Force of HobbitThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is a glorious, visceral mess.
By David EdelsteinPosted Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002, at 7:01 AM ET
In TheLord of the Rings:The Two Towers (New Line), the director Peter Jackson doesn't bother with niceties like a beginning or an ending: No doubt aware that his audience has already seen The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and bought its tickets for The Return ofthe King (2003), he serves up a big fat three-hour middle. The installment opens with Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) in midfight with that giant spawn-of-hell Balrog, then picks up three plotlines in midstream. Hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Samwise (Sean Astin) make their way to Mordor with the cursed Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron, dogged by the seething, chattering gargoyle Gollum. Hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) struggle first with the Uruk-Hai and then with the Ents, a race of walking, talking, often complaining trees. And Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and the dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) join forces with the Rohan, whose king, Theoden (Bernard Hill), is in the thrall of Gríma Wormtongue (Brad Dourif), a creepy little henchman of the dastardly Saruman the White (Christopher Lee). (If I have misspelled or mischaracterized any of the above, please send corrections to eatme@Idontgiveashit.com.)
As my synopsis implies, The Two Towers starts with a hash of exposition, the characters are sketchy, there's no payoff, and the cross-cutting among the three separate plots kills whatever momentum the filmmakers manage to build. Two-thirds of the movie is battle scenes you can't quite follow, although you can tell that a lot of people (or elves, or Uruks) won't be rising from the blood-soaked ground, and those that do will be hitting the Advil bottle (or its Middle Earth equivalent) pretty hard. The film is, by most criteria, an ungainly piece of storytelling. Yet it sweeps you up and hurtles you along like water from an exploded dike. If it's hard to keep hold of the spiraling narrative threads, it's harder still to resist the rush of mythic imagery and cornball heroic dialogue delivered by gorgeously blue-eyed actors and actresses. Like its predecessor, Jackson's movie infuses the solemn mock-scholarship of Tolkien with the volcanic enthusiasm of Tolkienites. The movie is a monument to a talented fan-boy's passion: You emerge into the light with your heart pounding, ears ringing, head swimming, and gasp, "That's entertainment!"
Here's the official Lord of the Rings Web site. The New York Times Magazine dubbed "simulsequeling"—filming several installments of a series at once, as Jackson did—one of the major trends of 2002. The title of the current LOTR installment certainly resonates right now, but can the film be read as a statement on the war on terrorism? Viggo Mortenson says no; this critic says yes. In "Tolkien, Hitler, and Nordic Heroism," J.P. Zmirak links Tolkien's rejection of totalitarianism to our fight against al-Qaida. This Salon review of T.A. Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century presents a "cantankerous, politically unclassifiable, anti-globalization Tolkien who is clearly our contemporary." Like all anti-modernists and myth-makers, Tolkien has always been both loved and hated; in this 1956 review in the New York Times, W.H. Auden confessed that "I rarely remember a book about which I have had such violent arguments."
Is this one qualitatively different? No, it's just as stirring: What I wrote in praise of The Fellowship of the Ring last December still applies. (It's too bad that review is attached to what in retrospect seems a way-too-forgiving take on A Beautiful Mind.) The Two Towers is medieval sword-and-sorcery filtered through the sensibility of a brilliant visceral-horror maven (not, as Chris Suellentrop has argued, a schlockmeister—that would be the guy who made A Beautiful Mind). The viscera, in this case, is from the Earth itself, which is always belching up large, mucky things: snakes, marsh demons, Ringwraiths. Last time out, we heard Saruman command his ghoulish minions to rrrrrip the trees from the ground. Now we learn that his ferocious anti-environmentalism will have unforeseen consequences—that the forces of nature itself will join with hobbits, humans, elves, and such-like to forestall the resurrection of Sauron.
