Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers picks up where Fellowship leaves off-- with Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) mano-a-mano with the Balrog (huge, bat-winged creature with whip and sword and severe attitude problem)--and, if anything, ups the ante. Fellowship focused on a band of brothers, Towers divides into three threads: Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) off to see the wicked (Sauron's One Ring of Power) tossed into the Crack of Doom (insert ass joke here); Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), kidnapped by nasty Uruk-Hais (upgraded Orcs) and rescued by Ents (perambulating hardwoods); kingly Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) and the rest of the Fellowship holed up at Helm's Deep, waiting for Saruman's ten-thousand-strong army to fall on them like rain.
A grand adventure and only someone with eyes turned to the back of his head would deny that this is entertaining. Jackson knows how to stage spectacles, whips em along harder and further than an Uruk-Hai drill sergeant; this is largescale comicbook filmmaking as big as any Hollywood has to offer. Some of the images are the stuff of classic fantasy: Frodo on rooftop's edge, offering his Ring to a hovering Nazgul; the Riders of Rohan sweeping down on the waiting Orcs; the Ents stepping forth as the river roars behind them.
And just to show it isn't all just the CGI, Jackson serves up what-- for me, anyway-- is the single most interesting element in both book and picture: the bond that forms between Frodo and his stalker/companion Gollum (Andy Serkis). Frodo admits to having more than simple empathy for Gollum, once named Smeagol-- both have been seduced by the Ring, can hear the Ring's dark call still. And-- as he explains to Sam in a crucial scene-- Frodo has to believe in Gollum because he has to believe people can recover from the experience.
The moment moves Gollum (and us) not to mention the difference Serkis' presence makes on Wood's performance, which in the previous picture had all the emotional texture of wet handkerchief--playing off Serkis, Wood can stop with the self-pity and be by turns angry, exasperated, imperious; Serkis responds with a mix of queasy obsequiousness and furtive defiance. Smeagol (as Gollum starts to call himself) is a remarkable creation, all artificial CGI sheen over frog eyes filled with pain. When Frodo shows him kindness, when Sam flashes earthy courage, the creature's eyes crinkle and the pain deepens-- Smeagol remembers when he was once kind, once brave, and the memory is the more piercing for being faint. Smeagol/Gollum in short is both the movie's single most crafted creature and its most human.
The Two Towers is all you can ask for in a Tolkien adaptation, grand and fitfully moving yet-- somehow-- unsatisfying, the key flaw being, I suspect, that it's still a Tolkien adaptation.
Jackson's filmmaking skills are not inconsiderable, though in this project we see their limits. The Battle of Helm's Deep has been compared to Orson Welles' Battle of Shrewsbury in Chimes at Midnight; I say "O let's not be too hasty." Helm's Deep has just about every trick in the filmmaking book plus a few new ones thrown at the audience, but in Welles had humans fighting humans; Jackson has humans fighting Orcs. He underlines their inhumanity-- fangs, claws, pale skin, pug nose-- has them bellowing like football players ("AAARRRGGHHH!!!" being a fair quote). Chimes underlines the combatants' mortality-- they begin by charging on horses, end up trading blows in dirt; the despair and sheer exhaustion seen is unmatched by anything in Towers.
Hero and enemy in Towers are never confused-- Aragorn may look increasingly unkempt but remains a handsome hunk compared to the best-groomed Uruk-Hai. In Chimes hero and enemy mingle and this transformation into inhuman indistinct objects-- rusted chunks of armor roiling in mud-- is seen by Welles as tragic. The Battle of Shrewsbury is possibly the most eloquent statement yet on the exacting price of war, the Battle at Helm's Deep the most elaborate "gee whiz!" special-effect sequence assembled to date.
In terms of villainous opposition what's depicted onscreen doesn't seem that impressive-- Christopher Lee puts tremendous authority into his voice as Saruman, though the character is strictly a minor roadblock on the way to Mount Doom. Arch-evil Sauron, from the looming armored presence in Fellowship's prologue, has been drastically reduced to a ball of flame burning at the end of a smokestack; we have to be repeatedly told that creatures great and small are compelled to draw close, otherwise he's about as compelling as a gas leak.
Tolkien seems to do better with victims than villains-- I suspect because he's a decent person, readier to empathize than subvert. Smeagol is his most successful character; Saruman becomes more interesting-- or should, if the movies follow the books' trajectory (I hear they won't). If Jackson follows the books then the bulk of Smeagol's relationship with Frodo has already been portrayed in Towers, and with the passing of that relationship likely passes any further emotional involvement on my part with the story.
Critics have complained of the insignificance of women in Tolkien (he corrects this in his prequel The Silmarillion but until someone makes a novel out of that (admittedly brief) slog it should be considered irrelevant to the work at hand); Jackson tries to suggest a tragic romance between Aragorn and Arwen (a vapid Liv Tyler), throws in the unrequited admiration of Eowyn (the livelier Miranda Otto), but they feel like last-minute fixes. Not advocating some sort of revisionist feminism, mind, but Igraine, Guinevere and Morgana are central to the Arthurian legends the way Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn are not in Rings.
With the lack of women go hand-in-hand a lack of sensuality (only Gollum seems to feel any passion at all, of the drug-addicted kind), a lack of cruelty (Saruman tries, but doesn't really make us gasp), ultimately a lack of profundity. Rings the novel, for all its detailed appendices, invented tongues, archaic terms, comes off as a mainly juvenile work; may be why, for all the craft and intelligence and performances, The Two Towers ends up being such a chore. Three hours is a bit much to ask to sit through what I've basically seen before, done with more daring and imagination, in other works of fantasy.
First published in Businessworld 1.3.03
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