When engaging in any activity, people tend to imbue Hobbits with qualities that do not lend themselves to visualization. In my case, these creatures are well mannered, energetic, very talkative, and small sized people who reside in some grandma’s cozy houses or someone’s wharves and are dressed as merry’s men of little Robin’s Hood, only small in proportions. They make as much as seven or eight meals, sleep quite a lot, have never traveled away from their property, and have pupils that revolve wilder with the silence of the sun than with the darkness of time. They are Marc Edwards adults inside or elders outside and when they need to stand up, for the only time or hundredth time does it require courage, for these adults are usually very shy and timid and get sick of people combat.
You can find such concepts concerning hobbits in “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” as well, but the hobbits themselves have been sidelined. If the books are cowardly illy fair tales of tiny heroine who recruits valiant men and sorcerers to help in a perilous quest, the film is striking about valiant men and sorcerers who go on a perilous quest, and take the teddie bears with them. That is not how it works for every single scene or episode, but in the finale “Fellowship” accumulates to be more of a sword and sorcery epic than a realization of more simplistic J. R. R. Tolkien Janos’s vision of the world.
The Ring trilogy represents the kind of naïveté that belongs to a kinder gentler world. Perhaps the school that produced The Wizard of Oz could have matched it. But “Fellowship” is a film which takes place after “Gladiator” and before “Matrix” so of course this goes without saying that this film had to build up on being exactly that of the over the top special effect commercial action movie. That it rises above the limitations of this genre that it is honestly well done adventure with moments that brings chicken skin to the reader is commendable. That is rather far from the real depiction of Tolkien’s Middle earth though.
Curious if the trilogy could live up to the film in terms of action, I delved deeper into my memories for any scenes of prolonged action and then head to the books which I hadn’t touched since the 70s. For example, the chapter titled “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum” contains portions that may support what is arguably the best action sequence in the video where Gandalf the wizard was stranded at an extremely precarious rock bridge situated in a gaping gorge and had to fight the balrog in a deadly duel instead. This is an exhilarating scene, fully realized with special effects and sounds that rip through the theatre. To my surprise, when I read the book, the whole paragraph is less than five hundred words long.
I positioned myself in a comfy zone with the one volume 1969 India paper edition of my book and spent an hour reading or skimming the pages. Just as I had imagined. Most of the trilogy deals with leaving places, going to places, being in places, all under ominous signs and thoughts, and moving on to more places. There are many mountains, valleys, rivers, towns and cities, caves, simple and greased dwelling places, grottos, shady places, clearings, main roads, dirt roads, and so on which Hobbits and their more considerable fellows moved to keep a very close eye on meals. The countryside is portrayed with an impeccable description of a 19th-century novelist. The people going out in search of new horizons also on their way encounter many mysteries some being sages a great deal more than of order no less than that of hobbits or even men and some being friendly and some not. In certain situations, violence must be used for protection or for keeping possession of the ring, but this is in a very small portion of the memoir. The majority is simply a development, a searching, a progressing, a narrative of this type written in the lofty and antediluvian romantic language which challenges the reader’s potentiality of the narrative mode.
Looking back at it, I understood once again why I enjoyed it so much in the first place. It was comforting. The cover made it clear that there were further pages with many more sights to see and far more experiences to be revisited. I liked that it even had breaks for song and poetry which this movie barely has time for. Just like some would say that ‘The Tale of Genji’ is the first novel, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is not a book about a plot or a character development, it is a book about another prolonged sitting where one of the characters is being defined, and with no less intensity. The journey with the ring, which would primarily act as the axis of the tale, is the purpose of the tale for Tolkien. A ring in the traditional sense of the word has always been considered an important object without which the plot will not move an inch. A ring, which gives the ring to him is in fact self evident that it is around the frodo baggins’s neck on a chain.
Peter Jackson, the New Zealand filmmaker who conceived this movie (and two more that will follow in the $300 million project), has designed a piece of art for, and of, our age in history. This I would guess will be appealing to a significant number of republican comprehensive school educated students especially to learners with a disposition that appreciates the works of Tolkien. It is ripe for numerous Academy Awards. It is an impressive production in its courage and scope, there are even little details that are just how they should be, the Hobbits may not be how I think Hobbits should be (they work quite well in full body stockings) but these fellows manage to have just the right amount of twinkle and guts in their eyes, like Elijah Wood as Motto and Ian Holm as the fidgety Bilbo.
However, these dominating characters appear to cross the Little Hobbit world and plundering the narrative at their leisure. The good wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the evil wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee) along with the ranger turned guide Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) are all so familiar and performed so superbly and convincing on the battle field that we just can’t think that Hobbits would be able to go anywhere without them. The elf Arwen (Liv Tyler), the Elf Queen Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) and Elrond (Hugo Weaving) who happens to be Arwen’s father are not petite ascribed in literature elves (‘very tall they were’, as the book states), and in this particular attention, the become like the Norse deities, and because of so much dramatic music and lights, it is surprising, that they manage to even speak, given all the distractions.
Jackson aims at improving the equation by adopting modern special effects in a few shots. There is one where a huge wall of water rushes over to transform into the wraiths of charging stallions. I enjoy the manner in which he attends to the hordes of Orcs in the large scale battles, understanding quite well that in a film of this sort, there are certain restrictions with regards to unnecessary accuracy. This is a rather well made movie. Nevertheless, it does continue and continue, and continue, more of the same vistas, more forests, more sounds of the night, more and monstrous creatures, more mumbles, more prophecies, more visions, more and more warnings, and in the end more then expected alienation comes to the myths until quite normal to these extremes it appears that such a thing could go on forever. “This tale grew in the telling,” Tolkien informs us thanks to the famous first words of his forward, suggesting that he, and now Jackson, got so much into the ‘the journey’, they Yearned so much dread the end.
Unfortunately, I am afraid that is not how the ‘Fellowship of the Ring’ again looks in my imagination as it should. Especially, not for some regret that the Hobbits went to the background and now their role is auxiliary only. However, the film is much more action campaign oriented as compared to the way Tolkien had conceived it. In a statement last week, Christopher, the son of Tolkien and the legal guardian of his father’s words, declared, ‘My own position is that the Lord Of The Rings cannot be put on the screen reasonably.’ Well, that makes sense, and Jackson, rather than trying to change it, has changed it into the sword and sorcery epic of the present age but retaining a good quantity of the characters and events present in Tolkien’s work.
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