So, where’s Tom Bombadil? Only the most obsessed Tolkien fans will regret the absence of the most irritating character in Middle Earth in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J.R.R.’s epic. Not much else is missing, though, and most should be satisfied, if not overwhelmed, by Jackson’s fidelity to the text. It endures as a happy hunting ground of Campbellian myth, adolescent angst, fairy-tale escapism, mediæval posturing, Wagnerian excess, Edda-headed rant, Yeatsian twilight, messianic brooding, and Toryish dyspepsia.
Me, I was seduced by the book at age 13; I had a map of Middle Earth on my wall, and I laughed heartily a year later at the Harvard Lampoon’s parody Bored of the Rings. For me, this film comes as an earnest anticlimax, moving in places but less inventive — and subversive — than might have been expected from Jackson. A budget of $350 million for a three-film package over three years can make you cautious.
The basic story has the hobbit (four feet tall, beardless, hairy feet, a soft spot for comfort, Irish accent) Frodo (Elijah Wood), the ward of Bilbo Baggins (a hammy Ian Holm), being chosen by destiny and circumstances as the unlikely bearer of the Ring of Power, which brings to those who wear it invisibility, and potential invincibility, but at the price of submission to Sauron, the evil entity who forged it. Frodo must take the ring to Mount Doom in Sauron’s realm of Mordor and there throw it into the fire from which it was forged. Accompanying him in this hopeless task is the Fellowship, a mixed-race party (no black or brown skins in this film, unless you count the Orcs — Tolkien is at least as racially problematic as George Lucas) of Frodo’s fellow hobbits Samwise (Sean Astin), Meriadoc (Dominic Monaghan), and Pippin (Billy Boyd); Legolas (Orlando Bloom), an Elf (immortal, Swedish-looking, English accent); Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), a Dwarf (hirsute, likes axes, hates Elves, Scottish accent); Boromir (Sean Bean), a Man (the weakest link?); Strider (Viggo Mortensen), the gaunt Ranger; and, of course, Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), a Wizard and the most desirable of the action figures.
Merchandising aside, Jackson shows impeccable discernment in his casting. Even as the narrative itself blurs or becomes irrelevant to the spectacle, the characters — especially Wood’s Frodo, who looks like a Botticelli angel crossed with a Cabbage Patch doll — linger in the imagination, offering emotional clarity. As for the tale itself, maybe it’s the map that’s lacking, because the adventures that follow so inevitably in the book (you follow the road from Bag End to Bree and . . . ) here seem episodic, a reprise of special effects recalling everything from The Wizard of Oz (welcome to Munchkinland) and King Kong (the Cave Troll) to Star Wars and Sleepy Hollow.
The sets seem staid and derivative — the Elven Forest of Lothlorien looks designed by Busby Berkeley — and the landscapes and costumes conjure toned-down Frank Franzetta illustrations. But there’s also a David Lynch perversity to some of the imagery. The Eye of Sauron appears like a giant, flaming vagina, and Sauron’s sliced-off, Ring-laden finger, seen in a multi-millennia flashback, is phallic enough to satisfy any Freudian.
Which is about as sexy as The Lord of the Rings gets, unless you consider the homoerotic subtext (Bilbo goes nuts when Frodo opens his shirt, exposing the Ring). The characters are mostly androgynous or asexual, though in this regard Jackson improves on the original by giving the girlfriends screen time. Here it’s Arwen (ethereal, big-bodied Liv Tyler), the Elf princess in love with Strider (Tolkien gives her about two sentences), who rescues the gravely wounded Frodo, and when I saw her turn and face the pursuing Nazgûl on the banks of the Bruinen before Rivendell, I realized that despite its flaws, the film had won me over.
I also realized I was not far from playing Dungeons and Dragons. Arwen? Nazgûl? The lingo summons up images of conventioneers in wizard capes and pointed hats. But it also evokes the eldritch nomenclature of the war in Afghanistan, where Tora Bora and Spin Boldak could be confused with Barad-Dûr and the Mines of Moria. Although Tolkien denied it, the book can be read as an allegory of World War II, or of any world conflict between good and evil. The question The Lord of the Rings raises is, which is which? And for how long?
