The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Welcome to the second of three very long posts -- again, as a reminder, these posts are more about how well the films capture (or don’t) the things that are really great about the books, and are therefore going to be more critical than I would be if I’m just talking about the movies as filmgoing experiences. Now, on to LOTR:TTT -- http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/3/30/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_-_The_Two_Towers_-_Ensemble_poster.jpg
I do have to say, the whole Gollum/Frodo/Sam dynamic is incredibly well-realized on screen in this movie -- Serkis in his ground-breaking role as Smeagol/Gollum is, of course, a revelation, imbuing a digital performance with an incredible depth of emotion and subtlety. Wood and Astin are very capable actors too, and they build off of him well, but it’s Serkis whose energy is crucial to pulling this off, and it really works. The movie is more explicit than the novel about Frodo’s level of identification with Smeagol, which it explains not just with film language but literally in dialogue between Frodo and Sam, and that’s honestly cool with me, as is the clearer indication that there really is good left in Gollum in the person of “Smeagol”. The movie doesn’t overplay its hand, I think, and helps us see this ancient creature as both malevolent and weirdly savvy and even genial (under the right conditions). It’s a good enough approach that it helps transform my reading of Smeagol/Gollum in a way that I think enhances the text of the novel, and that’s always a good thing.
The Three Hunters sequence is exciting, of course, though if anything it may be a little too rushed -- Legolas in particular is shouting very long sentences as he sprints across the screen, which ends up feeling more like a dress rehearsal than it does an intentional choice by Jackson. Once you notice this, it’s almost comical, since every time we cut back to them, it’s Aragorn looking purposeful, Legolas close on his heels shouting something about how “forsooth it is a red morn and they run as if their feet were wings and th….*voice trails off into the distance*”, and then Gimli making a joke about how slow he is. Gimli is almost nothing but quips at this point, and even though most of them are funny, I worry we lose the character’s integrity a little bit. The overall effect of these choices mostly works, I think -- we at least are building images of Legolas and Gimli in our heads, which is good since they were underwritten in Fellowship (novel and film), but I don’t think either of them really comes across with the depth I’d like to see there.
The initial setup in Rohan, with some scenes depicting the children of Eomund, the dying/dead Theodred, Grima the slimeball, etc., honestly works really well -- it’s a little distracting to have it come out of nowhere in the way it does, of course, since these are characters we haven’t even really heard of before, let alone met. But the relationships between these characters are laid out more clearly from the beginning than they are in the novel, and therefore you quickly develop attachments rapidly which I think the movie generally pays off. The Eomer changes are disruptive, though -- his conversation with Aragorn is much too brief and we don’t get the build up of their connection that I think we really need to have. Their conversation in the book, as you may remember from my post about it, is really wide-ranging, and gives us a chance to see both Aragorn’s assertion of his kingly power (which the screenplay is just doggedly determined to throw away) and Eomer’s youthful energy (which I think is less evident here than a sort of world-weariness, but then in the case of the film Eomer has been unfairly exiled, which does create a different dynamic very naturally).
Gandalf’s return is handled pretty skillfully though I wish we got a better description of what it means to him that he’s “Gandalf the White” -- which always feels a little cheesy when McKellen says it, since without any further explanation, the color swap feels like a sort of childish and meaningless distinction. That’s about the only nice thing I can say about the scenes set in Fangorn Forest, since the Ent sequence is totally off the rails for me basically from the beginning -- Jackson gets so invested in the idea that Ents are boring, dull-witted, out to lunch, meandering, etc., that it really frustrates me. We should be excited to encounter Treebeard and his people, a whole species we never even anticipated (and one really totally unique to Tolkien’s cosmology) and instead basically anytime he comes on screen, we in the audience groan and roll our eyes because we know NOTHING is going to happen. We learn rapidly to resent the Ents and see them as useless moderates who could easily help and are instead fixated on truly meaningless protocols and etiquette. I do like the relocation of some Bombadil stuff here, I guess, since we lose Tom from Fellowship, but honestly it could go and I would be okay, since I truthfully could excise the Ents entirely from this film and be content -- just have weird tree creatures show up out of nowhere to destroy Isengard, honestly, and let them be cool and mysterious, rather than this drawn-out complaint about them for even existing.
