Tolkien's Experiences of World War 1 Played Out

Rating: 10/10 (16 July 2004)

For me this film is both fantastic & disappointing. For a start let's get the negative out of the way. This final section of the trilogy is the one that deviates from the original story the most. For instance Shelob's part is almost sprinted through, Saruman simply disappears from sight, the Shire isn't wrecked & rebuilt & Sam is not seen to depart into the West (there's plenty more deviations too).
However this is small citicism of probably one of the hardest stories to portray on film & Peter Jackson has done wonders, keeping the narrative faitful & gripping while avoiding the need to go as far as having to make a 4th film, which would surely have been necessary if he'd stuck to the book.
What struck me the most, though, was the overwhelming clues & references to Tolkien's experiences of World War 1. Perhaps Jackson had this in mind when shooting the scenes, but reading the original book you can see that not much has been changed. Perhaps the most obvious is the scene where Frodo & Sam are struggling up the slopes of Mount Doom, amid the chaos & devastation, facing almost certain death Sam asks Frodo if he can remember the Shire. Squint a little & you can see them cowering in the trenches of the Somme or Ypres. Again & again this section of the story shows how ordinary, remarkably innocent creatures are propelled into inhuman adversity & somehow manage to prevail.
It is no coincidence that the Hobbits come from The Shire, where so many volunteers for the ranks of the British Army were filled for the conflicts on Vimy Ridge & Paschendel, echoing the rural idyly of Lancashire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire... all "Shires". In the previous section, The Two Towers, we see the Dead Marshes, a portrayal of the dead lying in the mud of Flanders after battle. Quietly Tolkein gets the horror out of his system & onto the page, wrapping it up in a tale of fantasy.
This is why I was disappointed with the deletion of the scenes regarding the return to the SHire. In the original the wizard Saruman has set up camp there following his defeat by the Ents & has set about destroying the area. The party of Hobbits return to find smoking chimneys, machines, polluted rivers & sickly children. This is an allegory for the different England that awaited the return of surviving tropps following the armistice of 1918. England had industrialised to meet war demand, as well as adopting a new wave of mechanisation to make up for the loss of so many men to the war. Men returned to villages that were as changed as they were & perhaps this is what we see when Frodo & all who were affected by the ring finally set sail for the mystical "West" where they will be healed & find peace.
In all it is a fantastic effort, the whole trilogy is cohesive & masterfully brougght to the screen. Of course it had a good start in life due to the amazing story Tolkien wrote, but Jackosn has worked miracles with the film making process, stretching to new heights. In a Hollywood dominated world, where originality is sadly lacking & innovation all too often regarded as dangerous, Peter Jackson has triumphed over mediocrity & banality. Where others play it safe by remaking old favorites, Jackson has created something entirely new, a genuine trilogy, not something like "Die Hard" where each offering is the same as the rest, only with a bigger budget & more cheesy one liners. It will be a VERY long time before anyone makes a film as good as this, let alone 3! And I doubt that anyone will be remaking this trilogy within our life time, unless they want to be compared very unfavorably to the original.