Peter Jackson Finally Has Something to Chew On

Rating: 10/10 (23 December 2001)

The acting in _The Lord of the Rings_ is very good. The weak actors are strong, and the strong actors are wonderful. The writing is very good. The adaptation does enough of a job translating Professor Tolkien's work across media as to create a beautiful screenplay that feels very much like the original, which is more important than reflecting it (just ask Robert Fitzgerald). The scene design is very good. The sets and backgrounds are stunning; I have to think back to the original _Neverending Story_ to find a fantasy adventure film with as fresh and as beautiful fantasy settings. The sound design is very good. The sound editing is very good. The costuming is very good. The animation is very good, and its integration into the live action is very good. There are many parts of the craft of filmmaking, and this film does all of them well. However, all of these elements together would have only resulted in a very good film. _The Fellowship of the Ring_ is not a very good film. _The Fellowship of the Ring_ is a great film, or, rather, it is the beginning of what will be, upon its completion, a truly great film. The difference is in the direction. Here, the difference is Peter Jackson's vision and art as a director, and it is Jackson, above all, who deserves credit for putting together a wonderful piece of art.
The difference between a film with many, disparate and diverse virtues and a film which brings them all together with truly artful vision is profound. _Titanic_ is a film with many of the same virtues as _The Fellowship of the Ring_: sound, set, costumes, acting (okay, maybe not), writing (okay, okay, okay, definitely not), the film employed many of the best in the business, but the end product was a film that won a host of Oscars and ended up on the bottom of the Weekly Rental shelf at Blockbuster. The reason why _The Lord of the Rings_ will remain in the hearts and minds of those who have seen it for far longer is because of its coherence as a piece of art and the well-articulated and complex voice of the director, communicated with purpose and skill through all the media that film provides.
Sir Ian McCellan said, after completing the mammoth shooting schedule of this film that, as an actor, particularly as a film actor, he is not an artist. An actor acts; it is the director who must imbue the film with a vision. Peter Jackson's vision is a strong, distinct one that cannot help but burst forth on the screen. See _Dead Alive_ (_Braindead_) if you don't believe me, but only if you know you do not require sleep or sanity for a good 36 hours. It is a rampant beast of a film, assaulting the intellect, the psyche, and the eye with equal and determined vigor; it manages to conceal the obvious in terrible suspense and to juxtapose images of unparalleled depravity with those of terrible and hilarious simplicity. It manages to render the watcher powerless in determining the fate of the characters. Predictability and cliche simply cease to exist, because the force of his voice is enough to command the audience. _Dead Alive_ was a cheap horror flick. Here, Jackson wields the same tool in the translation of a powerful piece of intellectual and imaginative work, and the results are of such richness and power that I would definitely need to see the film two or three more times in order to appraise them fully.
Of course, to some, the three hours necessary to watch the film will be too much. The continually serious tone of the film will be discouraging. The unwillingness to gratify the audience with continual buildups in a string of one-lined, music-swelling climaxes (a la _Independence Day_ and the like) will be discouraging to some. Yes, there is complexity in the rising action, and I am overjoyed to say that the number of characters pumping their fists and shouting "Yes!" is truly inordinately small for a three hour adventure movie. Some people like that sort of thing. Heck, I like it from time to time. A bunch of years back, when I watched _3 Ninjas_ on a babysitting job, I enjoyed it. What casual watchers will confront is the fact that this is not an epic action movie. It's not even really an action movie, and if one goes into the film expecting an action movie, one is likely to not have that expectation met in full. Some people may find this frustrating. I do not deny that. However, I do believe that the beauty of this film is strong enough to overcome that frustration in all but the most dedicated and prejudiced of cases.
The action scenes in this are extremely well-crafted. Usually, in films of this scale, action scenes rampage across the scene, glutted with gory images and landed blows. Usually, armed conflict on film becomes a singular beast, where the individual characters are swallowed in the fury of the moment. This is true even in most high quality war films. This is not true in _The Lord of the Rings_. The violence in _The Lord of the Rings_ is in service to the drama, and that is a truly remarkable feat of directing. It is effortlessly clear who is being killed by whom at all times, and the violence is often placed against some far more important scene in such a way as to imbue the latter with a beautiful urgency. And, of course, Peter Jackson does violence as well as anyone in filmmaking, so, even though the PG-13 rating, with its prohibition of spurting blood, prevents Jackson from showing everything he learned in _Dead Alive_, the battles are brutal, deliberate, and largely devoid of romance (with a few brilliant exceptions). For some, this will disappoint. For those wrapped up in Jackson's vision, it all becomes part of the world and the journey Jackson is trying to bring to the audience.
If I must ennumerate the flaws of this film, the first is that, although the film does a good job of masking how abominable an actor Liv Tyler is, Liv Tyler is still an abominable actor, and her scenes are somewhat wasted, if not actively detracting from the film. The second is that the combination of CGI and bluescreen to create photorealistic composite images is overestimated, like it is in every single film in which it appears, and sometimes the characters exhibit a little fringe or the CGI characters move unrealistically. Of course, the overestimation is not of very great magnitude, and the special effects, as a whole, are excellent, but the audience will generally be more impressed by the camerawork than they will be with the CGI. Thirdly, there are two or three individual occasions where the film breaks its own character (I'm talking about any and all occurances of the notion of "dwarf tossing" as well as the single attempt at a Jerry Bruckheimer-style one-liner), but, of course, they only last for a second or two, so they hardly consist of a problem. The purist in me wishes the movie did not take such breaths, but, in Jackson's defense, the film is dreadfully serious, and that most of the audience probably needed a respite when these lines came along, which were generally at the grimmest moments in the film. And, of course, there are a few very minor continuity errors which will probably be corrected whenever the film is rereleased, if not for the DVD, but these are difficult to spot and generally do not affect the film.
All this notwithstanding, I saw this movie in a packed theater of two to three hundreds people. I sat right beside the door, and only four people left to go to the bathroom during the entire three hours, despite the occasional sound of running water. This film will capture your attention, and it won't let it go until it is done. This film will teach you something, take something from you, show you something you never knew you had, and all the other good stuff that anything that actually succeeds in being art can and will do. This film will make you say to yourself as you leave, "Why can't all the movies I see be good?" This film will make you see the hype for the empty gas it actually is. This film will make you realize just how little Harry Potter did to challenge you, and how depressed that made you. This film will probably make you want to read the books.
However, most importantly, this film will not make you regret spending $9 on it (or less, if you're lucky), which almost every other movie you will ever see will not be worth. Heck, for quality like this, you can even afford to spring for some popcorn! Seriously, see this movie in the theater. It really is that good.
And, if you need another reason, the Spider-Man trailer is awesome! It was the first time I've ever seen a film audience greet the end of trailer with a round of amazed applause.