The confrontation/exorcism scene in Edoras is really lovely -- the Gandalf/Theoden relationship is established very clearly and it’s pretty cool to develop that connection between them. The confrontation makes great use of the novel’s language, and the staging, fight choreography, and cinematography are just masterful. I’m transfixed throughout. A minor frustration I do have through this sequence (and, honestly, the whole film) is Aragorn’s deference -- the spine he shows in the actual novel is nowhere to be seen, and so we get totally bizarre moments like him kneeling before Theoden or being slapped down by Theoden with the question “who’s king in Rohan” when the answer is it’s ARAGORN you old teapot, and while you’ve been sitting there like a fungus this “Ranger from the North” has been doing his best to pursue evil and drive it out of the land. I mean, in movie terms it works because it’s completely consistent with the story we’re given about this character, his motivations, his self-image, etc., so I’m not complaining that it fails on that level. I just find it frustrating because they’ve shifted Aragorn so much from his motivations as a character in the novel that there’s some really great character moments that are lost here.
Eowyn is awesome. Miranda Otto is spectacular in the role: the whole energy of her character is handled incredibly well -- the bouts of confidence and fear, the profound love of family, the immediate fascination with Aragorn, etc. This is a character who could easily have felt forced on us -- superfluous in the new scenes composed here, say, or else just out of place in demanding her rights a little too early, rather than waiting for the pay-off when she asserts herself later -- and instead it’s nearly impossible not to fall for her, and wish the others would just add her to the team and roll with it. No offense to Arwen and Liv Tyler, but even with Jackson building Arwen up in Fellowship, I watch a scene or two of Aragorn and Eowyn and I just root for them to be together: she’s so dynamic and has such a keen mind of her own.
Frodo and Sam’s encounter with Faramir brings me to the other big frustration I feel with this film (other than the Ents, that is). Faramir’s concern for the fallen enemy is nice -- it’s a good way to draw out what the narrator leaves in Sam’s head in the novel, and it at least nods in the direction of Faramir as a genuinely good person, someone with unusual integrity and strength of character. But then he is otherwise totally mishandled in a manner that suggests the writers had no idea what to do with him: he becomes this weird antagonist, like Boromir Part II (but this time Boromir has a hundred armed men as backup), and acts as a giant obstacle to the Ring’s quest rather than the one moment of respite these two guys should get in a whole movie of stress and strain. I get the desire to create tension I guess, since conflict is important to story-telling in the abstract, but it's tense enough for Frodo and Sam that this could instead have been a really great breather (as it is in the novel). And there were ways of creating external tension without making Faramir a giant dick and his men to boot: as it is, our impressions of Gondor remain incredibly negative, which is such a weird choice to make for a film trilogy that needs us to suddenly care very very much about the freedom of Gondor in the final film.
The Rohan sequences really do work - lots of character moments for Legolas and Gimli, which are most welcome, and great development of a plausible love triangle. Sure, this isn't how the romances actually unfolded in the text, but here I’ll turn my criticism at Tolkien instead of Jackson: the novel's insistence that Aragorn isn't interested in Eowyn is super implausible, and the film taking his conflict seriously here is much more fair to his character (and Eowyn’s). I do like that they’re very clear about the distance there -- him having fought alongside Eowyn’s grandfather as a young man, for instance -- but there’s an undeniable chemistry there. Elrond's emotions about Arwen’s departure are sensible from a parent's perspective, though I wish it was more nuanced: we see so little of Elrond that it’s tough to invest most of his screen time in him being a manipulative (borderline abusive) asshole. On the other hand, it allows Jackson to work in some really lovely material from the Appendices, and I can’t say that the confrontation between Elrond and his daughter rings false. I do kind of hate the Aragorn death fake-out, since Jackson overuses death fake-outs in general, but there's no denying they get a little arc out of it for Aragorn and I think it probably adds the right kind of momentum to the film at that point without really damaging anything about the characters and their relationships.
