Wading in the Velvet Sea

There have been a few formative pop culture elements in my life, moments were I could feel a seismic shift within myself that signaled that I wasn’t quite the same person I was before experiencing it. The first time I heard ‘OK Computer’ was one. Seeing U2’s ‘ZooTV’ tour in 1994 was another. And watching ‘Fellowship’ last year was a third.

Now, I’ve already spoken here about the geekdom that the third unleashed. So no more need to go on here. But if anything, it tainted what I saw last night. Last year, I was completely unprepared for the ass-kicking that movie gave me. Not just in terms of how BIG the movie was, but ultimately the heart and the depth behind it. For some, the slightly antiquated speech and pureness of nobility in the characters rang slightly false; for me, it was awe-inspiring. Having been weened on a school of movies where effects made you gasp at the technique, but left you slightly cold towards the people onscreen, ‘Fellowship’ for me reinvigorated the possibility that you could have spectacle AND emotion, a battle of 10,000 involving people you actually cared about, and the ability to convey information on both the smallest and largest scales simultaneously.

So as I sat in the theatre last night, I feel a slight sweating in my palms. I was kicking myself for all the trailers I had watched, all the spoilers I had read. I thought I knew too much---from the plot deviations from the book, to watching all the behind elements on the ‘Fellowship’ DVD---I just thought I had cheated myself out of the wonder and awe that came from the surprise that was the first movie.

I can happily report I was wrong. Good Lord. Wider in scope, surer in feel---some people complain that it lacks the intimacy of the first movie, and to that I say: lay off the crackpipe.

Yes, Helm’s Deep is amazing. Yes, the wargs will kick your ass sideways across the theatre until you’re bitchslapped with awe. The trolls that open the Black gate qualify as one of the great ‘let’s just see how cool we can make this’ over-the-top effects. But what truly makes this movie sing is, again, the emotion and the feeling between the characters, including, and especially related, to Gollum/Smeagol.

You know how they say, ‘Don’t believe the hype?’ Look, I’m sayin’ believe it. Gollum is the greatest unintentional ‘F You’ that Jar Jar will ever get. I say unintentional because you never get the feeling they set out to create the greatest CG character ever to spite anyone---they did it to serve the story and the movie. The oliphaunts, the fell beasts---they are all great, but are secondary to the interactions between the characters, without exception. The sheer size and scope of the world is meant to inspire awe, but not distance us. By treating the story as history, and not fantasy, the movie draws us in, makes us care about the characters, and THEN wallops you with a world that has elements may people had dared not even dream about.

AT its heart, the movie centers around not two towers, but three triptychs---Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas, Gollum/Sam/Frodo, and Merry/Pippin/Treebeard. Gandalf plays a part, as do the members of Rohan, but in essence the three stories center around these three sets of people. Of the three, the latter falls the shortest, but that’s far from faint praise---this storyline sets up the ascension both Merry and Pippin will make in ‘Return of the King’ as well as clearly spells out the ‘machine versus nature’ emphasis that Tolkein would have appreciated. As for the first group, well, sign me up if they ever run a battle camp, but holy Mary Mother of God they are just the coolest. At first, I was struggling to justify why these characters were so funny---Aragorn in particular was stoic as can be in the first movie. While losing none of the gravity, these three convey what men of war are like in this world---they’ve been through hell and back, battle is what they DO---so it makes perfect sense that faced with 10,000 warriors at their doorstep, they can crack jokes. The fact that the movie so perfectly nailed the counting contest during the battle attests to how much Peter Jackson trusts both himself and his audience. Whereas C3PO made wince-inducing jokes throughout the Clone Wars, Gimli’s request to Aragorn near the end of the Helm’s Deep battle is both hilarious and touching all at once.

And finally, Gollum. It takes a lot to distract from Frodo’s gauntness and Sam’s increasingly noble, important part in keeping Frodo sane, but Gollum does it. This Gollum is different in letter but again, not spirit from the book. He out-does the Willem Defoe scene in ‘SpiderMan’ where the two sides of his personality conflict. I couldn’t possibility predict that this character would elicit the most reaction and, in particular, sympathy from the audience, but lo, he did. And yes, I realize I am using ‘he’ and not ‘it’ to describe this character, but that’s how good it is. You simply marvel at how good the character is, rather than how good the CG is (which, of course, it is). When Gollum is called Smeagol for the first time, the reaction he has, the change in speech---well, that’s better acting than in any of the Freddie Prinze Jr. oeuvre.

The ending, framed almost entirely on Gollum’s face, without a hint of the magnificent score that has accompanied most of the movie, is one of the great creep-outs ever. Just breathtaking.

I haven’t even touched the Dead Marshes, the scope of Helm’s Deep, the beauty of Edoras, the siege on Isenguard, because, for me, that’s not what these movies are ultimately about. It’s in the eyes of a man who thinks he’s lost a friend, it’s in the eyes of a creature who is looking for redemption, and its in the eyes of a hobbit trying desperately to save himself from the evil around his neck. It’s the ability to convey these moments, and make me give a damn, amidst the canvas of the most beautifully shot and conceived movie I’ve ever seen, that haunts me today as I write this.