It has come to this...

Rating: Null/10 (19 February 2003)

Even today, as a writer, having been through J.R.R. Tolkien's Ring Trilogy twice, once for the journey and the second time somewhat more analytically, I can barely comprehend how Tolkien did it; how he managed to fashion a world of such minute detail, and with scope that was at once physical, temporal and emotional. Is the Trilogy literature? Maybe not by strict definition; its concern is not so much with ideas as with pure language, English specifically, and what can be done with this amazing tool. The tale itself seems, at times, to exist only as a hanger for Tolkien's aesthetic experiments with the evocative aspect of language, how words sound, and how that quality can be made to resonate in the mind of the tuned-in reader: Galadriel, Celeborn, Umbar, Forlindon, Dimrill Dale, Withywindle, Rivendell, Mordor; words that often sound more like wind chimes or gonging bells than words, all strung together with equally melodious text.
When I learned that Tolkien was coming seriously to the big screen, I was stoked, although memories of David Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's similarly monumental novel, Dune, had me a bit worried. One feature-length film, despite the great beauty of many of its elements, had not been enough to properly set up and display Dune's particular richness of detail and the movie tended to stumble about trying to hit a sufficient number of the book's high spots (though I still love the sequence in which House Atreides departs Caladan for Arrakis; the stately embarkation into the Guild Heighliners). It was a film that could only really work for those who had read and loved the novel. But Tolkien was to be served up in three (count 'em!) parts. Having seen the first two of the three, I have not been disappointed.
When the first installment bypassed Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, the choices Peter Jackson had been forced to make were obvious. I'm sure they weren't always easy ones. Many of the Trilogy's more subtle elements had to be bypassed. For example, the book's spooky view of the Black Rider on the Buckleberry Ferry stage, seen by lantern light from across the river as the Hobbits flee the Shire - a favorite interlude of mine - was really more effective and evocative than the film's narrow escape of screeching hooves. But the gorgeous pursuit of Arwen and Frodo from Weathertop by the Ringwraiths, with its breathtaking overhead cut to the full-gallop chase, put everything back in balance. The Fellowship of The Rings was so good that it may not have been necessary to have read the Trilogy first. But in the case of The Two Towers, reading first is highly recommended. This done, the second film which must, to some degree, only imply its particular book, will play all the more richly.
In the Two Towers, both in print and on screen, the story's U-shaped arc reaches its low-point before starting its climb to the end. It is the Trilogy's most challenging phase, for both reader and viewer. There was no way that the contemporary narrative cinema, with its rather rigid constraints, could have rendered it faithfully. Peter Jackson, a director of great skill and intelligence, obviously knew this as well. He taketh away but he also giveth back: eye-candy scenery, an FX for the ages in Gollum (underpinned by actor Andy Serkis' excellent performance; he blue-suited the part in real time to optimize the digital Gollum's relationships with the living actors), great Ents, and action that makes the clashes in Braveheart seem like square dances. The battle at Helm's Deep is riveting. Staged in the rain, like Kurosawa's climatic battle in the Seven Samurai, you can almost forget to breathe as the sequence unfolds.
To bring a written work like the Ring Trilogy to the screen; one with which readers had already formed deep connections, took guts, not to mention great movie-making skill. Because Tolkien's characters are so vividly drawn, great sensitivity and precision in casting was also required. In that light, all main characters are spot-on, often exactly as I envisioned them in the books. Frodo is just a bit too pretty, yet still authentically portrayed by Elijah Woods, who fans out the full deck of Frodo's emotions, from grit through fright, with great clarity. But with Frodo accompanied by Sean Astin's letter-perfect Sam Gamgee, all remains well. The memory of Ian Holm's equally-perfect Bilbo makes it even better. Karl Urban's coiled, wild-eyed Julius Caesar was my favorite recurring character in the Xena: Warrior Princess TV series and I enjoyed seeing him in the Two Towers as the equally-coiled Eomer. Cate Blanchett was probably born to play Galadriel but the real, possibly unexpected, thermonuclear casting-event was Craig Parker's elf-captain Haldir. A little make up and some blonde tresses morphed the pleasant-looking Parker into a presence of mythic nobility, as opposed to Orlando Bloom's more intense, wolf-like Legolas. Much of the innate beauty that infuses the entire Trilogy is compressed into Parker's character and I'm not alone here. Haldir websites are sprouting like mushrooms in Fangorn Forest as we speak.
It's hard to say anything bad about a production into which so much intelligence, sensitivity, courage, and labor has been poured. What would be the point? There's plenty of cotton candy out there to pull apart. Any film should be judged first in terms of its respective genre. Very few films are truly great across the entire spectrum. At this point, Lord of The Rings is a magnificent achievement, magically pulling together so much of what the cinema can be at this stage in its evolution. The Two Towers is a discrete film but also a necessary and difficult chapter of a larger work. Not all films will be Tolkienesque fantasies. But when such films are made, Lord of The Rings will be the absolute benchmark.