The Helm's Deep sequence works, as you and I both know of course -- one of the most famous battle sequences ever filmed and it’s not hard to see why. I know it was controversial back in the day, but the arrival of the Elves as combatants is fine by me, even though the notion that I'll be moved by Haldir's death is pretty remarkable, I think. The novel doesn’t really show us Elves at war, and I think it’s an unfortunate omission, so I do like seeing them at work here. My criticism of the Haldir thing is really just a criticism of the Lothlorien sequence in Fellowship -- if you want us to be moved by his death, he needs to be depicted as something other than a prickly concierge, which makes that portion of Fellowship even more of a missed opportunity, I think. There's a little geographic confusion during the battle itself, but overall it is pretty easy to follow the main events without much dialogue at all to guide us, and there's some great cinematography and scoring. The arrival of the White Rider is certainly going to be a hit for almost anybody, and anybody steeped in evangelical eschatology in childhood (as I was) is going to find really deep if slightly weird emotional resonance in the scene of him leading his troops into battle as an army of light, effectively.
Ugh, the Ents, though. Everything about it just makes me increasingly frustrated -- I mean, I get that they serve as an obstacle for the hobbits to overcome, so in very simple film terms, it makes sense. But we’re expected to understand that somehow the Ents haven’t noticed the aggressive deforestation program that’s been under way for literally months now, which we’ve all known about since mid-Fellowship? And we’re expected to root for the Ents even though they literally refused to aid in the war until suddenly they realized that THEY and THEIR people were direct targets? I mean, they come across as self-centered jerks. Now, maybe they don’t come across that way for you, and if so, I really am glad for you -- I would love to love their sequences a lot more than I do. I find myself rolling my eyes until they actually take up arms against Isengard and I can just lose myself in their furious assault on Saruman’s fortress.
Sam's final speech is of course good -- it’s the sort of thing people quite on social media (and goodness, we have, haven’t we) and it’s pretty true to his character and perspective, which I’m grateful for. It's puzzling though that Faramir would change his mind under these conditions - I mean, let’s think about what he learns at Osgiliath. As Faramir watches, he sees Frodo nearly give the Ring to a Nazgul as though hypnotized -- the Ringwraith shows up and it’s like Frodo is under a spell. Frodo only avoids handing over “the Weapon of the Enemy” due to being tackled by Sam, who clearly can barely keep Frodo’s psyche together. The two of them want to take the Ring straight into Mordor where there are nine Nazgul, and they intend to do so via a road that runs right past Minas Morgul, which Faramir knows is the base of the most powerful Nazgul of all. Their guide in this is a withered monster who Faramir clearly does not trust and believes to be a danger to their safety. Now, what in all that explains Faramir’s sudden 180-degree reversal, to send them off into Ithilien to finish their quest instead of accompanying him back to Minas Tirith? The answer is, it’s honestly not explicable. It would be consistent with the novel’s characterization of Faramir, a man who would not pick the Ring up if it was lying by the roadside. But the Faramir we’re given here? Again, I just find it frustrating -- if you’re going to create an arbitrary obstacle in Faramir, it’s got to resolve in a way that’s meaningful. The film language of these scenes suggests he suddenly identifies with and understands Frodo, but it’s not clear at all how that identification happens, and it’s not really clear what the connection really is. I can invent one in my head, but that’s me doing work I think Jackson and company should and could have done for me.
I have to say, I really do enjoy the film overall -- there are some wonderful performances here, and as with all the films in this trilogy, the score is amazing, the production and costuming work is second to none, and the cinematography and editing is generally very good (even if some of Jackson’s horror habits are sometimes a little distracting -- I would gladly ditch almost all of the slow-motion shots in these movies). My frustrations with the Ents and Faramir are simply that I think, out of a desire to create more points of tension and conflict -- effectively, to create more of a traditional Hollywood story -- the writers have done some damage to these characters unwittingly. As a result, they fumble the characters later in the film, when they make decisions that either aren’t explicable, or are only explicable in terms that should make them come across as villains and not heroes. It’s still a very good adaptation -- but, if I’m honest, it’s probably the weakest of the three films for me, purely in terms of how successfully it represents the themes and character development of the novel it’s working with (in part because this movie only gives us about 60% of both Books III and IV -- Jackson lopped off the first chapter of Book III for Fellowship, and the last several chapters each from both Books III and IV for Return, and leaves himself with a storytelling problem that he/his writing collaborators could only solve by creating new plot problems that I find either tolerable or unsuccessful).
Well, tomorrow I’ll drop my post about LOTR:ROTK and then a final post that recommends some websites and some books to your attention, if you’d like some Tolkien-related enrichment material!