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They took our precious

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on January 2, 2004 at 11:20:53

Lots of you won't like what's said here.

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They took our precious

'Rings' films taint the beloved books

By Deborah P. Jacobs, Boston Globe Staff, 1/2/2004

We live in a forgiving age. If in recent years we have reconsidered the sins of figures such as Richard Nixon and Marv Albert, the time has certainly come for a reevaluation of Gollum. Sure, it's hard to cuddle up to someone who tears live fish apart with his fingers, but he's not all bad. With the opening last month of ''The Return of the King,'' the final installment of director Peter Jackson's film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings,'' I've been thinking about Gollum, both as mad villain and metaphor.

As rendered by Jackson and actor Andy Serkis, he's arguably one of the movie's most riveting characters. Tricked out digitally with glaucous eyes, ceaselessly moving limbs, and a voice that oozes between outrage and abasement, he's evil on the small and immediate scale, far more frightening than the numberless hordes of Orcs, Nazgul, and other monsters that crowd the film's elaborate battle sequences.

So, yes, evil. But a familiar evil. As Gandalf tells a skeptical Frodo in the chapter ''The Shadow of the Past,'' Gollum's people were ''of hobbit-kind,'' and ''there was a great deal in the background of [Bilbo's and Gollum's] minds and memories that was very similar. They understood one another . . . very much better than a hobbit would understand, say, a Dwarf, an Orc, or even an Elf.'' Tolkien clearly painted Gollum as the uncomfortably close flip side of Frodo's noble nature; Frodo's companion Sam Gamgee cannot help but notice the strange bond between the two as they travel through Mordor.

At the precipice of Mount Doom, it is Gollum who does what he has set out to do, unlike Frodo, who has the chance to destroy the One Ring but cannot. Gollum is steadfast until the very end, never veering from his purpose, to get his clammy hands on that gleaming golden prize. This is a guy with standards, a guy who would never accept a substitute.

And to a lover of Tolkien's books, that is what Jackson's ''The Lord of the Rings'' feels like: a substitute, one far inferior to the original vision. Our precious has been taken from us, and we hates it, yes, we hates it.

Reams have been written about the director's dedication, about the hours his crews spent fashioning the charming hobbit hole of Bag End, the great hall in Minas Tirith, the enchantments of Rivendell. These sights are admittedly marvelous. But they're not enough. Neither they nor the ballyhooed battle scenes nor New Zealand's breathtaking scenery can compensate for what was altered. In transferring a thousand-odd pages of Tolkien to celluloid, cuts of course had to be made, but Jackson's nips and tucks have deformed the tale and its players.

One of Tolkien's most important symbols is Aragorn's sword, ''the Sword That Was Broken,'' which once belonged to his ancestor Isildur. Early in the book ''The Fellowship of the Ring,'' before Frodo and the rest of the Company of the Ring leave Rivendell for Mordor, Elvish smiths remake it and invest it with new strength, giving Aragorn at last his rightful authority and power. Thus one can only wonder at the wholly invented scene in which Elrond, the lord of Rivendell, visits Aragorn on the eve of the climactic battle to bring him the reforged Anduril and tell him that his daughter, and Aragorn's beloved, is dying. Oh, right. It's not enough that the Dark Lord is about to take over Middle-earth; Aragorn needs another incentive -- Arwen's life -- to fulfill his destiny.

In another bewildering alteration, the tricksy Gollum tries to make Sam look guilty of taking more than his share of the hobbitses' . . . hobbits' depleted stores as they make their perilous way through Mordor, and Frodo falls for it. Frodo falls for it. And then he tells Sam to go home. If in the books the bond between Frodo and Gollum is undeniable, the one between Frodo and Samwise is one nearly as thick as blood, making such a scene impossible.

In Tolkien's version, Merry and Pippin are transformed through war from unsophisticated but far from simple-minded young fellows into the ''fearless hobbits with bright swords and grim faces'' who will later put things to rights back in the Shire. In Jackson's film, they're reluctant warriors at best. As in ''The Two Towers,'' the director uses them almost exclusively for comic relief, having other soldiers belittle their martial prowess and playing up their weakness for ale.

And speaking of the Shire, the version of the hobbits' home shown to us at the end of ''The Return of the King'' is the worst insult of all. For it to have been completely untouched by war makes no sense dramatically or logically -- if the Shire were not vulnerable to Sauron's predations, why would the hobbits have felt compelled to defend it by striking out to destroy the Ring? It also provides for one of the deadest stretches of film time in recent memory: the four hobbits, each clutching a stein, smiling lamely at one another in a Hobbiton tavern.

Jackson did show his heart was in the right place by preserving the last line of the book: ''I'm back,'' spoken by Sam after bidding farewell to Frodo at the Grey Havens. But by then the damage has been done, in each of the three films, particularly the second and third. The subtleties, delights, and marvels of the books have been replaced with the predictable dimensions of a video game (''Extreme Hobbit,'' anyone?), with the exaggerated villains and heroes intent only on bloodletting. Tolkien's opus -- the collective precious of several generations -- has been tainted, almost like a favorite toy that one lends to a friend only to have it returned slightly scuffed and wobbling and, somehow, no longer itself.

So for now I'd just like to forget about the films and retreat somewhere dark and quiet for a while, until I'm ready to reclaim my precious. Got room for me in the cave, Gollum? Thanks. And pass the fish.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company

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