'Ring' leaders don't cut it in film that's
a visual feast
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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring **1/2
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By Steven Rea
INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC
It seems to be the thing, among reviewers of The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring, to disclose one's history with the
Tolkien trilogy: Read it, haven't read it; worshipped its world
of elves and hobbits, dwarves and men, think it's pathetic twaddle.
Not only have I devoured all 1,008 pages of the saga of Frodo
Baggins of the Shire, I pored over its appendices and indexes,
and surveyed Tolkien's maps of the exotic quadrants of Middle-earth.
I kept a notebook written in runes (see Angerthas table, Appendix
F). I imagined myself as Aragorn, heir to Isildur of Gondor. I
was 12.
So, a few years later (ha!), there I am, watching what Peter Jackson
- a courageous Kiwi who has made low-budget movies about depraved
puppets (Meet the Feebles) and a haunting classic about girl-bonding-gone-bad
(Heavenly Creatures) - has done with the inaugural installment
of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy.
And what he has done, on one hand, is a marvel. Exploiting the
awesome landscape of New Zealand and deploying banks of digital
wizardry, he has conjured a universe of cavernous subterranean
halls, impregnable, towering fortresses, golden Elven forests,
and multi-tiered stone cities.
He has also suffered a Renaissance Faire fit of excess, depicting
Hobbiton, home of our furry-footed hero Frodo (Elijah Wood), as
a kind of thatched-roof Teletubbyland. (The hobbits live in houses
carved into the hills, much like the one Dipsy and Tinky Winky
share.) And with its bubbly falls and fussy architecture, Rivendell,
the leafy refuge at the foot of the Misty Mountains, looks like
that Shangri-la at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Stop the world, I want to jump off.
Visually, then, LOTR - the first of three annual cinematic installments
devoted to the quest of the Ruling Ring - is a feast. Stallions
galloping across wide expanses. An expedition of nine trekking
great peaks and snowy slopes. Cate Blanchett, moony-eyed and golden-tressed,
as the Elven babe Lady Galadriel. Clanging battles - the sky filled
with arrows, the ground strewn with the bodies of warriors and
Orcs (unpleasant beings with terrible teeth and more terrible
temperaments) - that equal the scale and carnage of Braveheart
and Gladiator.
But moving across this tableau is Frodo and his gang, and here
the trouble lies. For one thing, Wood, the boyish, saucer-eyed
thespian, is a wimpy protagonist. True, hobbits are peaceful stay-at-home
types, but when Frodo sets out on his treacherous trip to destroy
that darned ring, he risks life and limb and rises to daunting
challenges. Not a one seems believable as conveyed by Wood, who
forever looks to be on the brink of a good sob. Likewise, his
hobbit sidekick Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) is a real wuss.
Jackson and cowriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have loaded
their screenplay with rumbling declarations ("Eeee-vil has
stirred in Mordor") and long tracts of cumbersome, quasi-Shakespearean
exposition. Whittling a giant volume of prose down to even a long
film (this one clocks in at two hours, 48 minutes) is no mean
feat, but this particular feat hasn't been realized altogether
successfully. And endless rounds of pseudo-Wagnerian choruses
don't help any.
Stealing the show are Ian McKellen as Gandalf, the tall, bearded
wizard who blows a mean smoke ring and nudges Frodo into his adventure;
Viggo Mortensen as the mysterious ranger Aragorn (a.k.a. Strider);
Sean Bean as Boromir, a troubled, valiant warrior; and John Rhys-Davies
as Gimli, a rather impertinent noble dwarf. Also to be found roaming
around Middle-earth: Liv Tyler, as a centuries-old beauty who
speaks in a dreamy elf tongue; Orlando Bloom as a dashing elf
knight (and Nelson twins doppelganger); and Hugo Weaving as Elrond
Half-elven, not quite as menacing as Weaving's G-man in The Matrix,
but still sporting an imposing forehead.
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