[The Saucepan Man]

I found this scene absolutely stunning, the most amazing scene in a completely amazing film. A few days after seeing the film, this scene is still ingrained upon my mind.<P>The performances of all three actors involved (Sean, Elijah and Andy) were incredible. Sean Astin topped off a wonderful peformance throughout the film and Elijah Wood really came of age, for me, in this scene. The emotions playing on Frodo's face while he struggled to destroy the Ring were utterly credible, making the scene painful to watch and yet gripping.<P>Personally, I think that it was a good film-making decision to have Frodo try to reclaim the Ring after having lost it to Gollum. This is entirely consistent with him having previously claimed it as his own. Also, it meant that we had a more dramatic struggle, since Gollum struggling with an invisible Frodo (as he does in the book) looked strange on screen, and verged on the silly (there were a few muffled laughs in the cinema when we saw this for the second time, which was one time too many in my view).<P>And Frodo most certainly DID NOT push Gollum in. There is no way he could have done that (in either the book or the film version) while Gollum still held the Ring. They struggled, stumbled and both went over the edge. That, for me, is light years away from Frodo pushing Gollum in. And the whole scene is still consistent with Gollum playing his part in the destruction of the Ring (justifying Frodo's mercy) because, had he not attacked Frodo for it, the Ring would have remained with Frodo until the Nazgul arrived to claim it.<P>And it also allowed for that wonderful moment where Frodo almost gave up, rather than grabbing Sam's hand.<P>All in all, I felt that it worked very well indeed, and probably far better than a purely canonical version would have worked on screen.