Mortensen's Aragon and the creature Gollum get the most to do in The Two Towers. The former disembowels countless Uruks, has a spectacular battle with a marauding giant pig-creature, goes over a cliff, and gets bathed in the ardor of the dishy Rohan princess Éowyn (Miranda Otto)—the happiest addition to the Rings saga, especially given Cate Blanchett's mere minute or so of screen time. Despite a slight resemblance to the Crypt Keeper from TV's Tales From the Crypt, the schizoid Gollum is one of the most fascinating of all FX creatures—a twitchy, agonized (and agonizing-to-watch) combination of obsequiousness and hostility. He's much more compelling than either McKellen or Lee—although the former has a nice moment when he declaims to Mortensen, "Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth day. At dawn, look to the east!" and then gives a little shrug of weariness, as if to say, "What the hell have I let myself in for?" I'll probably give the same little shrug when I go off to The Return of the King next year—but I'll plunge in just the same. I didn't learn all these damn names to be deprived of a big finale.
There is much expert Tolkien debate, particularly those posts by mtk (as, for example, here). Two good threads are the debate over Tolkien's ostensible racism (represented by Mauberley and rob_said_that below) and the discussion of self-conscious myth-making (represented by The_Bell and Tiresias below). Many are upset that Faramirhas been dumbed down (see this thread, for example). For a fan's extended review, see MsZilla's post here.
Remarks From The Fray:
I never called Peter Jackson a "schlockmeister." In fact, I was trying to argue (obviously unsuccessfully) that Jackson's early films are unfairly dismissed by fans of Heavenly Creatures and the Lord of the Rings. Oh well.
It was the banner headline in Slate, Chris. Anyway, I've been attacked for headlines I didn't write, so I know how it feels. The piece itself was indeed more balanced.
I understand we live in casual times, and a more conversational writing style is popular in these times. I imagine that D.E. wanted to pre-empt the fan-boy responses. But "eat me"? And the rest? I thought you a wee classier than that, Mr. Edelstein. And Slate as well. -- Nole95
… gave me a bounceback message, so I guess I'll have to post here.
Rohan is the country, the Rohirrim are it's people. And no, that's not being an excessive fanboy. If I were being an excessive fanboy, I would point out the derivation from the elvish Roch(Horse) and Hir(Lord), or the fact that the land was originally known as Calenardhon before Eorl settled there and became the first lord of Rohan, but I would never do such a thing.
Mr. Edelstein is quite right to view the characters of Aragorn and Gollum as the individuals on whom Tolkien chooses to shine the greatest (Elvish) light. Perhaps more than any other characters in the narrative, with the exception of Frodo, they are the ones required to undergo the greatest internal changes. What is more, they are the outward reflection of the wisdom of Gandalf to Frodo in the Mines of Moria. Namely, that in Tolkien's ultimate battle of good versus evil - as in any classic myth - the essential element is not justice or vengeance but redemption, that victory will be won not by the characters' courage in quest and battle but by their courage to show mercy and forgiveness for themselves and each other. This middle installment cannot provide the resolution of that essential conflict. That lies within the final installment, "The Return of the King." "The Two Towers" cannot satisfy; it can only sweep us along to fulfillment. If that was Mr. Edelstein's reaction to it, the latest installment of LOTR does not succeed in spite of itself but rather does exactly what Tolkien always intended it to do.
Invoking the word "mythic" doesn't save it. Myths were invented by unknown people over long periods of time, and that provenance is part of the respect we accord them. (Well, not always--an lot of myths I've read are just gobbledegook.) The Lord of the Rings is a modern literary work, as self-consciously anachronistic as Ossian was in its day. It has to be judged by the standard of art, not myth. As art, it ranks OK as a curiosity and an entertainment, but no higher. The movie only boils Tolkien's richly detailed story down to its most crowd-pleasing elements. It is to the books what melodramatic post-Civil War "Tom shows" were to Harriet Beecher Stowe's pretty good novel.
Tolkien did write a semi-great book: The Hobbit. It is, on the whole, lively, well-paced, nicely nuanced, and quite charming. Unfortunately, a balrog got hold of Tolkien near the end and dragged him into the Abyss of Epic Solemnity. Unlike Gandalf, he never escaped. -- Tiresias
Was I the only one who felt over prepared for the battle of Helm's Deep. First came the cry "The Battle of Helm's Deep is about to begin." Next someone said, "The Battle of Helm's Deep is beginning." Then it was, "The Battle of Helm's Deep has begun." Eight full minutes and 10,000 corpses later, the King has the gall to say "Now we fight the Battle of Helm's Deep." No wonder his men looked less than inspired …
The movie, like the Battle of Helm's Deep, never really starts, so it can't really end. It felt like Purgatory …
Now I can hear some of you say, "But it was SUPPOSED to feel like Purgatory. That's the POINT. Dontcha see? The audience feels exactly like the characters. The fact that you felt like it lasted for ever means that the movie succeeded in what it set out to do."
Nice try, dork. This isn't some Danish Expressionist art house film; It's not like the folks at New Line said, "Hey, let's suck all the life out of our season's biggest blockbuster while making it as confusing and tedious as possible. What a statement THAT will make."
If Frodo thinks Mordor is a long, hard journey, he should try being in the audience. What's worse, there's still another film to slog through next holiday season.
I just want to take a quick moment to respond to a point not made in the review itself, but in the article by J.P. Zmirak in FrontPage magazine last year, "Tolkien, Hitler and Nordic Heroism." It is a point that has been made numerous times in the midst of Tolkien's resurgence: that his model of heroism, blending as it does the best of the pagan and Christian sources of Western culture, provides a new model for our historical moment.
Although it is indisputable (and laudable) that Tolkien hated the Nazis, the relevance of LOTR for our times is undercut by two problems. A) The author tried to claim that LOTR was not in any sense an allegory and b) he nonetheless organized much of his Middle Earth anthropology on what we must admit are hierarchical racial stereotypes. Like the Norse mythology he loved, like the Edda and the Sagas of the Icelanders, and like Beowulf, all that is good and true and beautiful is not only northern but white, and all that is evil, corrupt and deformed is not only southern but dark (this is why Gandalf succeeds Saruman as "the White.") Elves occupy a superior position in the LOTR universe, and their superiority is a virtue of their capabilities as Elves, not because they have learned their skills but because they are predisposed to them. Aragorn, we will note, triumphs in large part because of his Elvish lineage; without his bloodline, there is little to set him apart from the rest of the other heroic humans in the text.
I enjoy the text of LOTR for its sweep of its narrative; in this sense it (along with Beowulf) surpasses the Norse myths, which, on close reading, turn out to be endless, trite variations of the same story (that story being not being Christian restraint but a struggle for kingship, power and women). But turning Tolkien into some kind of poster child for the forces of liberal democracy seems at best anachronistic and at worst insidious. This was a man who, faced with the specter of a racist empire, forged in his imagination its mirror opposite: a benevolent hegemony based almost exclusively on inherited characteristics. It makes for a rollicking good story and a kick-ass film. But it shouldn't be a model for a democratic politics or an egalitarian culture.
This is The Lord of the Rings, not The Turner Diaries. The "mud people" in TLOTR really are mud, not people. And the skalds, bards, and scops who fashioned the fables of the first millennium, from which Tolkien drew much of his inspiration for his work, were entirely unconcerned with any modern political agenda. TLOTR is more about honor, nobility, and even Manichaean dualism; it is not about race war. -- rob_said_that
In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (New Line), the director Peter Jackson doesn't bother with niceties like a beginning or an ending: No doubt aware that his audience has already seen The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and bought its tickets for The Return of the King (2003), he serves up a big fat three-hour middle. The installment opens with Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) in midfight with that giant spawn-of-hell Balrog, then picks up three plotlines in midstream. Hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Samwise (Sean Astin) make their way to Mordor with the cursed Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron, dogged by the seething, chattering gargoyle Gollum. Hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) struggle first with the Uruk-Hai and then with the Ents, a race of walking, talking, often complaining trees. And Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom), and the dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) join forces with the Rohan, whose king, Theoden (Bernard Hill), is in the thrall of Gríma Wormtongue (Brad Dourif), a creepy little henchman of the dastardly Saruman the White (Christopher Lee). (If I have misspelled or mischaracterized any of the above, please send corrections to eatme@Idontgiveashit.com.)
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUpon
Is this one qualitatively different? No, it's just as stirring: What I wrote in praise of The Fellowship of the Ring last December still applies. (It's too bad that review is attached to what in retrospect seems a way-too-forgiving take on A Beautiful Mind.) The Two Towers is medieval sword-and-sorcery filtered through the sensibility of a brilliant visceral-horror maven (not, as Chris Suellentrop has argued, a schlockmeister—that would be the guy who made A Beautiful Mind). The viscera, in this case, is from the Earth itself, which is always belching up large, mucky things: snakes, marsh demons, Ringwraiths. Last time out, we heard Saruman command his ghoulish minions to rrrrrip the trees from the ground. Now we learn that his ferocious anti-environmentalism will have unforeseen consequences—that the forces of nature itself will join with hobbits, humans, elves, and such-like to forestall the resurrection of Sauron. 
Is Hasan a Terrorist? And Other Great Stories From Slate This Week.
How Sarah Palin Is Dividing the Republican Party
Can We Apply the Lessons of Y2K to Swine Flu?
They Made a Movie About the Wrong Aviatrix
Jamie Foxx's New Single Is Extremely Lewd
The Week's Best Editorial Cartoons
Notes From The Fray Editor:
There is much expert Tolkien debate, particularly those posts by mtk (as, for example, here). Two good threads are the debate over Tolkien's ostensible racism (represented by Mauberley and rob_said_that below) and the discussion of self-conscious myth-making (represented by The_Bell and Tiresias below). Many are upset that Faramir has been dumbed down (see this thread, for example). For a fan's extended review, see MsZilla's post here.
Remarks From The Fray:
I never called Peter Jackson a "schlockmeister." In fact, I was trying to argue (obviously unsuccessfully) that Jackson's early films are unfairly dismissed by fans of Heavenly Creatures and the Lord of the Rings. Oh well.
-- ChrisSuellentrop
(To reply, click here.)
It was the banner headline in Slate, Chris. Anyway, I've been attacked for headlines I didn't write, so I know how it feels. The piece itself was indeed more balanced.
-- David_Edelstein
(To reply, click here.)
I understand we live in casual times, and a more conversational writing style is popular in these times. I imagine that D.E. wanted to pre-empt the fan-boy responses. But "eat me"? And the rest? I thought you a wee classier than that, Mr. Edelstein. And Slate as well.
-- Nole95
(To reply, click here.)
… gave me a bounceback message, so I guess I'll have to post here.
Rohan is the country, the Rohirrim are it's people. And no, that's not being an excessive fanboy. If I were being an excessive fanboy, I would point out the derivation from the elvish Roch(Horse) and Hir(Lord), or the fact that the land was originally known as Calenardhon before Eorl settled there and became the first lord of Rohan, but I would never do such a thing.
I know, I'm a sad sad person.
-- cmd
(To reply, click here.)
Mr. Edelstein is quite right to view the characters of Aragorn and Gollum as the individuals on whom Tolkien chooses to shine the greatest (Elvish) light. Perhaps more than any other characters in the narrative, with the exception of Frodo, they are the ones required to undergo the greatest internal changes. What is more, they are the outward reflection of the wisdom of Gandalf to Frodo in the Mines of Moria. Namely, that in Tolkien's ultimate battle of good versus evil - as in any classic myth - the essential element is not justice or vengeance but redemption, that victory will be won not by the characters' courage in quest and battle but by their courage to show mercy and forgiveness for themselves and each other. This middle installment cannot provide the resolution of that essential conflict. That lies within the final installment, "The Return of the King." "The Two Towers" cannot satisfy; it can only sweep us along to fulfillment. If that was Mr. Edelstein's reaction to it, the latest installment of LOTR does not succeed in spite of itself but rather does exactly what Tolkien always intended it to do.
-- The_Bell
(To reply, click here.)
Invoking the word "mythic" doesn't save it. Myths were invented by unknown people over long periods of time, and that provenance is part of the respect we accord them. (Well, not always--an lot of myths I've read are just gobbledegook.) The Lord of the Rings is a modern literary work, as self-consciously anachronistic as Ossian was in its day. It has to be judged by the standard of art, not myth. As art, it ranks OK as a curiosity and an entertainment, but no higher. The movie only boils Tolkien's richly detailed story down to its most crowd-pleasing elements. It is to the books what melodramatic post-Civil War "Tom shows" were to Harriet Beecher Stowe's pretty good novel.
Tolkien did write a semi-great book: The Hobbit. It is, on the whole, lively, well-paced, nicely nuanced, and quite charming. Unfortunately, a balrog got hold of Tolkien near the end and dragged him into the Abyss of Epic Solemnity. Unlike Gandalf, he never escaped.
-- Tiresias
(To reply, click here.)
Was I the only one who felt over prepared for the battle of Helm's Deep. First came the cry "The Battle of Helm's Deep is about to begin." Next someone said, "The Battle of Helm's Deep is beginning." Then it was, "The Battle of Helm's Deep has begun." Eight full minutes and 10,000 corpses later, the King has the gall to say "Now we fight the Battle of Helm's Deep." No wonder his men looked less than inspired …
The movie, like the Battle of Helm's Deep, never really starts, so it can't really end. It felt like Purgatory …
Now I can hear some of you say, "But it was SUPPOSED to feel like Purgatory. That's the POINT. Dontcha see? The audience feels exactly like the characters. The fact that you felt like it lasted for ever means that the movie succeeded in what it set out to do."
Nice try, dork. This isn't some Danish Expressionist art house film; It's not like the folks at New Line said, "Hey, let's suck all the life out of our season's biggest blockbuster while making it as confusing and tedious as possible. What a statement THAT will make."
If Frodo thinks Mordor is a long, hard journey, he should try being in the audience. What's worse, there's still another film to slog through next holiday season.
And I'll be there at midnight,
again
with my elf ears on.
-- chango
(To reply, click here.)
I just want to take a quick moment to respond to a point not made in the review itself, but in the article by J.P. Zmirak in FrontPage magazine last year, "Tolkien, Hitler and Nordic Heroism." It is a point that has been made numerous times in the midst of Tolkien's resurgence: that his model of heroism, blending as it does the best of the pagan and Christian sources of Western culture, provides a new model for our historical moment.
Although it is indisputable (and laudable) that Tolkien hated the Nazis, the relevance of LOTR for our times is undercut by two problems. A) The author tried to claim that LOTR was not in any sense an allegory and b) he nonetheless organized much of his Middle Earth anthropology on what we must admit are hierarchical racial stereotypes. Like the Norse mythology he loved, like the Edda and the Sagas of the Icelanders, and like Beowulf, all that is good and true and beautiful is not only northern but white, and all that is evil, corrupt and deformed is not only southern but dark (this is why Gandalf succeeds Saruman as "the White.") Elves occupy a superior position in the LOTR universe, and their superiority is a virtue of their capabilities as Elves, not because they have learned their skills but because they are predisposed to them. Aragorn, we will note, triumphs in large part because of his Elvish lineage; without his bloodline, there is little to set him apart from the rest of the other heroic humans in the text.
I enjoy the text of LOTR for its sweep of its narrative; in this sense it (along with Beowulf) surpasses the Norse myths, which, on close reading, turn out to be endless, trite variations of the same story (that story being not being Christian restraint but a struggle for kingship, power and women). But turning Tolkien into some kind of poster child for the forces of liberal democracy seems at best anachronistic and at worst insidious. This was a man who, faced with the specter of a racist empire, forged in his imagination its mirror opposite: a benevolent hegemony based almost exclusively on inherited characteristics. It makes for a rollicking good story and a kick-ass film. But it shouldn't be a model for a democratic politics or an egalitarian culture.
-- Mauberley
(To reply, click here.)
This is The Lord of the Rings, not The Turner Diaries. The "mud people" in TLOTR really are mud, not people. And the skalds, bards, and scops who fashioned the fables of the first millennium, from which Tolkien drew much of his inspiration for his work, were entirely unconcerned with any modern political agenda. TLOTR is more about honor, nobility, and even Manichaean dualism; it is not about race war.
-- rob_said_that
(To reply, click here.)
(12/24)