Catches the spirit

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2002)

I first read the Lord of the Rings as a preteen many years ago, and have reread it more times than I can conveniently remember. (Plus the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, and various of the volumes edited by Christopher Tolkien as well - so I brought a lot of additional lore of Middle Earth in with me!) When I went to see the film I was worried that it would be too different from how I had imagined that world for me to enjoy, or on the contrary that the film version would take over how I imagined characters, locations, etc. so that I could no longer envision things in my own way. I am very pleased that neither was the case. While there are certainly aspects of the film that I would have liked to have seen done differently (the hobbits Merry and Pippin should have much more to them than just comic relief), or choices in casting that I might disagree with (most notably Hugo Weaving as Elrond - I do not see the half-elven lord as quite so dour), I enjoyed the film unreservedly and await the next two installments impatiently. One perhaps small point, carried through from the book, that is particularly well done is the fact that the characters express their affection for one another without fear or embarrassment, without even making a point of it - it is simply their natural emotion. It is this that makes the story so wonderful - it is a saga of good and evil, yes, but the "human" (or elven, or whatever) aspect is what gives it life. Tolkien was a true sub-creator, and the filmmakers have caught a good deal of that splintered light.