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.
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