Cinema
Fable failings
The Lord of the Rings (Classic, Haymarket) Admirers of Tolkien's trilogy angrily insist that it isn't for children, which may explain why I have never been able to get through more than ten pages of the stuff. The Lord of the Rings (A) is based on the novels The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, and my own snap response is that it certainly isn't for children and probably not for adults except for those Tolkien addicts who are determined to see the master's work visualised.
The history of the tortuous transition from page to screen is itself a fascinating epic. The Ring books were cult literature in the Fifties, with fan club members chattering away to each other in the tongues of Dwarf and Elf. The film rights were owned by Walt Disney for ten years until 1968, when they passed to United Artists. where both Stanley Kubrick and John Boorman tried their hand at creating a screenplay from the mass of material. The problem of depicting the imaginary physical universe of Middle Earth seemed insoluble until Ralph Bakshi came up with his proposal for an animated film, and the company gave the go-ahead in 1975.
The process of production, which consumed the next three years, was certainly unusual. Working from a screenplay by Chris Conkling, a 'young Tolkien scholar', and Peter S. Beagle, a 'respected fantasynon-fiction writer', Bakshi directed a live action version of the film on soundstages and on location in California and in Spain. He then applied an army of illustrators and animators, including many art students, to the problem of transforming the film into animation.
It seemed worthwhile to describe the background in detail, if only to assure the myriad Tolkien fans of the integrity and enthusiasm of the enterprise. The film is a visual feast in its use of colour and line, and the laborious production technique is fully justified as scenes of magic and fantasy alternate with realistically exciting scenes of battle and pursuit. We traverse the terrain of Middle Earth, with its mountains, forests and rivers, and with its population of Hobbits, wizards, elves, dwarfs, orcs and all the other weird creatures of the novelist's imagination.
Figures fade alarmingly from threedimensional solidity to cartoon to silhouette, deepening the sense of mystery. There's a genuine sense of fear as the black riders — red eyes glinting in the night — invade the village in their search for the Ring, and pursue the Hobbits through the mines of Mona, with a splendid climax as the Wizard Gandalf does battle with the flying demon.
Yet the film as a whole is a failure for reasons which should have been predictable. The central story, the one which has to hold our attention, is that of Frodo's journey to Mordor to destroy the Ring. Unfortunately the actual narrative is both diffuse and confusing. After the band of companions split up, we cut from Frodo to the plight of the other Hobbits without being sure who is who. They look alike; they even sound alike. The voices range from bland American mid-west to RADA effeminate, with the rare relief of an English rural accent. Periodically the Wizard re-appears and gives a report in flashback on his activities, which breaks the momentum.
Curiously, the recent animated version of Watership Down suffered from many of the same faults, particularly the confusion of the narrative and the difficulty in discriminating between the roles. Even the most magical fantasy falls to earth if it's not clear who's who and what's happening, as every maker of fables should know.
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