There'll never be anything like it

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2004)

(huge whopping spoilers like you wouldn't believe)
It's not really a movie at all - what it is, is an experience perhaps only religious conversion can touch. This movie, as a whole, has changed my life. I make movies because of this movie. I owe more to it than the filmmakers can ever know.
It starts off wonderfully unexpectedly, with a shot of a worm between two fingers. The focus pulls back and we see a hobbit - or something like a hobbit. We find out its Smeagol in a bit, and then, a bit farther on, we find out what Smeagol did to ever have his Precious in the first place. Then it moves on - to Frodo and Sam, to Pip and Merry and Aragron and Gandalf and all the rest. I won't bore you with a whole retelling, since no doubt if you're reading this you're probably as obsessed as I am. I'll just mention a few things-
Merry and Pip greeting the riders at Isengard. There's nothing funnier than stoned hobbits, man.
Minas Tirith. Enough said.
The stairs at Cirith Ungol, and the spire of light that went up into the sky. Most people don't mention this in their reviews, but I felt terror, sheer and true. I can't remember the last time I've felt that, and I watch countless amounts of horror flicks.
Gandalf explaining death to Pippin. So soft and beautiful and true. It feels so true, somehow.
Sam carrying Frodo on his back. You'll see that one parodied in a few years, trust me. It's just too strong and lovely and heartbreaking and man if I'm not using the same words as everyone else uses.

Everything in Mount Doom, all of it. It worked out better than I had hoped for.
Frodo and Sam lying on that rock, the lava streaming around them, waiting to die. Frodo remembering the Shire, seeing it. Sam remembering Rosie dancing. I've seen it four times now, and I can never get through that bit without sobbing like a child. Sam gave everything for his master, and only in the end, in that last moment before death, did he even truly think of himself.
Frodo's face as the eagle picks up up. Oh my God I can't describe how beautiful it was. My first thought when I saw that was: "He think's he's dead. You only have that sort of release with death."
Frodo getting on the ship at the harbor, the slow way he walked and then the strange making slow creeping flush in his eyes and his face. He was back, and he was our Frodo again.
And the line, "You cannot always be torn in two," Frodo's voice-over message to Sam. Ah, I love it so much. Man.
There's more, thousands of words worth more: Pip's song, Denethor's funeral pyre, the mumakil charge, the charge of the Rohirrim. More strikes me each time I watch: this last time, it was the way Aragorn and Arwen's son looked, and the strange colors in his eyes.
I staggered out of the theater all four times with a washed-clean feeling - like I'd run a thousand miles and washed in a thousand oceans. I've never cried so much in a movie before. I've never come out of a theater feeling reborn before. Only these movies, only these, forever - I can only hope to someday have half the effect these movies have had. They aren't really movies at all - they are religious experiences.