One Sole Problem with this Film

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2002)

The first film in this magnificent trilogy has but one, single, sole problem. Those who have read and loved J.R.R. Tolkien's work, and have often immersed themselves in the words and the images they evoke shall encounter this problem.
Cognitive dissonance. This is a term (Eliot Aronson's, methinks) of the psychological jolt one gets when expecting something familiar, and what comes in the senses (usually sight) is different. Had a building you pass every day been abruptly demolished, you might even see an afterimage of the building in the expected spot, then wonder what was wrong, then figure it out when the expectation and reality got straightened out in the mind.
So it is, in a way, with Fellowship of the Ring. Everything you see up on the screen is just about perfect. The differences in performances (particularly McKellen and Christopher Lee) have nuance and logical-but-unexpected movement built in. What the cast does is give everything expected with added dimensions. No still photo can convey the movement, and Viggo Mortensen's deep capture of Aragorn's character is a good example. The dissonance, what there is of it, comes from knowing the novel too well. Every plot point could be filmed, but then we'd see forty-hour-long films. Can't happen. So as all the images come alive and speak, we too familiar are jolted a bit at the absences.
Thus the "errors" are infinitesimal. What we have here is Best Picture, Best Director, - and the other two parts arriving to perhaps sweep the Oscars for three years. In other words, it ain't too bad.