Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King

02/14

Fantasy/NZ-UK/English, Elvin (Japanese subtitles)/200mins
Starring: Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen
Director: Peter Jackson
New Line

After the extravagant spectacle of the first two instalments of Lord of the Rings what could director Peter Jackson do to round off the trilogy? Why, make a film that is bigger and grander and more spectacular than the first two, of course. He has made a film so colossal that it seems bigger than New Zealand where it was filmed.

The Return of the Ring has the Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) complete their world-as-they-know-it-saving journey to destroy the ring of power while the nations of men and elves divide, squabble, heal and unite while battling vast armies of mindless orcs and trolls.

Yet more effort and ingenuity has been extended in portraying Middle Earth and its citizens than in the earlier movies. You feel every bump and crash of the battles, duck when the nazgul swoop and are transported to Middle Earth in the panoramas of Gondor and Mordor.

Critics have complained all along that the films lack substance, that they have nothing to do with the real world and are mere specta-cle. Indeed, compared to the novels, the films do lack something. To say they are irrelevant or shallow is unfair to at least the second and third films. Dragons are relevant? Are you mad?

As Sauron gathers his armies, metaphors flap around the story like enraged nazgul. Think about Tolkein’s life: the dark powers are Mammon, industrialisation, totalitarianism, personal tribulation, overbearing guardians and insanity, more or less simultaneously,
and we haven’t started thinking about the good guys yet.

Certainly the story is about power: power corrupts; power hypnotises and consumes. Gollum is a soul (graphically) disfigured
by addiction to it, Frodo and Aragon struggle not to be seduced or overcome by it. If there is one complaint about the Return of the King, it is the length. At 200 minutes it does test the viewer’s endurance and risks economy class syndrome, but we forgive, because Middle Earth is a place worth travelling to.

Master and Commander

02/28

War/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/138mins
Starring: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D’Arcy
Director: Peter Weir

‘Tis a special film indeed where the leading man can strut around shouting things like "Hard to larboard, Mr Warley! Luff, luff, and shake her!" without producing howls of derision from the audience. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is a swashbuckler in the old sense of the world, but one that has a thoughtfulness, craft, and modern technological execution that levitates it to the top of the genre and opens it to a non-swashbuckling audience.

The film begins with its own Private Ryan moment when the British frigate HMS Surprise is ambushed by the French privateer Acheron. We are thrown into bloody, scary, intimately observed battle as the larger French ship nearly demolishes its quarry. The English escape through a guile that we learn to be one of the characteristics of their salty captain.

It is 1805, Napoleon has most of Europe, Britain is fighting with its back to the wall and HMS Surprise is charged with defending British interests in the oceans around South America. After the ambush, the Surprise’s captain, Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe), resolves heroically and against common sense to pursue the French ship and stop it from creating havoc in the British commercial fleets in the area. The chase gives us the tried and trusty episodes of sea-fiction: the high seas, the rounding of the cape, the doldrums and the becalmings.

The film moves in the middle part on the relationship between Crowe and the ship’s doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), a sort
of thinking man’s version of Star Trek’s Kirk-Spock relationship. Both men can talk philosophy and endearingly pass the woman-less evenings by playing the violin together. The story and characters are drawn from Patrick O’Brian’s epic series of Maturin/Aubrey novels and some of the quality of the acclaimed books carries over.
I cannot judge the accuracy of the depiction of life at sea, but it
is utterly convincing. And you have got to love a sea-faring yarn which has, without a shred of self-consciousness, someone taking a pot-shot at an albatross.

Film Reviews: Chris Page

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