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Rating: You never watch a film with the same eyes. And if this time the excuse to return to the theater was the 4K, the truth is that I was dying to test my emotions and critical eye, twenty years later. It was the day of my thirteenth birthday, and this film became a new obsession for me: I remember watching it on repeat on videotape, the following summer. I practically know all the dialogues and shots by heart. Yet watching it again in the cinema wasn’t a predictable or useless step; last night I felt the magnetism of the events as if it were the first time, I wandered together with the little hobbits in the woods of the Shire, I smelled the scent of blood and betrayal with Gandalf and Saruman at Isengard, I suffered the chill of Caradhras and the abyss of Moria.
Unthinkable today
The experience, the time passed, the even more refined quality of the images. All useful elements to weigh a new judgment, independent of the twenty-year-long love that had indelibly shaped my taste for cinema. I watched The Fellowship with new eyes and was dazzled. Such a work today is out of scale. In the sense that in 2021 no one would make a film like that, condensed into just three hours; they would exploit this treasure trove for a TV series (and indeed the one for Amazon on the Silmarillion is in production), perhaps even two. Instead, due to a series of fortunate events, Peter Jackson was able to work on the length of three films (initially two) and what I rewatched on the big screen, understanding it with a new awareness, is a visual poem of rare intensity and care, a fantasy summa embracing Christian values and beyond.
A poem for the words chosen with love, for the underlying values, but a poem of images for the pictorial fineness of the scenes, on which the director wisely lingers (to allow us to see). The precision with which the narrative hooks meet is astonishing, even if there are a couple of minimal blind spots (the part where Gandalf goes and returns from Minas Tirith is not very clear in timing compared to the arrival of the Nazgul). We are introduced to many characters and each of them has its own breath, its own evolution. I felt a strong nostalgia for a Hollywood cinema that knows how to be slow, to take its time, but is also dense with content. Here we are at dizzying heights. An example above all: when the Fellowship is stopped in the mines because the guide does not remember the way, there is space for a dialogue that offers phrases of this stature.
"Many who live deserve death, and some who die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death and judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends."
Scenery and direction
The poem of images is a technical masterpiece of computer graphics and real settings, encompassing the eerie scenarios of the mines, the bucolic ones of the Shire, the enchanted ones of the Elves’ realms. But it is a poem of pure cinema even in the more technical passages of the direction, when the camera explores the nooks of Balin’s tomb, besieged by orcs and a cave troll. Frodo flees, takes cover, and together with him, we are in the midst of the fray, but with only very few moments of visual confusion. Because Jackson wants to show us, to captivate us through the fascination of our minds, and not to subjugate us with mere adrenaline-fueled, gratuitous movements. The decantation of the years tells me once more that the love of a young boy was not misplaced: today's images, if possible, are even happier because they contrast a cinema that has become more and more disposable. Not here, the steep dwarven steps have a specific weight, they seem to collapse under our feet. And so the bridge of Khazad Dum opens a chasm that scares us; we feel the void below.
In such well-defined spaces, the author’s eye moves with energetic intelligence, exploring everywhere, with vertical dives into the depths of Middle Earth's mysteries. Once the references are identified (Mordor, the tower of Isengard, the Misty Mountains), we can move confidently in a world that works because it is carefully simplified. There is a lot of didacticism in the repetition of the myths, because it is important that we understand. Tolkien’s map is complicated, but the clash between good and evil is marked almost linearly from west to east. With references, the journey can unfold with great liveliness, because if we jump from Isengard to Rivendell, no one will doubt where we are. In this sense, even the camera is not lazy but plays with angles (in the woods, when the Nazgul smells hobbits, at Bree, in the forges of the white wizard), races swiftly in the dwarven realm, and ventures out freely into the woods of Lothlórien, plunges down from the skies crossed by Gandalf’s friendly eagles to the intestines of the earth where Saruman shapes his monsters.
Wizards and Rangers
I thought: in 2001, cinema screens, I believe, were short of magicians and wizards. Then all at once, Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee. Not great for other directors wanting to attempt the genre. This film is gigantic also for this reason, as it revives a disused genre and does so with a formal perfection that would essentially doom the genre itself prematurely. You cannot do better than this, you cannot outperform sir McKellen. When the two clash, the slapstick antics between the comic and the gruesome mix with the fierce expressions of the two elders. One spins on the head, the other falls head over heels, like the grim version of Disney's Merlin against Madam Mim. Because in all this, there is also great irony, crucial to not overdo it with burdens. Then this first film is, in my opinion, unsurpassable because it does not have to deal too heavily with the uncomfortable figure (from a pure narrative economy perspective) of Gollum.
Jackson chose Viggo Mortensen for Aragorn, and he won. He took Sean Bean, Elijah Wood, and Sean Astin. And he won. He invented Orlando Bloom. Those faces, revisited today, have not lost an ounce of their charisma in twenty years. And I struggle to find, except in rare cases, subsequent roles where they have done better.
A Christological triad
I could go on for pages and pages, but it's unnecessary. What is necessary, however, is to highlight what I had completely ignored at the time, starting to recover it a few years ago with more recent viewings. In this first chapter, perhaps also due to some varied dialogues in this edition (but I am not sure), the exquisitely Christological dimension of Frodo's story emerges strongly. The spotless lamb that can bear the weight of the vanitas vanitatum, the ring of power, earthly life, and the corruption of human souls. The whole mechanism of the adventure is a perfect metaphor for human struggle in pursuit of worldly goods, which moves immense energies: the Balrog, the demonic octopus, trolls, Saruman and Gollum, Boromir and then Faramir, Bilbo. All the same, all men and monsters susceptible to corruption, and therefore Frodo's condemnation to solitude. The solipsistic escape is a test he cannot avoid, his destiny. As it is the destiny of other heroes to fall to rise again: in this sense, the wise Gandalf lets himself fall into the abyss, to fight a deep evil and return new to life. In this, there is also a lot of Eastern philosophies, the inescapable Yin and Yang, but bent to a teleological vision.
In all this, Jesus Christ is halved, divided into two opposite and complementary figures: the agnus dei Frodo and the wise teacher Gandalf. Perhaps we can also add the imperishable friend and physical support (as well as moral), Sam. A triad, because it was not necessary to imitate the sacred scriptures, but everything else seems that it is indeed aiming there.
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