I have just returned from Middle Earth, and my body is heavy with the memory of battle, my mind alight with the visions and details of The Two Towers. Based on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers forms the middle of the trilogy, and is a good place to evaluate the effect of being thoroughly caught up in a story.
Although the production of a film is a collaborative process, Peter Jackson was surely the focus of all this creativity: the wizard in the centre of a web of creative power. He has crafted an incredible artwork, one which shall endure, one that has enriched the world. I am grateful to all those who made it come to pass.
I bow my head again as I remember it. Arwen’s heart so filled with sadness, Elrond spelling out the consequences of her love for Aragorn: ‘There is nothing here for you but death.’ It felt as if he spoke those words for all of Middle Earth, and for all of us in the audience. I cried with Arwen as I saw the King Aragorn laid upon his coffin, the body turn to stone, the leaves of the ages fall upon it as so much was lost to Time, and there, oh Mercy! – the sweet beauty Arwen broken-hearted in the shadows, her dream of the world-as-it-was lying cold and dead before her, and her light is lost. The bitterness of mortality could not have been more elegantly rendered. I grieved that Arwen’s time has passed, and all we know of it is the tale passed down through Tolkien. I grieved that someone so fair should have to bear so much sadness. I was completely swept away.
Peter Jackson’s team have excelled at transforming the Lord of The Rings from page to screen. I never cried reading the book, but in the movie there was a power that came out of Tolkien’s work which I do not believe was fully realised in the text. The themes were there, the words were there, but ‘some things that should not have been forgotten’, were lost beneath the ponderous complexities, as if a layer of dust had fallen upon many of the treasures, and dulled their meaning. Jackson has improved the legend, for Middle Earth is polished on screen, authentic and bold. The Two Towers did not appear to be a dramatisation of Tolkien’s work – rather, it transported me into those real events which Tolkien experienced and later wrote about.
I fell with Gandalf into that dark underworld beneath Moria, dropped into that awesome cavern with my sword against the Balrog’s ancient face, and knew if I turned aside for just a moment, I would die. I was there upon the walls in Helm’s Deep, looking down upon thousands of terribly strong foes, feeling that deathly fear through all my soul and holding only the thin blade of my defiance before me. I could feel how weak that blade was, even though Aragorn had told me, ‘This is a good sword.’ I knew he’d said it only to make me hold on to my courage.
I held my breath as I moved past the top of the Dark Tower, where the ‘single eye wreathed in flame was ever watchful’, one of many brilliant cinematic moments. I pitied the wretch Gollum, who is a complete success – living, breathing Smeagol, more real than ever. I laughed for joy when Aragorn’s horse found him lying wounded at the river’s edge, nuzzled him as he was dreaming of Arwen, and took him to safety. The horse-work throughout was truly brilliant.
I moved through the world, in awe of so much artwork and detail it defies individual mention. The landscapes, the villages, the battlements, the halls, the weapons, the Black Gates of Mordor, the haunting soundtrack, everything was authentic, inspired, praiseworthy.
The scriptwriter’s division of the narrative, to weave the many concurrent threads, is as it should have been in the book – it keeps the pace fluid through a section which really dragged on and on (in Tolkien’s version). The film breathes new life into the fantasy.
It is rare to witness such mastery, and so inspiring to see such beauty. Thank you Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Richard Taylor, Viggo, Elijah, Sir Ian, Andy, Liv, Orlando … and the few thousand others.
