[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I have to say that I think that this is one aspect of the book (among many) that PJ nailed absolutely dead to rights. The markers of a continuing sadness/melancholy that will surpass the bounds of the movie are so many that I hardly need to enumerate them here (besides, they've been mentioned already).

I would just say, however, that PJ translates to the filmic medium something that Tolkien did brilliantly in the novel. The end of LotR is supremely non-novelistic, what with the hero 'disappearing' into an ambivalent, even ambiguous exile the nature of which is not adequately explained in the narrative. Sam's own ending, the ending of the whole story, is also an extraordinary rewriting of the novelistic convention. The utter domestication of the hero in that final paragraph, his being taken 'back in' by the home and hearth is something that just does not happen in novels. In the 19th C, that scene would have been played out only in epilogue form and been presented as the achievement of the hero's journey, not the conclusion of his retreat from his journey. In the 20th C that scene would not be presented at all, except as a problematic and ambiguous 'real life' moment to counter the supposedly 'happy ever after' conclusion it appears to be.

What I mean to say is that Tolkien, in writing his book, gives us a conclusion that goes against novelistic convention. The drawn out series of endings (incl the Scouring) leads to a rather anti-climactic moment. . .but only from a narrative/strucutral point of view, not an emotional one at all.

PJ does precisely the same thing but in filmic terms. Each of the "closing shots" that he gives in the serialised endings (Mount Doom, the marriage of Aragorn and Arwen, the return to the Shire, Frodo's departure) is large, gorgeous, rounded out with large soundtracks -- they are typical Hollywood closing shots. The fact that they keep happening, I think, hammers home the idea that there is no one way for this film to really 'end'; that the story the film is telling defies the easy conventionalities and sententious simplicity of Hollywood narrative. That it is all rounded off with a shot of the closed door of 3 Bagshot Row undercuts the drive to conclusion and understanding -- the final shot of the movies is not a narrative one in which things are explained in a final way (Aragorn and Arwen are married, good is triumphant; Frodo is gone, good is rewareded) but a shot in which the ongoing story of Sam and Rosie is hidden from us -- they go inside to live their lives, the door closes, and we are left with the image of not being able to see what is going on.

I realise that this is not entirely on point with the original point of the thread, or with the current direction, but I wanted to put that up anyway. It does seem to me, however, that this careful drive to constitute the narrative as not finished, as escaping any final conclusion, works against the prologue's assertion that evil can be destroyed "forever". The vision of "forever" that we have at the end is one of continuing life and ongoing existence/change: no-one is so niave, I think, as to think that life is perfect. So while Sauron may be gone, we are still very much in a world like the one we live in: imperfect, ongoing, and in which bad things happen (Frodo does leave Sam, this is sad and an 'evil' necessity to him).

It also occurs to me that the insistence on ambiguity that PJ works toward is a good way of capturing the ambiguity that surrounds Frodo's sense of failure/judgement and his desire to leave. The film is not, I think, as certain of why Frodo has to leave as it would appear. With his departure Bag End is empty and dead -- unlike the book, in which Frodo's departure is a healing of the Shire and what opens the way for Sam's fulfillment, in the movie Frodo's going leaves a gaping wound in his world, and while he may finally be happy, nobody else is.