Lengthy but never boring

Film review: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Even after the success of The Fellowship of the Ring, there are still doubts surrounding The Two Towers. This is perfectly understandable given that sequels generally fare disastrously (Remember Star Wars?) Add to this the fact that promotions for the movie have played up the action sequences, seemingly at the expense of character development and plot (things more important to J. R. R. Tolkien readers), and the love story between Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and Arwen (Liv Tyler).

Indeed, the film, like its predecessor, departs from the book. The first movie expands Arwen role and does away with Tom Bombadil character altogether, to the chagrin of readers. The sequel similarly contains sequences not found in Tolkien. One major departure is Faramir bringing Frodo, Sam, and Gollum to the besieged Osgiliath, where Frodo is confronted by a Nazgul on a winged dragon.

Director Peter Jackson is clearly making a gambleand the gamble pays off. The Two Towers was nominated for the Best Picture award at the Golden Globes. More importantly, when one looks beyond the plot liberties that Jackson has taken, he realizes that the film stays true to Tolkien not in word, true, but in spirit. Attempting a literal or faithful adaptation, an oxymoron that would have been self-defeating, for the Tolkien mythology and universe are too rich and complex for a slavish adaptation a la the Harry Potter series. One has to resort to other means, such as allusions and condensation. The writers –Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Stephen Sinclair –treat The Lord of the Rings as one continuous work, not as three separate entities, and such a treatment is actually closer to Tolkien’s design.

To capture the encyclopedic texture of Tolkien lore, the movie incorporates details from the appendices to The Return of the King, The Silmarillon, and The Hobbit (thus, the love story of Aragorn and Arwen). The lines used as the prologue in Fellowship and partly reiterated here, in both instances by Galadriel, are actually Treebeard from the last book. Such touches encourage healthy discussion among Tolkien fanatics and scholars without leaving out the newly initiated, and that is a feat in itself.

Jackson himself says in the extended DVD of Fellowship that he wanted to stay faithful to the themes, not the plot, of Tolkien books, and this is what we get. In s the themes are renewal and hope, which complement one of the main concerns of the entire corpus of Tolkien writings: mortality. The love story between Arwen and Aragon, merely appended to The Return of the King but figuring prominently in the film, must be seen in this context. It redresses the lust that humans have for immortality, which Eru or Iluvatar, the Supreme Being in Tolkien’s universe, has given to the elves. Arwen forfeits her immortality out of love for a man, thereby affirming what Iluvatar has designed mortality to be: a gift to men, not a curse.

The elves participation in the Battle of Helms Deep, another major departure from the novel, must also be seen as dramatizing the theme of renewal. Not only are elves and men reconciled but also are elves and dwarfs. Towers sees Legolas and Gimli sharing a horse, the elf defending the dwarf from the insults of Eomer (played by New Zealander Karl Urban, one of the sexiest men according to People; he could give Orlando Bloom a run for the wig), and both placing a bet on who between them will kill more orcs.

Jackson, in short, knows what he is doing and where he is headed.

However, despite the three-hour running time of the movie, one may want an even more unhurried narration. The dialogue is replete with references to hope. While the theme is foregrounded, as shown above, the treatment also becomes rather heavy-handed. The word "hope" recurs in scene after scene to an irritating degree. Interposing some scenes between these "hope-full" exchanges could have eased the nagging feeling.

The suspicion arises that an extended DVD with these scenes included is in the making. But of course, that product would not be commercially viable because of its length. The appeal would be to the Tolkien fanatic, and there are quite a number of them, as the reception to the extended DVD of Fellowship released recently, shows. The version of Fellowship which found its way into the cinema focused on the hobbits, a move justified by the theme, sounded in the prologue and reiterated by Galadriel: "Even the smallest person could change the course of the future." Scenes that develop the character of the rest of the Fellowship or which fill in the gaps in the narrative are found in the DVD: Aragorn song about the mythical love story between Luthien and Beren, which becomes his or destiny; Boromir’s vision, which leads him to the Council of Elrond; detailed description of Shire culture; the negotiations between the Fellowship and Haldir, after which the nine fellows are allowed entry into Lothlorien; a more substantial role for Celeborn, Galadriel’s husband, and so on. Imagine what Jackson would add in the Towers DVD, length be hanged.

Whoever said that the viewer’s attention span is becoming shorter must make an exception in the case of The Two Towers and, indeed, of the other Lord of the Rings releases, whether DVD or film. Jacksons adaptations produce the same effect as Tolkien’s books. They may be lengthy, but never boring.

With the specter of a US-Iraq encounter looming before us, The Lord of the Rings takes on even more significance. It was also at the brink of a world crisis that Tolkien wrote the trilogy; and although he rejected allegorical interpretations of his work, it spoke to people in a war-besieged world. Next to the Bible, another book of battles (physical and spiritual) and of hope, the trilogy was the most read book of the last century. Peter Jackson’s adaptations will probably be the most watched movies of the current one.