This movie was incredible but there was something that held me up from writing it up until after seeing it a second time–you don’t really think I waited two months to see The Two Towers, did you? Of course you didn’t.
For those very foolish few who haven’t seen it, The Two Towers is the middle film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. The fellowship of nine, formed in the first movie, has been broken and scattered and in these three hours we follow them in three groups. Frodo and Sam have crossed into the lands of Mordor, home of the dark lord Sauron, and are making their way to Mount Duim where they will attempt to destroy the One Ring and with it Sauron’s power. Sauron, in league with the corrupted wizard Saruman, is sending his legions and minions into the lands of Men and Elves not only to find the Ring and return it to him but to conquer and destroy them once and for all.
Merry and Pippin were captured by Saruman’s Uruk Hai-led band of marauders, who killed Boromir during the same confrontation. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are tracking them, hoping to free them. Gandolf is missing, presumed dead, after battling the Balrog in the mines of Moria. All three paths seem hopeless, the path for Frodo and Sam through the black lands trackless, Aragorn’s Elf love Arwen is begged by her father to forsake Middle Earth and join the Elven trek to the Undying Lands across the sea.
The acting highlights in TTT are Andy Serkis as Gollum/Smeagle, Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn, and Miranda Otto as Eowyn, honorable mention to Brad Dourif as Grima Wormtongue. Serkis campaigned for a Best Supporting Actor nomination but apparently the Academy wouldn’t allow it; after all, though we hear his voice we never see his face. He had to perform each of his scenes twice, once on the sets with the other actors and a second time alone in front of a blue screen in a special suit with many sensors attached to capture his motion, then the computer specialists replaced Serkis’ image with Gollum’s.
Later in the day I watched Speed on TV and the comparison of Keanu Reeves and Mortensen was very instructive. Reeves was clearly aiming for the subtle, contained energy style of action hero but only Mortensen pulled it off. Consider the scene where the latter pushes open the doors of Theoden’s hall after he is thought lost in battle against Reeves’ entrance into the underground passageway where Sandra Bullock has retrieved Dennis Hopper’s money. Also interesting is the difference in performance by Otto and Liv Tyler’s Arwen; Otto is much more believable in her range than Tyler.
The most amazing work of all, though, is by Peter Jackson who co-wrote the screenplay and directed this monumental effort. Looking at the list of movies that will be released this year, and knowing that there will be many more to come, I will say now that if he does not get the Best Director Oscar (and Return of the King Best Picture) then those awards are a farce. There have been plenty of 150 minute plus films and most of them have long dragging sections, but not here, not even if I consider both LotR films as one. The creativity he’s brought to the visualization and staging of such a complex story as well: Gollum!, Treebeard and the other Ents, the city of Edoras (capital of Rohan) perched high on the mountain, the evil of Orthanc and the pits of Isengard and Barad-dur behind the Black Gates, the Keep at Helm’s Deep and the massive army that assaults it, down to such tiny details as the bodies under water in the Dead Marshes and the blinding light accompanying Gandolf’s return.
The whole thing struck me as very Shakespearean. Epic scale, mad kings, a reluctant return to a throne, romance between feuding families, small people caught up in great events. Many people, writing when TTT was released in December, claimed the whole thing was an attempt to back America’s warmongering but that seems so ridiculous on even the slghtest of examinations for two simple points: nearly the whole cast (plus the director) has come out against war and the scripts were written in the 1998/99 timeframe and principle production took place in 1999/2000! This absurdity reflects the similar controversy that arose when the books were published in the years after World War II as many commentators framed Aragorn, Gandolf, and Frodo as the Allies and Sauron/Saruman as Germany and Japan. But Tolkien rejected that because of course he was commenting on the way modern industry was crushing the last remnants of the rural English life he held so dear. Seriously.
Only 297 days until the release of Return of the King!
Absolutely recommended!
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