Return of the King
Dec. 21st, 2003 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyWent to see RotK again tonight, with family and a friend (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jic). I was tempted to turn around and catch the special midnight viewing as well. Sadly, I have work tomorrow.
I adore this movie. Lord of the Rings is definitely the best movie I've ever seen. And it is one movie, split into three parts, just as the book was originally one book.
It's utterly magnificent in scope. The landscape is gorgeous and so are most of the actors. I did cry a bit this time, but it's still too epic for me to cry a lot. The moments that did bring tears - Pippin singing during Faramir's charge and Frodo finally remembering the Shire.
The ending felt so right to me - cuts and all. Ah, and Frodo and Sam 'at the end of all things'. Even knowing that they get saved doesn't lessen the power of that moment, because they never dream of salvation for themselves at that point. And then it comes, on great wings and cloaked in white. Yes, Tolkien was definitely religious.
It's just all so beautiful - sad and joyous and trembling and, above all else, hopeful. Life carries on, just as it has this past age - with one or two differences.
Buffy: "But we never..."
Angel: "We never win."
Buffy: "Not completely."
Angel: "We never will. That's not why we fight. We do it 'cause there's things worth fighting for."
- Amends; BtVS
Sam: "There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
- the Two Towers; LotR
Tolkien was very much anti-war and it shows. Battle isn't glorious, it's bloody and horrible.
But he did believe that fighting was, on occasion, necessary. That some battles, some wars, are worth fighting. I personally can only think of two, but there have probably been others. Of course, there are also many wars that aren't worth fighting - that are fought for reasons that make the heart and mind ache with the pointlessness of it all.
But even the ones worth fighting are filled with pain and death and stupid, terrible things. Because that's what war is. That's why I've always been glad about the way that Anya died in Chosen - because that, more than anything else that episode, illustrated why fighting sucks.
As Buffy says in The Gift - "Fighting's not cool."
It isn't - people die (that near-suicide charge of Faramir's makes me want to shake him; and Theoden dying was very affecting) and get irreversibly injured (Xander's eye still makes me wince) and it just... sucks, even when it is for a good cause.
And if you don't have anything to hold onto - that's when you break. That was what lost Frodo, in the mountain - all he could see was the ring, his reasons for resisting fading to black under its siren call. That's why Angel slept with Darla - he had nothing to hold onto, with even his hope for a suicide charge turned to ashes in his hands.
In The Gift, Buffy was very close to giving up the idea that the world was worth fighting for. If she hadn't been able to save Dawn, she would have.
People need hope, need a reason to find, need to be able to find some part of themselves to hold onto - and yet, you can fight without that, it's just harder and, in the end, it breaks you.
Sometimes, things get broke, can't be fixed.
But even then, hope is not gone, as we see in Frodo's final smile.
jic). I was tempted to turn around and catch the special midnight viewing as well. Sadly, I have work tomorrow.I adore this movie. Lord of the Rings is definitely the best movie I've ever seen. And it is one movie, split into three parts, just as the book was originally one book.
It's utterly magnificent in scope. The landscape is gorgeous and so are most of the actors. I did cry a bit this time, but it's still too epic for me to cry a lot. The moments that did bring tears - Pippin singing during Faramir's charge and Frodo finally remembering the Shire.
The ending felt so right to me - cuts and all. Ah, and Frodo and Sam 'at the end of all things'. Even knowing that they get saved doesn't lessen the power of that moment, because they never dream of salvation for themselves at that point. And then it comes, on great wings and cloaked in white. Yes, Tolkien was definitely religious.
It's just all so beautiful - sad and joyous and trembling and, above all else, hopeful. Life carries on, just as it has this past age - with one or two differences.
Buffy: "But we never..."
Angel: "We never win."
Buffy: "Not completely."
Angel: "We never will. That's not why we fight. We do it 'cause there's things worth fighting for."
- Amends; BtVS
Sam: "There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
- the Two Towers; LotR
Tolkien was very much anti-war and it shows. Battle isn't glorious, it's bloody and horrible.
But he did believe that fighting was, on occasion, necessary. That some battles, some wars, are worth fighting. I personally can only think of two, but there have probably been others. Of course, there are also many wars that aren't worth fighting - that are fought for reasons that make the heart and mind ache with the pointlessness of it all.
But even the ones worth fighting are filled with pain and death and stupid, terrible things. Because that's what war is. That's why I've always been glad about the way that Anya died in Chosen - because that, more than anything else that episode, illustrated why fighting sucks.
As Buffy says in The Gift - "Fighting's not cool."
It isn't - people die (that near-suicide charge of Faramir's makes me want to shake him; and Theoden dying was very affecting) and get irreversibly injured (Xander's eye still makes me wince) and it just... sucks, even when it is for a good cause.
And if you don't have anything to hold onto - that's when you break. That was what lost Frodo, in the mountain - all he could see was the ring, his reasons for resisting fading to black under its siren call. That's why Angel slept with Darla - he had nothing to hold onto, with even his hope for a suicide charge turned to ashes in his hands.
In The Gift, Buffy was very close to giving up the idea that the world was worth fighting for. If she hadn't been able to save Dawn, she would have.
People need hope, need a reason to find, need to be able to find some part of themselves to hold onto - and yet, you can fight without that, it's just harder and, in the end, it breaks you.
Sometimes, things get broke, can't be fixed.
But even then, hope is not gone, as we see in Frodo's final smile.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-21 09:09 pm (UTC)Theoden's death is actually a little different in this regard - particularly in what his death means to Theoden.
For him, death on the battlefield, at his age in particular, is the way to die, and his comment that he will go to his fathers and bear no shame is very much in keeping with old Norse and Anglo-Saxon tradition. (Which Rohan is heavily taken from.) But that stems more from the mindset on mortality itself rather than war in particular. What matters more to the view in this day, I hope, is what war and Theoden's death means to Eomer and Eowyn.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-12-28 09:22 pm (UTC)