week of 1/8/03
 
 
 

Peter Jackson, like Tolkien, could care less about the critics
By Karl Rohr

Arwen must die.

If you’re a true fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, you can wish for nothing less. As long as director Peter Jackson turned revisionist in “The Two Towers,” why didn’t he have Arwen trampled by an oliphant, or better yet, slung over an orc’s saddle in the first movie and carried out of the series forever? Anything would have been better than using her lame love scenes as padding in an otherwise great movie trilogy.

And as long as I’m momentarily into Jackson bashing, what was he thinking about when he portrayed Arwen and her elven kin as cold, soulless robots instead of the lusty poets and singers that Tolkien described? And what’s up with the portrayal of the mortal Faramir as menacing and sinister, therefore missing his tragic quest to earn his father’s approval? One Tolkien fanatic has pointed out to me that instead of going to Tolkien, Jackson borrowed the characterization of Faramir from a nearly forgotten BBC radio production.

Why did Sam and Frodo, who did not witness the death of Faramir’s brother, Boromir, tell Faramir in “The Two Towers” how he died? Why did Frodo show the ring to the ringwraith at the end of the film? You gotta be kidding me! The series would have been over at that point! Sauron would have known the location of the ring and massed his forces against Frodo. End of story.

Even more perplexing than the movie revisions are the reviews of critics who obviously have never read the books. Some have praised Jackson for “adding” a brilliant interior monologue of Gollum arguing with himself. Surprise, folks, that scene is in the book. Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, a reviewer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said Jackson “totally gets Tolkien” except that the movie emphasizes the predicament of humans, where Tolkien would have had sympathy with the horses. I beg to differ. The pompous John Bowers argued on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” that “The Two Towers” reminded him of a junior high school writing assignment that helped students develop the middle of a story.

I know he’s talking about the movie, but a film version of a Tolkien work compared to a junior high school writing assignment? Ouch. That’s cold.

But Tolkien was accustomed to the critics. In the introduction to the trilogy, Tolkien wrote that “some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”

Despite Jackson’s revisions, he shares an admirable trait with Tolkien. Neither man worked for the approval of critics, and each was more into thrilling audiences with quality work than kissing up to awards committees. The movies and the books also share qualities. These works belong to the fans, who, for once, haven’t been cheated. This time they are really on to something.

But I’ll take the books over the films every time. It warms my heart to go to Wal Mart and see Tolkien’s works displayed between the King James Bibles and romance novels, in a category by themselves, mass marketed for a curious public turned on by the movies. Oh man, what pleasures await those who haven’t read this guy yet.

A hundred different Tolkien fans can give a hundred different reasons why they read him. I’m attracted to his sense of history. He served as an Oxford Bosworth Chair of Anglo-Saxon in 1925 when he was only 33 years old, with Old English as a central field of study. Tolkien was one of the foremost scholars of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, and anyone who has read that masterpiece comes very close to understanding Tolkien’s world.

The Riders of Rohan are my favorite screen images so far. Here are Anglo-Saxon warriors circa 700 A.D., complete with clothing decorated with elements found in archaeological digs, including those wonderful helmets similar to one excavated at the famous Sutton Hoo site in Suffolk, England. Tolkien’s blend of Norse sagas, Celtic mythology and Anglo-Saxon poetry created a memorable world steeped in haunting imagery and heroic deeds.

Many readers simply like hobbits. Obviously, they were also the author’s favorites. He called himself a hobbit, favoring robust ales and simple food in abundance. He didn’t travel much and he preferred to dress in ornamental waistcoats. He stayed up late, slept late, and smoked a pipe. He loved culinary mushrooms.

The diminutive hobbits of the trilogy find themselves confronting numerous potentially fatal obstacles and adjusting to an existence far different than their leisurely world of the Shire. They are the unlikeliest of heroes, especially working class Sam Gamgee, who eventually holds the fate of Middle Earth in his hands. Sam had been a servant and gardener for Frodo, a fact perhaps obscured by the movie’s emphasis on their friendship. Still, the hobbits had a class system, and Sam was near the bottom. That the future of the world could rest in the servant class instead of Frodo’s notable lineage strikes an undeniable responsive chord with many readers.

