Wonderful Film

Rating: 10/10 (20 December 2001)

I have read several postings, most of them agree that the movie is very good, but there are also some detractors who think the movie is too long/boring/shallow/incomprehensible/not-like-the-book, etc. Those who think the movie is not good mostly belong to one of two very distinct groups: those who have never read the book, and those who are uberfans of the books. I consider myself a LOTR geek, but I can also make a distinction between literary works of art, and cinematographic works of art. To be able to appreciate this movie, a person needs to separate him/herself from the idea that it needs to be religiously faithful to the book. It just doesn't work that way. What is important is to watch the movie as an entity all on its own that comes extremely close to depicting Tolkien's vision, but with the understanding that this is a MOVIE, and as such, it can only go so far in portraying what, at the end of the day, is the construction of every individual's imagination (what you as a person make out of a book when you read it). For those who have not read the book, I can understand that it may seem confusing at times. It can also seem long, but there is a reason for the length, and believe me, if you had read the books, you would have felt that it was NOT nearly long enough. Also, I have found that people with short attention spans tend to like more straightforward storylines, so this movie may not be for them. All in all, the movie was great. As close to my own imagination as it can come. It is not exactly like the book, but it doesn't need to be. The characters were really well-developed: you feel the hobbits to be as innocent and childlike (despite the fact that Frodo is actually 50 years old) as they are in the book, and Sam is just what I had imagined: the perfect impersonation of purity-of-heart and loyalty; you feel Boromir's struggle between his good side and his corruptible side; you feel Gandalf's centuries-old wisdom; Gimli is the perfect image of a dwarf, and Aragorn is just as deep as the book makes him to be. As I have been doing with the books for the past 20 years, I will force-feed this movie to everyone I know until they all agree it is just wonderful ;-)