2 reviews of The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers; A worthy translation of the original

The wait is over and The Two Towers, the second book of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is finally on the screen. And here is one of those rare cases where the film has emerged as a worthy translation of the original. The movie is more spectacular than Tolkien or any lover of the books ever envisioned.

Director Peter Jackson probably had doubts as to how theater audiences would react to his version during his first time out with The Fellowship of the Ring. Not this time around though. He hits the ground running from the first scene on and every scene that follows is executed with the sure-footedness of somebody so familiar and so in awe with the story that he can tell it backwards, enhance where needed and tone down as required.

That same degree of knowledge is also what he expects from his audience. Other directors doing a sequel, and that includes foremost expert George Lucas during his Star Wars outings, usually go through the process of refreshing memories with a short introduction or recap of what went before. Not Jackson though. He plunges head-on into the continuation of the tale and woe to you if you missed the first one and have no inkling about what this strange mix of creatures are fighting about.

Of course, it is the all-powerful ring. In The Two Towers, the Fellowship tasked with guarding the hobbit Frodo and the ring until it is destroyed, has splintered. Frodo and Sam are still on track to Mount Doom, where the ring was forged and where it can only be destroyed. They have found an unlikely guide in Gollum, the underground creature from which Bilbo Baggins, Frodo’s adoptive father has taken the ring.

The other hobbits, Merry and Pippin have been captured by the orcs. The rest, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are embroiled in a series of bloody battles at Helms Deep and Isengard against the evil Sauron and his minions. And there is an assortment of new characters. Now added to the Elves, Dwarves, Wizards and humans introduced in the first book are allies like Treebeard and the Ents, leaf covered creatures who protect the trees, the Riders of Rohan and the Stewards of Gondor and enemies like Saruman’s Uruk Hai army and a more fearsome variety of Ringwraiths.

The situation allows Jackson to shift the focus from the gentle hobbits to the warriors among the Fellowship. This should not be construed as a betrayal of Tolkien’s original intentions. The title The Two Towers refers not only to the fortress of Barad-dur where the evil Sauron holds court and the tower of Orthanc in Isengard which is the stronghold of the treacherous Saruman. It can also refer to the parallel journeys taken by the lead characters towards the same end. The meeting of the two towers spells doom for Middle-Earth. Reuniting the Fellowship means the destruction of the One Ring and the beginning of peace.

That Jackson chooses to concentrate on the action-driven part is only logical from a filmmaker’s point of view. While readers can easily relate to Frodo’s agonizing trek as the ring bearer and sympathize with Gollum’s aambivalence towards good or evil through the printed word, film is a visual art and the action driven lot of the other heroes certainly makes for better, more exciting viewing. The hobbits, Treebeard and the Ents, even Gollum are cute and amusing. Disney would have loved having them.But characters similar to the brooding Aragorn, the elegant Legolas and the wisecracking Gimli are regulars in the action thrillers of today.

The Two Towers is a first-rate action film. The heroes fighting unimaginable odds are noble-hearted and single-handed in their purpose. No villains are more blood-thirsty than the Uruk-hai. The raging armies fill the screen and the viewer is caught up in a cataclysm of epic proportions. Troy, Agincourt, Napoleon in the depths of the Russian winter, no battle, real or imagine prepares one for Jackson’s interpretation of the clash at Helm’s Deep. Of course, it is mostly computer-generated but even that is no less admirable. With his superb attention to detail, ability to fill the picture with all the right images and deft combination of art and technology Jackson, the upstart from New Zealand rethinks the adventure film genre.

Given the sacrifice that Jackson made to realize this part of The Two Towers, the longing to once more bask in the sum-filled beauty of Middle-Earth is probably as palpable in the audience as it is in the hobbits on the screen. There has to be an end to all this evil. Sauron and Suriman must be sent to their death. Frodo and his friends must get back to the serenity of Hobbiton. The love Aragorn and Arwen have for each other must be fulfilled. And then the nasty reminder, you have one more book to go before you find out if the ring will ever get destroyed and if peace will ever be restored.

The actors Elijah Wood as Frodo, Viggo Mortensen as Aragon, sean Astin and Sam, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Christopher Lee as Saruman, John Rhys-Davis as Gimli, Orlando Bloom as Legolas and everybody else in the movie are uniformly competent. They all pale in comparison though to three other players in the movie, two of them computer-generated actors.

There is Gollum, the most fascinating of the new characters is a groveling creature who feasts on dead fish. Forced to escort Frodo to Mordor, he teeters throughout between good and evil. He wants to do right, that is to help Frodo destroy the ring but he remains fascinated with the bauble and wants it back. Another one is Treebeard, the peace-loving guardian of the trees is as jolly as Santa Claus, as warm as paunchy grandfathers and as filled with wisdom as the sages of old. Then there is the other-worldly beauty of New Zealand so lovingly captured on film. If Jackson envisioned his country as Middle-Earth personified, what is seen on the screen says that he might just be right.

The Fellowship of the Ring, not only won at the box-office. It also copped 13 Academy Award nominations just like previous winner Forrest Gump. The more crowd-pleasing The Two Towers might not do as well in the Awards derby but it has effectively set the stage for The Return of the King and that is all that matters to the fans of Tolkien’s tale.