Even if you’re not an environmentalist, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for the Ents. Tree huggers of all ages, here are your heroes. The Ents, strange old-growth tree beings capable of speech, thoughts and extreme vengeance, eventually have enough of seeing their kinfolk hacked down to stumps. They befriend the hobbits Pippin and Merry, and attack and defeat Sauron’s forces at Isengard. The Ents’ forest vividly reminded me of ones I had seen while hiking in British Columbia, but anyone who has been sick of developers and their desecration of the mountains in Western North Carolina feels like shouting a supportive cheer for trees that can defend themselves.

Tolkien himself had been sickened by the changes taking place in England. He hated to see industry change the pastoral landscapes he enjoyed, and later in his life, he stopped driving a car because he felt that too many highways and too many vehicles had been clogging his homeland and increasing pollution. His books are full of imagery that any environmentalist can appreciate. That he equates evil with devastation of the natural world shows what emphasis Tolkien places on a government’s environmental ethics.

Many readers of Tolkien have been fond of finding religious symbolism in his work. The search is justified. Although Christian fundamentalists see works steeped in paganism and sorcery, Tolkien himself was a devout Catholic who helped C.S. Lewis in his journey to the Christian faith. Count me among those who would have liked to join – or at least listen – to the pair’s frequent conversations over stouts in the Eagle and Child pup in Oxford, England. What tales we could have heard! Tolkien’s epic narrative sweep was steeped in history and the realization that the present was part of an inevitable journey to a final conflict in which those of faith would prevail.

Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware have written a perceptive little book, Finding God in Lord of the Rings (Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2001), that compares the struggle for Middle Earth to the call and mission of Christians. The post-Christian era has arrived, much like the advance of Sauron. Although a few islands of goodness and sanity remain (Rivendell and Lothlorien), they too will soon be swept away. Christians kept up a brave front as long as they could, but the eve of their departure is at hand. The end is near.

But Bruner and Ware compare Frodo’s reflections at the end of his journey to similar words found in Psalm 73: “When I tried to understand all this (the prosperity of the wicked), it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny.” The final destiny of evil is ruin, and the authors point to Revelation 12:12 for a comparison to the gathering of Sauron’s forces: “He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”

Many people have turned to Tolkien because they see parallels to our world today. The gathering war clouds and our constant exposure to images of those corrupted by power inevitably turn readers to the siege of Helms Deep or the righteous quest of the Fellowship to defeat the Dark Lord while hopefully remaining uncorrupted themselves.

Tolkien understood violence and war, having served in combat as an infantryman in World War I. He matured as a writer during the rise of Hitler and the bombing of his beloved England. Tolkien understood the gathering of evil forces and the alliances necessary to defeat them, and his personal experiences and fears appear in his books.

But there’s a danger in using Tolkien’s work as a comparison to today’s war clouds. Viggo Mortenson, who portrays Aragorn in the three films, has been on the talk show circuit wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with words he scrawled himself; “No More Blood for Oil.” Charlie Rose showed the shirt on PBS and let Mortenson explain it. The Today Show on NBC did not show the shirt or let him explain it.

Mortenson warned on the Charlie Rose show that too many people think that the United States has an unquestionable right to jump into a war if our leaders deem it prudent. Although many viewers have been attracted to the films because they see our nation on the screen ready to fight the forces of evil, Mortenson pointed out that the Fellowship, consisting of different beings with different histories, cultures and values, united against a known and definite enemy. Their struggle was not a power play for personal gain but a sincere and crucial effort to preserve the world.

In a film companion book to “The Two Towers,” Mortenson wrote, “Storytellers and stories change, but the opportunity to do well or ill by others and ourselves will always be present. The right to choose how we coexist is ours unless we willingly surrender it. There can be no quick fix, no easy or permanent answer to the troubles of today or tomorrow. A sword is a sword, nothing more. Hope, compassion and wisdom born of experience are for Middle-Earth as for our world, the mightiest weapons at hand.”

Tolkien’s time as described in the Lord of the Rings has not really come yet. He will become ever more important as we put our trust in leaders who tell us they have our best interests at heart, and we have to decide for ourselves who is the Dark Lord, who is in the Fellowship, or if we are even able to put a fellowship together. We can look to Tolkien in our darkest hours yet to come and then realize that the good, simple and true Sam Gamgees of the world might hold the key to our salvation.

But I still think Arwen must die. Look in the toy stores. Nobody even wants her action figure. At least in terms of taste, maybe our world is headed in the right direction after all.

(Karl Rohr teaches history at Western Carolina University. He can be reached at rohr@wcu.edu)