Stories that matter

Rating: 10/10 (8 February 2016)

The Two Towers - aka: "the one that usually gets mostly skipped during a LOTR marathon". Perhaps a film that was continuously mistakenly referred to as "Lord of the Rings: The Twin Towers" released the year after 9/11 was always going to have a bit of a rough go standing out amidst the splashier, more gratifying bookending acts of its franchise. It's obviously still a masterpiece - no one disputes that - but, being heavier on the action, hardship, and lacking major punctuations of narrative momentum, definitively the black sheep of the trilogy (notice the lack of Empire Strikes Back comparisons from those talking' Tolkien). But this marginalization isn't fair, as it overlooks how much The Two Towers does accomplish - arguably, the subtlest, cleverest film of the trilogy - and how indispensable it is to the meat of Tolkien's triumph.
If Fellowship is all about "why we fight" with its vision of the joyful, utopian tranquility of the Shire worth preserving at all costs, and Return of the King is all about triumphant closure, The Two Towers has the tricky task of being the 'the night is darkest before the dawn' hump of the trilogy, establishing the full scope and ripple-effects of the battle for Middle Earth, and how crucial victory is for an increasingly fleshed-out world. Jackson takes this to heart - fittingly, The Two Towers is literally darker, filtered through barren browns and blueish-greys. This darkness also amps up the violence in the notoriously most action-heavy of the trilogy. At the point where Bilbo was extolling the virtues of pipe weed in Fellowship, in The Two Towers, we're greeted with a pile of steaming, charred orc bodies and heads on stakes, having just waded through the massacre of a helpless village, and an interlude of orc cannibalism. Yum.
But Two Towers isn't just viscerally grim: it also delves the most into addiction subtext. Andy Serkis' sublime, show-stealing work conveying the schizophrenic eager puppy dog and warped spitefulness of Gollum (including Frodo's tearful plea regarding why he has to believe Gollum can be saved) and Rohirrim King Théoden (proud, powerful Bernard Hill) withering at the hands of the seedy Wormtongue (the sickeningly perfect Brad Dourif) allow for quieter, moving moments of pathos amidst the more grandiose macro conflicts. It's also easily the most political, with the Ents vs. Isengard vignette proudly hammering (ha) Tolkien's anti- industrialization theme, while Treebeard's Entmoot conference is a deliciously sly parody of the slowness and inefficiency of bureaucracy in crisis situations, especially when intercut with the ferocious battle of Helm's Deep. Meanwhile, the Rohan refugee crisis has a distressingly topical political urgency of its own, keeping a human face on the devastation of Sauron and Saruman's machinations.
That said, this is still the same movie where Viggo Mortensen makes out with a horse. Astutely aware of the heaviness at play, Jackson mines for comedy respites whenever he can, with many thanks to John Rhys-Davies' 'Gimli the comic relief dwarf', while Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd may as well be playing Harold and Kumar given Merry and Pippin's glut of pipe weed gags. It's a testament to all their exemplary work that their characters still integrate loveably rather than feeling gratuitous. Similarly, the fight scenes are as exhilarating as can be, with the warg fight and Ents releasing the river each invoking cathartic roars of joy, while the rain-drenched battle of Helm's Deep is a classic setpiece of vintage war tension (the opening Gandalf/Balrog plummeting fight is also fun, but a weirdly video- game-y note to open with).
Jackson, now faced with cross-cutting between parallel story lines, masterfully keeps track of his overwhelming deluge of story while keeping the pace ticking. While the dour whininess of the Frodo/Sam segments do grate over time (perhaps the resonant work by Elijah Wood and Sean Astin conveys suffering too well), the addition of Gollum and, later, Faramir (the subtly magnetic David Wenham) keep the dynamic interesting. The new cast all shine in their respective moments, including Miranda Otto's feisty, lovestruck Eowyn, and Karl Urban's bold Eomer, while Ian McKellen finds interesting notes of metaphysical remove to play as the resurrected Gandalf, and Viggo Mortensen makes every beat of his hero's journey achingly, inspiringly empathetic. All the while, Middle Earth is as sumptuously gorgeous as ever (a panoramic shot of Rohan framed by the mountains with Howard Shore's soulful single violin theme in the background is arguably one of the most beautiful in the trilogy), while the CGI remains seamlessly magnificent (Treebeard in particular is a gloriously detailed creation, each notch of bark and creak of movement stunningly realized, while the Ringwraith's 'winged beasts' are also fearfully entertaining creatures).
Then comes the final payoff: a montage of triumphant victory between Helm's Deep and the conscientiously objecting Ents turned Isengard-flooding activists, coupled with a show-stopping, tearjerking speech about "stories that really matter" speech by Sean Astin. It's a long time coming, and the film's middle lags in anticipation of it, but dear god is it worth the wait - an inspiring triple-whammy that brings the house down more than almost any other moment in the trilogy. All of the immaculate, dazzlingly intricate visuals, blood-pumping combat and moving characters aside, it's these moments that really sell the soaring, larger-than-life, transcendent emotionality of the franchise. And this is why, black sheep or not, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers remains classic movie magic, and one of the most essential, incompatible films of all time.
-10/10