The end of all things

Rating: 4/10 (18 December 2003)

I had expected to enjoy this film as much as the first two, or even more; but I felt glad when it was over, and my disappointment makes me feel ungenerous toward it. Technically it's the best of the three, less slapped-together-looking, and some parts of it succeed, finally, in capturing the authentic Tolkien atmosphere. But some parts--and sometimes the same parts--are just boring, others are just noisy, the director has begun to repeat himself, and in this culminating installment his inability to come to grips with the crux of the story becomes evident.
The previous films, despite their faults, held me all the way through; this one had me wanting to leave after a few minutes. The previous films filled me with a sense of wonder, over and over; this one has it only seldom (as in the lighting of the beacons), and in some places where it might show, it's swamped by the director's overfondness for grue and beasties. I never liked his Orcs (extras in Halloween masks), and here he turns the army of the dead into the Pirates of the Caribbean. The previous films kept me in the world they created; this one kept throwing me out of it, particularly in the scenes of Minas Tirith--where, as an example, the faces, unlike those of the Shire and Rohan, included several that were joltingly contemporary (possibly belonging to friends of the director).
The previous films, though of course they cut much from the books, included the essentials of the story; this one eliminates much, including everything to do with Saruman (the parley at Orthanc, the pollution of the Shire, the fates of Saruman and Wormtongue). We see Eowyn and Merry's wounding, but not their healing; we see a Palantir, but not Denethor's; we see Sam with the Ring, but not his use of it. Instead the film squanders most of its time on fighting: not only the battle scenes, which are terrific for a while but go on and on, recycling the same effects again and again, but also wrestling bouts between Sam and Gollum, Frodo and Gollum, Sam and Frodo, Sam and Shelob, etc. Then there are the scenes showing again and again--what was established upon Gollum's first appearance--that he's a treacherous villain and Sam doesn't trust him.
But the main fault of the film--and of the others, though it becomes crucial here--is its relative shallowness. It fails to convey the feeling, or the moral meaning, of Frodo's struggle with the Ring. The director resorts to externals--dialogues with Gollum the fallen one, Frodo's alter ego--without ever getting inside Frodo himself. Nor do we ever understand what the Ring is and what it means.
The same is true of the event from which this film takes its title. Aragorn gets his sword back, gets a crown and a good cheer, and that's it. His union with Arwen comes down in the end to a juicy kiss. And, incomprehensibly, the film omits the most important line of all, Frodo's, when he says what it's all been in aid of: "It must often be so when things are in danger: that some people have to give them up so that others may keep them."
To be fair to the filmmakers, they may simply have butted up against the central problem which confronted them at the outset: Tolkien's books and characters aren't dramatic. Individual scenes in the films are dramatic, the actors are compelling enough personalities to put them across, and the combination makes for good theatre. But, as has been well said by the Eldar, it don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing.