The Saucepan Man |
12-12-2003 06:36 PM |
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> The BBC article is probably the most praiseful I have yet read. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Actually, I think that this one from yesterday's <I>Times</I> (a UK newspaper) beats it on that score:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> <B>One film to rule them all</B><P><B>By James Christopher</B> <P>December 11, 2003<P>AND so it ends, the greatest film trilogy ever mounted, with some of the most amazing action sequences committed to celluloid. The Return of the King is everything a Ring fan could possibly wish for, and much more. <BR>The sense of closure is exquisite, but I’m not sure I’m able to forgive Peter Jackson for the three years that he has taken to put it on the screen. The wait has been excruciating. <P>Frustrating, too, as it takes a fiendish amount of time to pick up the scattered threads of the story. The film is not great art. It’s a Herculean assault course that runs the emotions ragged for an exhausting 3hrs 21mins. That said, it would be churlish not to gift the film the full five stars. <BR>It has always been the sheer scale of Jackson’s ambition that has impressed. If the crawl of the Hobbits towards the fires of Mordor provides the heartbeat, it’s the bloodcurdling battle scenes and a new battalion of monsters who provide the thrills. While the Ring leaches the spirit from Elijah Wood’s Frodo, and Sean Astin’s Sam, the rest of the Fellowship tool up for the Last Battle with the kind of demented heroism that leaves you weak at the knees. “Certainty of death? Small chance of success? What are we waiting for?” harrumphs John Rhys-Davies’s Dwarf. <P>“Never get between a Nazgul and his prey,” rumbles a faceless wraith. It’s excellent advice. The Jurassic beasts in Return of the King are awesome. The Nazgul itself looks as if it was conceived by the Loch Ness monster after an indecent night with a giant bat. <P>There are more stone trolls than you can shake a stick at and, if you are mildly arachnophobic, I would seriously advise closing your eyes when Andy Serkis’s show-stealing Gollum lures Frodo into Shelob’s sticky lair. <P>The real power of the film comes in surprisingly intimate moments, giving the spectacle a psychological gravity that surprises. The way that Jackson frames Gollum’s schizophrenia by showing him talking to himself in a puddle is an inspired touch. Ian McKellen milks Gandalf’s secret fears like a man who has had one too many prunes. <P>The plot itself turns on Aragorn’s coming of age when he returns to claim the throne of Gondor, a seat kept warm by John Noble’s surly steward who stuffs his face with sweetmeats while his armies are gutted by rotting orcs and huge elephantine dinosaurs crewed by ugly Mad Max nutters. <P>It is the battlefield horrors that do most of the dazzling. The close-quarter action photography with gristle and bone is spliced with dizzy shots of flying masonry launched by ginormous trebuchets. Everything seems ginormous, apart from the Hobbits. There’s even a Pirates of the Caribbean moment when an army of ghosts is brought to staggering life. <P>How do you follow up a film like this? I’m not sure you can, or how sane that would be. The characters and their exploits have seeped into the film lexicon. It is quite simply the action trilogy by which all others will be measured.<BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Wow! Quite a ringing (if you'll pardon the pun) endorsement. Equally as euphoric, but somewhat grudging in the final analysis, is this interesting review from today's <I>Independent</I> (another UK newspaper):<P> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR> <B>All hail Gollum and the orcs after Jackson's maddening goodbye to the world of Tolkien</B><P><B>By Charlotte O'Sullivan</B><P>12 December 2003<BR> <BR>From the start, director Peter Jackson said the final instalment would be the best. Hundreds turned up in the wee hours of yesterday morning, despite the rain, so they would have a good view of cast members such as Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom and Sir Ian McKellen walking into the premiere at London's Odeon Leicester Square. <P>Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy has morphed from being a quirky gamble, a fantasy adventure too frightening for kids and possibly too silly for adults into the surest thing in town. Harry Potter 3 didn't dare take it on this Christmas. The battle for the West has been fought and Jackson, the hairy, humble New Zealander who met his wife while working on the BBC's Worzel Gummidge, would seem to have won. <P>Expectations for The Return of the King have peaked somewhere around the Himalayas. The opening sequence leaves us giddier still. Gollum * the hissing, bubble-eyed, two-timing maniac who stole the show in The Two Towers * is here seen as a harmless hobbit, Smeagol, before the precious ring came into his life, and as he raspingly puts it, "Cursed us!"<BR> <BR>Andy Serkis, the British actor formerly invisible "beneath" the computer animation, undergoes an electrifying transformation * sinking, like the most desperate of junkies, into the squalid ecstasy of self-annihilation. Jackson has taken a risk, but it pays off. <P>After that, Jackson gets on with the more conventional business of setting up the various plot-strands (for those unfamiliar with Tolkien, or the previous two films, I apologise for the confusion that's about to ensue). Frodo Baggins and Sam are led off by Gollum (the world's least reliable tourist guide) to Mordor; Gandalf goes with Pippin to the aid of a besieged castle in Gondor; Theoden and his niece and Merry prepare to meet him there later; Arwen persuades her father that she really, really, really is prepared to die for Aragorn; and the latter (with Legolas and Gimli in tow) tries to whip up an army amongst the undead. I've missed one or two people out, but you get the gist. Everyone's busy and there's not a minute to lose. <P>The New Zealand landscape, as ever, shovels its way into your psyche and the huge battle scenes feel as personal and fraught with tension as domestic dramas. Meanwhile, the actors say their lines with such fierce commitment that you daren't miss a word. Aragorn (Viggo Mortenson) and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) are the crucial authority figures, but the little hobbits, this time, play a much bigger (ahem) part. <P>Every now and again we may get a little restless, but mostly we're right in there, weeping softly when a certain person passes away; laughing madly at the carefully paced jokes; keeping an eye on the increasingly agitated and Byronic Frodo. <P>And then *disaster! Having stroked and stimulated us into submission, Jackson just can't think how to wrap things up. At one of the film's many climaxes, Sam implores Frodo to let go of the ring. Jackson's fingers show a similar unwillingness to unfurl. The magic has time to wear off. Who are this portentous lot? You suddenly find yourself wondering, and why have they stolen so much of my time (three and a half hours, and that's before all the DVDs)? <P>Reverence is crucial to this project. But, as our heroes say soppy farewells to each other for the umpteenth time, all sorts of blasphemous thoughts come to mind. Such as that the real battle here is between two sorts of men's hairdo: the wet-look perm and the samurai pony-tail. <P>I came out of The Two Towers feeling like I'd been converted to the Church of Tolkien; I emerged from The Return of the King on the side of the gargoyles. Those orcs may have bad teeth and kill you without thinking. On the up-side, they probably wouldn't chew your ears off with long goodbyes. <BR> <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I do think it somewhat churlish that, after 10 or so hours of film, this reviewer begrudges the characters their final farewells. I have seen this criticism made elsewhere, but it was always inevitable that there would be a fairly lengthy wrap-up. Imagine what this reviewer would have made of it if the <I>Scouring of the Shire</I> had been kept in. <P>By the way, don't you just hate it when these reviewers who have clearly never read the books get the details wrong? Minas Tirith a "castle in Gondor" indeed!
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