Frodo (Elijah Wood) carries a heavy burden in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
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Precious Queer Moments
The history of the franchise is familiar. Seven years in the making. Three successive holiday seasons of massive hype and merchandising. Sets constructed in the wilds of New Zealand sometimes years ahead of time, allowed to "weather" and become overgrown for "authenticity." Special effects that reset the bar. Gripes that Andy Serkis, who provided the human voice and movement templates for the computerized Gollum, wasn't nominated for a Supporting Actor Oscar last year.
The Lord of the Rings is finally coming to an end with the release of The Return of the King. Then again, director Peter Jackson is considering making the prequel, The Hobbit, with Ian McKellan and Liv Tyler reprising their roles, so the finale may be far off indeed. It's understandable that he's hard pressed to turn away: it's been an ambitious and mostly successful enterprise for Jackson, and it couldn't have been easy, given the books' devoted and very vocal fan base.
It is precisely Jackson's pandering to fans' expectations that repeatedly drags The Return of the King to a halt. This leads to a general problem of pacing, as the film tries to include too many plot details from the books. Nearly every scene goes on just a little too long. When the watch fires of Gondor are finally lit to call Rohan to join in battle against the armies of Mordor at Minis Tirith, we spend several minutes following the process from majestic mountaintop to mountaintop. This despite the fact that it we already know the distance is great and Gondor's peril immediate: one or two signal fires and mountains would have been enough.
The Return of the King is cluttered with such longeurs. Slow motion is used to excess. But when so many events are assigned such gravity, all are diminished. The dialogue is blustery and bombastic. Plans of action are repeated unnecessarily and Jackson often cuts between close-ups of the many central characters to show each of their responses to any given situation. Cutting its many scenes just a bit would have given The Return of the King some sense of urgency. As it is, the film mostly meanders.
Admittedly, some of this itemizing stems from the vast, multi-part narrative that must be brought to some closure. The fellowship that set out in the first film to destroy the One Ring has been broken, its members scattered far and wide. Frodo (Elijah Wood), Sam (Sean Astin), and Gollum must make their torturous way to Mount Doom in order to cast the Ring into its volcanic fires.
Similarly, after their successes at Helm's Deep and Orthanc in the second film, the remaining members must regroup, only to be scattered again as each is charged with specific duties. King Théoden (Bernard Hill), Éowyn (Miranda Otto), Merry (Dominic Monaghan), and Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) must rally the troops of Rohan to join Gondor. But Aragorn must abandon Rohan for a time, to establish his birthright at King of Gondor, and so departs with Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) for the Paths of the Dead, deep in the White Mountains. Meanwhile, Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) ride ahead to Minis Tirith to rouse Denethor (John Noble), Steward of Gondor, and ready his army for battle.
And don't forget about Arwen (Liv Tyler) and Agent Smith, I mean, Elrond (Hugo Weaving) fidgeting around Rivendell, he worrying about the fates of elves and men, she slowly deciding to give up her elven immortality for Aragorn. All of these many characters and storylines come together in the battle against the forces of the Dark Lord Sauron on the Pellenor Fields, in the cities of Osgiliath and Minis Tirith, and before the Black Gates of Mordor.
It is during this combat that The Return of the King engages the viewer. The clashes are impressively rendered, no surprise, but still quite a pleasure. The siege engines, catapults, and Orc legions of Mordor are immense, as are the multiply tusked "oliphaunts" that carry Sauron's army. There's a thundering crash as the Rohirrim cavalry pounds into the ranks of Orc infantry. When the Orcs fill their catapults with the heads and body parts of the soldiers of Gondor they have slaughtered and fling them into the city of Minis Tirith, it's a gruesome and excellent effect.
While these scenes clearly drive the film, their intensity cannot be the sole narrative impetus. The relationships among the various characters give a human depth to the battle of "good" against "evil," and Jackson does a generally admirable job translating these relationships to the screen. Nonetheless, the primary theme that Jackson and scriptwriters Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh foreground is overwrought. Production notes assert that the subtext of The Return of the King is all about fathers and sons, familial loyalty, and love. These relationships are, of course, all vexed and frustration. Denthor and his hierarchical and vacillating love for his sons -- the dead Boromir (Sean Bean) and the dead to his father Faramir (David Wenham) -- are one such family unit. As are Elrond and his adopted son Aragorn (though the films don't specify this relationship, Elrond raised Aragorn in Rivendell), Gandalf and Frodo.
The more obvious and pleasurable subtext, though, is the queer undercurrent to the relationships among the Hobbits. A recent cover of The Advocate (9 December 2003) calls attention to one of "the national gay and lesbian newsmagazine's" features: "What's gay about holiday movies?" Inset is a photo of Sam cradling Frodo in his arms on the slopes of Mount Doom. Regardless of whether or not the two are really a "Hobbit couple," as The Advocate calls them, their intimacy is everywhere in The Return of the King. Throughout their many tribulations, the two sigh each other's names and look wistfully into each other's eyes. Merry and Pippin get into the action as well. When they are separated, it nearly breaks their hearts, as tragic as their subsequent reunion is joyous.
While the battle scenes are impressive, these precious queer moments between Frodo and Sam, Merry and Pippin, are what give some much needed levity to the film. They keep The Return of the King's epic battle between "good" and "evil" from becoming too self-indulgent and entirely bogged down in its own grave importance.
— 18 December 2003
