A landmark

Rating: 9/10 (17 January 2014)

Is this the first time Hollywood trusted a director to just make a 9+ hour movie and serve it up in three slices (not sequels)? I think so. It was a good call by New Line, especially considering that the director of "Heavenly Creatures" and "Dead Alive" did not exactly have mega-credentials.
When I first read the book many decades ago, I learnt Feanorian script and basic Sindarin. I have read it many times since. So my expectations were high when I sat down for the first film. I must say I was mesmerized from Kate Blanchett's narration to the end when Frodo and Sam march towards an exquisitely done matte painting of Mordor.
The full opus takes quite a few liberties with the book, from omissions (Tom Bombadil) to transpositions (Warg attack on Rohirrim in episode 2 rather than on the Fellowship in episode 1) to inventions (Sam being sent back home by Frodo in act 3). It merges and deletes characters (Arwen and her brother, Eomer and Erkenbrand), or invents them (the orc Sharku, a play on Saruman's nickname in a part of the book cut out entirely). Many of them are preferable to the alternatives that were considered (for instance, Arwen in film 2 showing up in Aragorn's dream, rather than as a battle maiden at Helm's Deep). Only rarely does it have plot holes (like Frodo suddenly brandishing a sword at Sam in Osgiliath, when they are prisoners of Faramir who surely removed all their weapons). Perhaps the greatest liberty is the constant weakening of the moral fibre of characters for the sake of creating short-lived dramatic tension (like Treebeard only making up his mind to fight when he sees that Saruman has killed his trees; or Faramir originally taking the ring towards Minas Tirith to echo his weaker brother.
There is one incomprehensible artistic and business decision: Why did Jackson not just end the third film with the crowning of King Elessar, and let Saruman live (as in the book, and as was potentially implied in the theatrical release)? Then they could have made a fourth film to take the hobbits to the scouring of the Shire. Anticlimax, you say? I bet film 4 would still have made a tidy sum because LOTR mania was at a high level in the early 2000s. And it would have avoided that awkward never-ending-ending in Return of the King. After seeing the income stream from 1-3, New Line would have gone for #4 and given the hobbits their own little final battle. As a positive side effect, it would have toned the scale down a little at the end, thus allowing The Hobbit, which is vastly overblown, to stay a little closer to the smaller scale of Tolkien's earlier book.
All of this is easy to forgive because the films hews close to the spirit of the book overall, and departures are usually corrected, as in Sam's "By all rights we shouldn't even be here (Osgiliath)" - and soon they weren't. It is visually a masterpiece. Many have remarked that Jackson has finally trumped Kurosawa as the best big battle auteur, and I grudgingly admit it's true (although I still like RAN better than LOTR; it's one of a few films I give a "10"). He forces bold acting out of the actors sometimes, with pathos and tears pushed to the verge of what is acceptable. The level of detail in the scenery, weaponry, sets, costumes, just everything, is absolutely amazing; and yet the filmmakers resisted the temptation to gloat over it. So much work for a few seconds of screen time! The film is complex and textured, a classic like Gone with the Wind and the better costume dramas of the 50s when it comes to big bold scale.
In the end, the film became my visual impression of the books for the most part, and that's a great compliment because I had read the books multiple times and certainly formed mental pictures of what everything is like. Even the young Frodo worked for me in the end: who knows what a 50 year old hobbit looks like in a world where Dunedain can still reach 100s of years of age?
With all its flaws, this mammoth film is great cinema, and deserves its Oscars and other accolades. It will be a long time before this story is remade.