her shirt).


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