A masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2003)

I give The Two Towers a full 10 stars out of 10 and declare it a must-see. Here's why:
The Lord of the Rings has been with me since I first read it in early adolescence (now quite while ago). As such, my relationship with it over the years has been very personal, and as 2000 drew to a close I knew I would be a tough critic of any attempt at turning these very special books into films.
So I began watching The Fellowship of the Ring with trepidation. By its close, I esteemed it a tremendous achievement, worthy of much praise. But as anyone familiar with the books knows, the real challenges for a film-maker determined to mount the whole epic really begin with Book 3, the first of The Two Towers...
The second film is an unequivocal triumph. It works on every level, through the grandest moments to the most intimate. And it surpasses the first picture in significant ways.
Underlying the success of the film is its realisation of the world in which the drama takes place. With dedicated attention to detail, Middle Earth is brought to life as a continent inhabited by real people, their feelings as real as the grime on their faces and the dirt under their fingernails. The landscape is marked out by palpable contrasts of geography and culture, all fitting into a strong spatial context where distances and differences matter. One has the feeling that to walk from Hobbiton to Edoras really is like walking from Paris to Moscow.
The Two Towers introduces a new human element which was rather lacking in the first film, through new characters and a fuller treatment of old ones. Here Peter Jackson is admirably served by his cast: Bernard Hill is perfect as Theoden (and this although I had originally imagined the king of the Riddermark as a much older man), and there is an eye-catching turn from David Wenham, whose performance as Faramir is transfixing. Real humanity is introduced through powerful details, too: normality shattered by the onslaught of the orcs; boys and grandfathers in ill-fitting helmets manning the parapets to await battle; women and children cowering in caves, listening to the awful fate of the men who must defend them with their lives.
Every scale of engagement, from attritional siege to minor skirmish, is represented in the course of the opening war - and represented as a messy, frantic tangle, a chaotic contact sport with the highest of stakes. The orcs are seen as skilled, strong, courageous, disciplined and determined. In so many films any excitement is utterly undermined by what I term the 'Keystone Baddies' effect: take for example Imperial Storm Troopers who can't hit jack and don't know the meaning of the word 'cover', up against heros who never miss. But in The Two Towers, the orcs are every bit as dangerous as their non-orc opponents. We see them fall in scores to arrows, only to exact retribution with their own crossbows when in range; at close-quarters, as many non-orcs as orcs are seen slain; once-immaculate elven warriors lie cheek-by-jowl in the mud with goblins. These battles are to the death, and no-one holds back for the purposes of narrative.
Perhaps the most remarkable achievement is Smeagol, pure CGI except in voice. In those films I had previously seen employing such effects, they were never used as more than tokens to please the eye. But so assured is the characterisation by Andy Serkis and the sfx team that this entirely artificial personage becomes as real as the human cast: indeed, he carries some of the most heart-wrenching scenes (for example the soliloquy in which he wrestles with his twisted, ring-intoxicated self).
To cap it all, no concession is made to younger audiences. This phenomenon has bedevilled movies for too long, and it's time a stop was put to it. Example: in the original Star Wars trilogy, there was not a single child, and yet all three films were perfectly accessible to all ages. Twenty years on, and Episode I is all about a child (one who can't act, moreover), and Episode II has content clearly intended to help children get involved (the young Boba Fett, who's also no Olivier). No such compromises in either installment of The Lord of the Rings (and compromises they would be, for there is nothing of the sort in the books). These are films for adults, just as they should be. If kids have to grow into them, they'll be the better for it.