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Drooling on the Pillow

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Elvin Hooves 

Colby Cosh gets it exactly right taking on the end of ROTK. I saw it last weekend. Taken as a whole I think LOTR is the most thrilling accomplishment in movies made during my life. Thrilling, as in weeping, cheering, laughing, screaming and recoiling. As in leaving the theatre with a stunned buzz that lasted hours. All that emotional investment and an unabashed polemic on behalf of western civilization.

But the ending of ROTK does drag. I doubt that, with half a billion in sales behind him, Jackson was getting any pressure for an upbeat ending, or would notice if he was. Perhaps it was simply a failure of nerve. It is asking a lot of a movie maker to put his characters through all that and have them return to a right scouring. The excellent point that Mr. Cosh makes is that without it the movie is missing a beat. A beat from which a more cinematic end note would have been easier. Four schmoos sitting around Moe's tavern having a beer while those around them little note nor long remember their sacrifice has nowhere to go but a rueful shrug and making babies. Tolkien gave us hope and renewal but also another reminder of the cost of failure, a bitter memo on the stakes freedom plays for.

The title of this post was an accident. I was going to write something else and wound up writing the name of an old acquaintance. A Colville indian I haven't thought about in probably twenty years. Yes, that was his name. Nice guy, big, smart and loyal. But cranky. A middle earth Shrek.
Posted by: Sluggo / 11:18 AM
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