An awesome and terrible experience

Rating: 10/10 (24 December 2001)

As a teacher, I know that one of my responsibilities is to ensure that children's sense of `Awe and Wonder' is allowed to flourish. The modern child seems so cynical and sophisticated that he can be very difficult to impress. When I was eight years old, a student teacher had tried to read The Hobbit to my class. I hated it. But seeing the BBC's 1968 radio adaptation of the story in Waterstone's when looking for something to listen to on my journey to work, (one which lasts an hour and a half, There and Back Again) I felt sure that I could overcome my prejudice. I did. I loved it. I was hooked. I wanted more. I bought the BBC's radio Lord of the Rings (1980) and was now a confirmed Tolkienite. Fascinated by the mythology, I visited the "official" Tolkien website and discovered that a film was being made. However, having seen Peter Jackson's hand held close-up-to-the-nostril style in "Braindead" and "The Frighteners", I was somewhat fearful of what he might do to the Frodo, Gollum and Aragorn imagined in my head. When I downloaded the first trailer, my fears were allayed more than somewhat. The hairs prickled on the back of my neck. Alas, I knew that I was going to have to wait another eighteen months to see a film about a book that I hadn't read; that if I read it I might be turned by the Power of The One Book into a Tolkien geek (too late already) and then be disappointed by the changes I knew Jackson would have to make.
I gave in of course, completing the trilogy last summer and rereading the Fellowship of the Ring this summer. Despite my enjoyment, Tolkien's writing leaves much to be desired and I became hopeful that a director who captured the spirit of the book rather than every dry detail would be doing us all a service.
When last night, the hour finally arrived, I was not disappointed. No, it was not like the BBC's version which I have now listened to countless times. No, the book has not been translated directly to the screen without any changes. Jackson has taken a number of liberties with the book, but has in the process, produced a film that in many ways is superior in vision to that achieved by Tolkien himself.
There is a theory that artists are not originators of their work, merely imperfect vessels for the expressions of universal truths. Whatever Tolkien may have intended by his book, there is a story, not necessarily his, to be imagined and reimagined by the readers, some of whom will baulk at seeing their version significantly altered. Perhaps the most obvious element missing in this film is the story and song, the literature and lore of Middle-Earth. But what is not only preserved, but magnified and rightly so, is the sense of a universe where the powers of good and evil, of nature and the landscape, are vastly greater than man can understand. Jackson's triumph is to have sewn this thread of truth into every frame, and, according to my wife, by no means a fan, `made it all look so real'. The essence of the book for me is epitomised by Gollum, a pathetic character so twisted by the lust for power that he has no control over his own destiny. We have yet to see his role fully revealed, but it is clear that Frodo, Aragorn and even Sam too are controlled by their fates. What Jackson has achieved is a realisation of the scale of the hidden forces which direct man in love, in battle, throughout life. It is the sweep and power of the opening battle which sets the tone for the whole movie, not just the narrative detail. The detail is almost irrelevant. It matters not that we do not see properly the individual thrust and parry of a fight, because this film is not about the mechanics of war. It is about the forces which drive man to wage war and which are beyond his understanding  the same force which drives man to fall in love, to lust for power, to procreate.
It is a marvellous achievement. This film scores over almost every other that tries to grapple with the same themes. Star Wars, often quoted by those of short memory as the top movie of all time, does not come close in projecting the real, hidden powers of the universe. For all its talk of `The Force', it fails to convey half the passion and fear to be found in Fellowship. Star Wars is of course a different film  clever, knowing, a technical marvel, paying due allegiance to many other films and books, most notably Lord of the Rings. But Fellowship is not about special effects, or baddies and goodies in the simplistic sense, or buddy-buddies, or soap-opera moments (`I am your father Luke!'). If it lacks intimacy it is because it tries to get beyond the individuals that make up the story and instead visualise the unknowable meanings of life. A risky strategy, but one which works.
Jackson delivers a hugely spiritual film; not the kind of spiritual experience that dopeheads declared Kubrick's 2001 to be, but with the same sense of awe which I must arouse in my schoolchildren; the same sense of the `terrible' (reach for your dictionaries folks) which filmmakers generally shy away from. `Awe and wonder' is a rather embarrassing and much underrated theme for filmakers in a post-modern world, which heaps endless praise on self-referential Tarantino movies. The grand and meaningful can seem so absurd that such films can only be made full of wise-cracks to make them accessible to the closed-minded. This epic is therefore only for the open-minded, the innocent, even the naïve, who are willing to allow `awe and wonder' to take over their lives for three hours. Like a six-year-old child, I can't wait for next Christmas.