the
lord of the rings:
the fellowship of the ring |
director
Peter Jackson
screenwriters
Peter Jackson
Philippa Boyens
Fran Walsh
based on
the novel by
J.R.R. Tolkien
producers
Peter Jackson
Barrie M. Osbourne
Tim Sanders
Fran Walsh
cinematographer
Andrew Lesnie
music
Howard Shore
editor
John Gilbert
cast
Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins)
Ian McKellen (Gandalf)
Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggins)
Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn)
Sean Astin (Samwise 'Sam' Gamgee)
Liv Tyler (Arwen)
Orlando Bloom (Legolas)
Cate Blanchett (Galadriel)
John Rhys-Davies (Gimli)
Billy Boyd (Pippin)
Dominic Monaghan (Merry)
Hugo Weaving (Elrond)
Sean Bean (Boromir)
Christopher Lee (Saruman)
Sala Baker (Sauron)
Andy Serkis (voice of Gollum)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 178m
u.s.
release: December 19,
2001
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
site
other peter
jackson films
reviewed on this website:
- the
frighteners
- king
kong
the lord of the rings:
- the fellowship of the ring
- the
two towers
- the
return of the king
see also:
- peter
jackson: the films
(overview of his work,
with brief reviews of each movie)
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All right, everyone can relax
now -- and I mean that both ways: the first of the three Lord
of the Rings movies has emerged triumphant, but it's not
going to alter the course of mankind (it's just a movie,
folks). The wildly ambitious (and, fortunately, just as wildly
talented) New Zealand director Peter Jackson has delivered what
everyone should have been delivering for years: a good story
well-told, a massive adventure painted in strokes bold and subtle
on a vast canvas. I expected no less from him, though I come
to The Fellowship of the Ring as a Jackson fan, not so
much a J.R.R. Tolkien devotee (I last read the books, oh, twenty
years ago), and this wouldn't be my favorite Jackson film --
second or third, maybe.
Given his biggest piggy bank
ever and almost three hours in which to sprawl, Jackson still
has to speed through the book. Invariably, when he does dawdle,
he dawdles over fairly uninteresting stuff; no matter how much
golden light he throws onto the Elves, for instance, they can't
compete with the forces of evil for sheer cinematic power (at
least in this first volume -- the Rivendell footage tends toward
the blandly idyllic at times). Jackson's at his best here working
with dark colors -- the corrupt wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee),
who's building an army of half-man, half-Orc creatures; the truly
frightening Ringwraiths, who bring a shiver of dread into the
movie every time they ride in on their black and shrieking horses;
the various monster-movie obstacles, including a giant troll
and the much-beloved-by-Tolkien-fans beastie the Balrog, with
its ferocious whip of flame. Not to mention the chief Big Bad
-- Sauron, whose tainted Ring sets the plot in motion.
Pitted against all this evil
are a motley crew of four hobbits, a wizard, an Elf, a dwarf,
and a couple of regular guys. (No girls allowed in this Fellowship,
though Jackson -- to the disgruntlement of many purists -- has
given Liv Tyler's Elf character Arwen a slightly more active
role than in the book.) Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), who has
inherited the aforementioned Ring from his uncle Bilbo (Ian Holm),
must take it to Mount Doom and destroy it; the wise and mighty
wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) has advised Frodo never to wear
the Ring -- its corruptive power is too great -- but of course
on several occasions it finds its way onto his finger. It's a
proactive ring -- it can even adjust itself to fit any finger.
There's unfortunately some
rushing of things that shouldn't be rushed, even at almost three
hours. The confrontations between Gandalf and Saruman (yes, I
realize they weren't in the book) feel a bit too Matrix-y
-- yeah, they're wizards, but they're also old, and should
they really be able to be flung all over a vast room without
breaking a hip? The Balrog gets more build-up than actual screen
time; at times, the movie has the same thin, one-damn-thing-after-another
tone as Harry
Potter, which also tried to pack too much into a reasonable
sitting time. But Jackson's storytelling economy also serves
him well here; when Bilbo gives Frodo his sword Sting (which
glows blue when Orcs are near) and magical chain mail, we're
fondly reminded of Bilbo's own adventure, which he's busily recording
in his book There and Back Again (Tolkien renamed it The
Hobbit, of course). In the same scene, Bilbo shows us a flash
of ring-addiction that's chilling for being so sudden -- Ian
Holm, making a deep impression despite scant screen time, gives
us an invaluable sense of how dangerous the Ring really is.
In addition to Holm, the film
is immaculately cast. Elijah Wood is as much the ideal Frodo
-- wide-eyed, sincere, frightened yet determined -- as Ian McKellen
is the textbook Gandalf -- wise, wry, sometimes self-satirical
(as when Gandalf, in his first scene, tries hard to be stern
with Frodo and can't quite keep a straight face). It's a good
thing Jackson populates the Good with so many vibrant actors,
because his Evil -- with the exception of Christopher Lee's Saruman,
who occasionally bears an eerie, obviously unintentional likeness
to Osama bin Laden -- hardly has a human face. Evil in this movie
snorts and writhes in shadows, or hisses to itself in demented
supplication to the Ring (what little we see of the mutated Gollum
in Fellowship is mitigated by what we hear -- Andy
Serkis deserves kudos for making that famous "my precioussss"
vibrate with menace and madness).
As the first act in a trilogy,
Fellowship is all set-up and quest. It inevitably suffers
from reverse been-there-done-that; Jackson is competing not only
with fan devotion to the books, but with all the Tolkien rip-offs
and knock-offs of the last fifty years, including a quarter-century
of role-playing games. I grew bored with Dungeons & Dragons
by age 14 or so, so it's a testament to Jackson's skill that
I was with the film throughout, given that it often plays like
a D & D game writ large. The proceedings are a bit more solemn
than usual from the previously prankish Jackson, though he still
manages to sneak in some humor: the bumbling hobbits Pippin (Billy
Boyd) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan); the very tall Gandalf's trouble
adjusting to the very small Bilbo's hobbit-hole; the perpetually
snoopy Samwise (Sean Astin); a dwarf one-liner that, I'm certain,
did not come from the books; the burping, blink-and-you-miss-it
cameo from the director himself, who, Hitchcock-like, has found
his way into all his films except his puppet satire Meet the
Feebles.
Jackson also, it must be said,
conjures the most potent major-motion-picture magic in years.
The landscapes get a tad too pictorial in the tradition of bad
'70s folk-album covers, but when Gandalf breaks out his enchanted
fireworks for Bilbo's 111th birthday party, you feel that this
is what dazzlement was always meant to be, and that what we know
as fireworks today are just a weak dilution of the age of sorcery.
When the swords and arrows come out, as they frequently do, so
does Jackson's love of hack-and-slash; the fearless human men
of the Fellowship, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and the conflicted
Boromir (Sean Bean), speed into the fight with full-blooded battle
lust -- the spectacle is all the more thrilling for packing an
emotional charge. Fellowship is a big one, with two more
to come; if some part of me isn't all the way into the story
Jackson has chosen, I'll still definitely be back to see what
else he does with it.
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