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Christianity teaches that we cannot achieve salvation through our own acts
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I am a rather clumsy theologian - my qualifications are an O Level in the subject and many years of 'pondering' - but I understand that this is true only of certain types of Christianity. I had two ex-Catholic grandmothers, one of whom had not in her heart really converted to CofE on her marriage, and she would certainly have agreed with that view of salvation. However, as a child I went to an ordinary CofE church where we were weekly instilled with the need to do 'good deeds' in order to go to Heaven. So, I have assumed that there are two diverging Christian viewpoints, and being no Martin Luther or Thomas A Kempe, I may have expressed this clumsily, but no offence is intended (I fundamentally believe that all religions are equal, I am something of a philosophical Unitarian if not a spiritual one).
Tolkien clearly believes that evil is a(n im)'moral' choice but an choice made by a free being. If Frodo is overwhelmed by a more powerful external force then Tolkien is saying nothing that a thousand other writers haven't also said. But i don't think he is . I think he's saying that the battle is more an internal one than an external one. Frodo consents to what he knows is evil - the Ring & everything it symbolises - & that is his 'failure'
I have already said in another post that I recognise in Frodo's sufferings an echo of the sufferings of Post Traumatic Stress (PTSD). There is indeed a very real internal battle which Frodo is fighting; his agonies are a very real internal evil. He is battling an urge simply to give up. This urge to give up is in itself an 'evil'; what could be more wasteful than giving up your own life? This is something that often inevitably follows a great trauma, and having been there myself, at the very cracks of my own metaphorical Mount Doom, ready to succumb to some evil within, I thoroughly understand his internal struggle.
After being at the bottom of such despair, I know what inevitably follows and that, indeed, is a whole lot of guilt. The concept of sadness at Frodo's being forced to go into exile is also correct - he
was going into exile. You do feel deeply ashamed at having in some way almost 'given up' - I know that for months I would scuttle around in the shadows afraid everyone was
talking about my "failure to cope"!
Sorry for the little bit of soul-baring, but it is a good example to use, and, as I've said before, for the past three years I've grown to deeply understand the sufferings of Frodo (and Gollum and Bilbo for that matter). I used to think it was 'just' the power of the ring - but now I see there was more to it. And it is not something Tolkien would have been unfamiliar with either, following his experiences in the trenches he will have seen many men with PTSD, if he did not have this to some extent himself.
In terms of the films, it would have been good (or would it have felt too 'raw' to me?) to have seen this understanding of Frodo represented, but, from bitter experience, I often find that if you haven't walked in those shadows, you're not necessarily going to know how it feels, or even to acknowledge that they exist.