The last of the rings.
Fine, replies the skeptic, but isn't the story rather basic, the characters two-dimensional, the sentiments simplistic? True enough, I guess. But then, the same criticism could be applied to The Wizard of Oz, Simon & Garfunkel's singles and Aesop's fables. In pop culture, profundity is in the eye of the beholder.
Like The Two Towers, chapter three begins by plunging the audience right into the thick of things, as if to sever us from anything familiar, disorient us and thus purify (and reclaim) our attention. We learn a bit about the backstory of Gollum (actor Andy Serkis plus some amazing CGI work), a human whose unchecked appetite for the glories of the Ring caused his moral and physical disintegration, then follow the nasty beast as he leads the pensive, ring-bearing hobbit Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his loyal pal Samwise (Sean Astin) on a trek to Mt. Doom, whose volcanic fires are the only force that can destroy the ring and end the war between good and evil.
Jackson, who cowrote the script with Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens, crosscuts between the hobbits' journey to Mordor with Gollum-a treacherous little slimer who plans to kill Frodo and reclaim the ring for himself-and the attempts by the combined forces of humanity, dwarves, elves and other magical creatures to beat back an assault by the forces of Lord Sauron and his army of orcs. While the hobbits try to complete their mission-overcoming a treacherous landscape and frequent attacks by monsters ranging from spectral horsemen to a giant spider-we witness attempts by Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), rightful heir to a kingdom he'd once deserted, to unite squabbling factions for a last stand against the forces of darkness.
That last stand will begin at Minas Tirith, a city ruled by Denethor (John Noble), a depressed and amoral steward-king who appears to have accepted the triumph of darkness as a given. Aragorn is joined by the usual gang of derring-doers, whose ranks include hobbit buddies Merry and Pippin (Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd), the endearingly gruff dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), the back-from-the-dead wizard Gandalf (sad-eyed Ian McKellen, stunning in his long, white robe) and the supercompetent archer elf Legolas (swashbuckling minimalist Orlando Bloom, who has the best action-hero poker face since Steve McQueen). The heroes' final stand against Sauron's minions tests both their physical courage and their emotional resolve.
Here, as in the other two movies, Jackson shows a remarkable willingness to acknowledge the psychic toll inflicted by violence and fear. Throughout their journey, poor Frodo and Samwise look as grimy, frightened and weak as their untrustworthy guide, Gollum; their colleagues on the other side of Middle Earth seem equally worn down by the strain of their mission. The filmmakers' commitment to physical realism lends a sense of gravity to the proceedings. While this third installment has plenty of humor-much of it truly silly-it never lets you forget that vanquishing evil is a serious business, and that evil has no patience with the frivolous.
The Rings pictures may be superficially predictable adventure yarns, with mostly noble and charming good guys whacking ugly, drooling bad guys by the bushel, and rarely suffering anything worse than a shoulder wound or some hurt feelings. Yet Jackson still creates palpable tension by making it all seem overpoweringly physical-so real you can almost smell the mud, blood and burning foliage. This New Zealand filmmaker and his obsessed army of countrymen have accomplished a feat not seen since the Mad Max trilogy: They've overseen the creation of an alternate universe from the ground up (every suit of chain mail has a different pattern of embroidered metal and fabric, every sword a different heft, every winged dragon and tusked mammoth a slightly different texture, shape and velocity). Then he photographed that world in a way that suggests a camera has been turned loose inside a place that factually exists, and whose inhabitants take its splendors for granted.
The acting is iffier than the filmmaking. Mortensen is a tad wooden as Aragorn; Rhys-Davies sometimes seems too pleased with his own heartiness. And in this relentlessly male-centric tale, the women fight like hell just to be noticed. Miranda Otto's Eowan of Rohan has a crowd-pleasing moment near the end that nearly justifies her otherwise minimal (if lovely) presence; Liv Tyler's elf princess Arwen, alas, does little but ride and suffer.
There are, however, at least three performances in Rings that rank with the best acting in the history of fantasy film-Wood's, Astin's and Serkis'. Their work succeeds because all three performances are simple and unironic, oblivious to hipster snickering. Jackson has never seemed more attuned to the expressive possibilities in Wood's wide-eyed, exquisitely pained countenance. In some scenes, the apocalyptic gray skies and flickering lava reds highlight his pale face like a bust carved from soapstone; in a jaw-dropping closeup near the climax that seems lifted from Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, Wood's heavenward gaze and pensive yet slack face suggests a martyred saint borne aloft to heaven. Astin's Samwise is more impulsive, emotional and generally recognizable than Frodo-the staunch best friend most of us never had. Astin communicates Sam's willingness to sacrifice everything for Frodo (and for the success of the mission) with such take-it-or-leave-it simplicity that I suspect his performance will become a favorite target of anti-sentimentalists who don't have a new Spielberg film to kick around. Serkis' Gollum is powerfully realized-less villain than pathetic antihero; a warty little cousin of Macbeth or Hamlet, always arguing with his own reflection in scummy pond water; the devil on his own shoulder.
The film's three-hour-plus running time passes with welcome speed (the protracted, give-yourself-a-round-of-applause epilogue notwithstanding). Jackson deserves the credit for keeping the whole contraption on track. Untamed by the trilogy's estimated $300 million budget, he draws on his roots in exploitation, selling each shot, line and image through the crudest guerrilla filmmaking tricks. The series is elegant and powerful in spots; it's never pretty or full of itself, and it never settles for simple pictorial display. Jackson keeps doing things that rip one's attention away from color and composition and refocus it on movement, feeling and narrative function.
Note, for instance, the trilogy's extensive use of handheld camerawork and long lenses (both of which are still associated with documentaries, not fantasy blockbusters) to lend even the craziest action scenes a patina of realism. A transcendent shot in King that finds Gandalf riding onto the battlefield to face an army of several thousand orcs starts in the thick of the battle, then systematically picks out Gandalf riding in from screen right, toward the swarming mass of enemy soldiers, with a towering white city visible in the background. Despite the fact that probably 90 percent of the moment is computer-animated, the whole shot has been manipulated to make it appear to have been taken with a handheld camera, presumably on horseback with one of the orcs. It's the special-effects equivalent of spinning a dozen plates in the air while riding a unicycle and playing "Positively 4th Street" on the harmonica-yet the whole shot is onscreen for less than 10 seconds. Note also the use of handheld camerawork in the scenes involving Gollum-a computer-animated creation that amounts to a sharp-witted actor in a blue jumpsuit giving a stylized, almost Kabuki-like performance inside a theoretical "costume" that would be added months later by animators. While you're at it, appreciate how the entire series is cut. Almost every shot has some kind of movement in it, yet the shot always begins after the motion has begun and cuts away before it ends. This technique lends an undercurrent of kinetic force and unease to the whole tale-a subliminal sense that a gigantic narrative engine has been set in motion and will keep rolling forward until it ends.
It ends well.