![]() Yet the taller characters seem to stand astride the little Hobbit world and steal the story away. It is an awesome production in its daring and breadth, and there are small touches that are just right the Hobbits may not look like my idea of Hobbits (may, indeed, look like full-sized humans made to seem smaller through visual trickery), but they have the right combination of twinkle and pluck in their gaze-especially Elijah Wood as Frodo and Ian Holm as the worried Bilbo. It will be embraced, I suspect, by many Tolkien fans and take on aspects of a cult. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director who masterminded this film (and two more to follow, in a $300 million undertaking), has made a work for, and of, our times. ![]() The ring, which provides the purpose for the journey, serves Tolkien as the ideal MacGuffin, motivating an epic quest while mostly staying right there on a chain around Frodo Baggins' neck. Like The Tale of Genji, which some say is the first novel, " The Lord of the Rings" is not about a narrative arc or the growth of the characters, but about a long series of episodes in which the essential nature of the characters is demonstrated again and again (and again). I cherished the way it paused for songs and poems, which the movie has no time for. You could tell by holding the book in your hands that there were many pages to go, many sights to see, many adventures to share. Reading it, I remembered why I liked it in the first place. ![]() Sometimes they must fight to defend themselves or to keep possession of the ring, but mostly the trilogy is an unfolding, a quest, a journey, told in an elevated, archaic, romantic prose style that tests our capacity for the declarative voice. The travelers meet strange and fascinating characters along the way, some of them friendly, some of them not, some of them of an order far above Hobbits or even men. Landscapes are described with the faithful detail of a Victorian travel writer. There are a great many mountains, valleys, streams, villages, caves, residences, grottos, bowers, fields, high roads, low roads, and along them the Hobbits and their larger companions travel while paying great attention to mealtimes. The trilogy is mostly about leaving places, going places, being places, and going on to other places, all amid fearful portents and speculations. Settling down with my book, the one-volume, 1969 India paper edition, I read or skimmed for an hour or so. In the book, I was not surprised to discover, the entire scene requires less than 500 words. This is an exciting scene, done with state-of-the-art special effects and sound that shakes the theater. The chapter "The Bridge of Khazad-Dum" provides the basis for perhaps the most sensational action scene in the film, in which Gandalf the wizard stands on an unstable rock bridge over a chasm, and must engage in a deadly swordfight with the monstrous Balrog. Wondering if the trilogy could possibly be as action-packed as this film, I searched my memory for sustained action scenes and finally turned to the books themselves, which I had not read since the 1970s. But a true visualization of Tolkien's Middle-earth it is not. That it transcends this genre-that it is a well-crafted and sometimes stirring adventure-is to its credit. But "Fellowship" is a film that comes after " Gladiator" and "Matrix," and it instinctively ramps up to the genre of the overwrought special-effects action picture. The Hollywood that made " The Wizard of Oz" might have been equal to it. The Ring Trilogy embodies the kind of innocence that belongs to an earlier, gentler time. That is not true of every scene or episode, but by the end "Fellowship" adds up to more of a sword and sorcery epic than a realization of the more naive and guileless vision of J. ![]() If the books are about brave little creatures who enlist powerful men and wizards to help them in a dangerous crusade, the movie is about powerful men and wizards who embark on a dangerous crusade, and take along the Hobbits. Such notions about Hobbits can be found in "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," but the Hobbits themselves have been pushed off center stage.
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