LORD OF THE RINGS - AGAIN

I finally finished re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy on VCD tonight.

The urge to re-watch the movies was kindled some weeks ago after attending the Singapore premier of the Lord of the Rings Symphony by the Singapore Festival Orchestra (SFO).

The symphony itself was nothing to write home about, though the performance itself was reasonably competent. The re-arrangement by Howard Shore comprises of six movements, which tries to chart the progress of the story chronologically through the music. The elements which made up the symphony were basically extracts from the original sound-track which were woven together to form the symphony.

Each movement ended very abruptly, with no proper finish or lead into the next movement. The audience was left looking at each other with blank faces with the same thought “Huh? That’s it?”. The same few themes repeated themselves at various points throughout the symphony, and with no movie sequences to provide any context, it becomes tedious by the nth time the tunes were repeated. The whole symphony lasted almost two whole hours, and Howard Shore even included that last poppish sounding track played during the credits roll. By then, I was squirming in my seat and praying for deliverance. One needs a lot of stamina to sit through the entire symphony. I personally think there was zero value-add in the symphony version of the sound track; and that Howard Shore should have left well alone.

Despite all the shortfalls of the writing, the symphony did bring back memories of the movie, which I last re-watched about two years back. The urge to watch it again did not diminish even days after the concert, so I finally sat down two Saturdays ago and started on “The Fellowship of the Ring” and finished the entire trilogy about two hours ago.

Re-watching the movie brings back to mind how differently the book and the movie affected me. The book was mired in details, the storyline weaving back and forth, not only in the present third age, but also of ages past. Even as I struggled to the keep all those details straight, I could not help but admire Tolkien’s thoroughness in the laying out and explaining his imaginary world from its creation to present day. The book focused a lot on each individual’s thought processes and feelings, and the history behind each and every event. One got the chance to understand why each character acted the way they did and why certain events turned out a certain way. There was basically a lot of scope for scholarly post-mortems.

However, the details overwhelmed me sometimes, and reading all those details about Frodo’s trials and tribulations and his physical and mental struggles, which was the main focus in “The Two Towers”, got so depressing and tedious, I made it through only with a lot of page skipping. While the “adventure story” portions and battle scenes were well told and well described, I didn’t get the same excitement and sense of urgency that I got from watching the movie, especially those epic battles. The impact of visual images cannot be denied.

Although very much clichéd, the elements of good over evil, hope and love, friendship and loyalty, grit and integrity etc etc didn’t come across with such impact in the book as compared to the movie, though it actually forms the entire basis of the story. I suspect all the history lessons and character psychoanalyses in the book distracted me from thinking too much about these things, or perhaps they were just too subtly done in the book, I don’t know. Whatever, the reason, the movie was clearly focused on these so-called cliché elements, to great effectiveness, since there was nothing much else to detract from it. However, it does seem to make the movie rather shallow and surface, especially to those who have read the books.

In my opinion, having read the book a long time ago (time enough for parts of it to fade), then watching the movie, is the best way to enjoy the best of both. One gets to enjoy the visual feast that is the movie with full understanding of the motives with all the “historical” references from the book, and without those small details from the book to render one critical of every small omission or inaccuracy, and detracting from the enjoyment of the movie.

My greatest pleasure in watching the movie is seeing middle earth brought to life and thinking “That’s exactly how I imagined it to be!” throughout the whole show. It makes the story so real to me. For every of those nine to ten hours spent watching the movie, my surroundings cease to exist. I am living in middle earth. I am living each and every one of those battles. Every time each installment ends, I return to my surroundings with a jolt, rather like an out-of-body experience. Very intense stuff.

Incidentally, the sense of reality that the movie gives me is the reason why I have never had the slightest wish to try the computer game version of Lord of the Rings, despite the great reviews and my love for real time strategy games. In the game, the player is responsible to build up the various armies with limited resources and defeat the Dark Lord Sauron, rather like living Aragon’s situation in the movie, I believe.

What if I failed?

I can’t even bear thinking about it.

So let those who are able do the fighting and the winning. I will just sit back and immerse myself in the Middle Earth of my imagination.