Hail to the real fellowship of the ring!

When I was little, my mom told me the story of how, as a medical student, she went to watch Cecil B. de Mille’s now-classic Ten Commandments. After the scene showing the parting of the Red Sea, she said, the theater audience clapped and hooted, thrilled to the bones by what they had witnessed. It was the l950’s and that special effects scene was by far the most spectacular they had seen.

I realized exactly what my mom and her fellow-moviegoers must have felt when I watched the climactic siege of the Rohan fortress of Helms Deep in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the second of J.R.R. Tolkien’s eponymous trilogy directed by Peter Jackson. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Jackson has been hailed, among others, as today’s Cecil B. de Mille, given the clarity of vision and the massive logistics he employed to bring the Lord... to life. The number of people involved in making the film–the credits alone list down everyone from hammerhands to laborers, veterinary surgeons to riding doubles–is staggering.The siege of Rohan–simply way beyond anything I have ever seen, battle or otherwise–well exemplifies this.

The siege shows three members of the by-now disbanded fellowship of the ring, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) with King Theoden of Rohan (Bernard Hill) and his men battling the 10,000-strong army of menacing Orcs and Uruk-hai. Though the special effects are fantastic–Orcs and Uruk-hai catapulting themselves up the fortress in ladders, volleys and volleys of arrows raining on both sides, the enemies storming the fortress’ inner sanctu–what makes this scene exceptional is the way it builds up tension and suspense from the moment the fierce army comes marching into view until they are... (oops, I’m stopping here lest I spoil your fun).

Sweep the audience up into the raging battle between the forces of the dark lord Sauron’s puppet, the wizard Saruman (who vows "There will be no dawn for men") and the peoples of Middle Earth is exactly what the siege of Helms Deep–and the rest of Two Towers–deftly does in three hours, one doesn’t even realize that time has passed by so quickly.

Two Towers tells the story of the splintered fellowship of the ring as they try to find their way to Mordor on whose fires the ring was forged and on whose fires is the one place the ring can be destroyed. Along the way, the friendship of hobbits Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin, who lives up to his genes; mom is actress Patty Duke Astin) is put to a test when they are joined by the ashen, emaciated, skulking, forever-at-odds-with-himself Gollum who has shrivelled in body and spirit after having once possessed the ring.

For their part, hobbits Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) meet the ancient Ent Treebeard, the shepherd of the woods, who just might make a difference in the battle of good versus evil if only the hobbits can convince him. "For so long have we not bothered with the wars of men and wizards," argues Treebeard. "This is not our war." To which Merry counters, "But you are a part of this world!"

Readers of Tolkien are familiar with his passion for the environment and how much he lamented its degradation. Lord of the Rings may be considered Tolkien’s supreme lamentation over the loss of the natural world under the onslaught of industrialization and his yearning for its return. It is again to Peter Jackson’s credit that he makes the plight of the environment, as personified by the Ents, something we cannot remain indifferent about. Which is why there is something painfully sad watching what Treebeard terms here as "the last march of the Ents", another of the movie’s spectacular highlights.

Treebeard and Gollum are two marvels of digital technology–and Jackson’s knowledge of character–that gives full depth to the meaning of "animation". If the Oscars were to hand out an award for "Best Rendition of an Animated Character," Gollum would win it hands down. With his withered mien, rotting teeth and strands of barely-there hair, Gollum commands attention with his hissing and raspy, "Precioussss!". From the slithery way he catches fish and ravenously eats it, to the torment between his dark and his good sides as revealed by monologues that are alternately hilarious and pitiful, the animated Gollum is what anyone can be if exposed to a continuous assault of evil. Yet, he also personifies what we may yet be if we yield to our good side.

Gollum’s presence amplifies the friendship between Frodo and Sam, because just as Frodo says, "I have to help (Gollum) because I have to believe he can come back (to good)", so does Sam believe Frodo must be protected against the ring’s malignant power which begins to take its toll. A tear rolling down Sam’s face as Frodo is poised to stab him is a most heart-tugging scene of friendship: "It’s me, it’s your Sam!" implores the loyal friend.

Hope in time of doom is a central theme in Two Towers–the elf Arwen (Liv Tyler) hopes that the love of her life Aragorn will eventually return to her; Aragorn must encourage King Theoden not to lose hope to steer his army to victory; and Sam and Frodo realize they must hope that good is worth fighting for if they are to succeed in their mission.

That Peter Jackson was able to pull Two Towers off is a feat that will surely become part of cinematic if not popular cultural lore, just as that oft-told story of how Tolkien came to write his books on Middle Earth. Checking the exam papers of his students one day, Tolkien came across one that was a blank page. Then and there he wrote on the paper: In a hole in a ground lived a hobbit. Fortunately for us all, in his hole in this earth lived Peter Jackson who, so fascinated by Tolkien’s world, vowed to bring it to the screen.

"I’m a hobbit at heart," Jackson was once quoted as saying. And he well could be, judging by how his Two Towers and The Fellowship of the Ring before it, have turned out. To all who have read the books and watched the films or to those who have only now discovered Tolkien’s fascinating, magical realm, J.R.R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson are without a doubt the real fellowship of the ring. Hail! Hail! –By Ann Montemar-Oriondo