ROTK Take Two

I cried much more the second time and it felt shorter, even though my kids were with me and provided more distraction than I had the first time through. Still think Sean Astin is astonishing, as good as Sean Bean was in Fellowship. This movie definitely belongs to the hobbits -- there are a number of scenes involving the Men from the books that I missed, but really all four hobbit actors are so good and their storylines are so emotional that I loved spending time with them, as opposed to parts of TTT which dragged for me.

I'm still not really in the mood to talk about it. I wonder why that is. It's certainly not from lack of love for it. I suspect that this is one of those movies, like Indian Runner, which I'm going to have to process through fic before I can be coherent critically. The different pieces of it seem very compartmentalized in my head -- the Frodo/Sam/Gollum storyline, the Rohan-Gondor storylines, the Return of the King, Merry's arc, Pippin's arc, Gandalf's rather strange arc, what's left of the Denethor-Faramir relationship, etc. -- even though I think the stories meshed better in ROTK than TTT.

For me, perhaps not surprisingly, Boromir carried the thru-line of almost everyone even though he's been dead for two movies; I can connect him with pretty much every storyline in the film. And (, please don't hit me) I don't want to write him miraculously!undead right now. Because his death, while incredibly tragic and painful to watch, is a tremendous catalyst for just about everyone else and triggers a long list of things that need to happen. It's the polar opposite of a meaningless death, in terms of what the moment means to him and the ripple effect all around. I'm sure that in a week I will miss him terribly and want him miraculously!undead but not right now.

Since I was reading Patrick O'Brian while on line for an hour and a half waiting to be let into the theater, I got in the mood for this Paul Bettany quote on Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World that I pulled out for : "Genuinely, I just saw two men who frankly love each other. They are emotional and intellectual sustenance for each other and rely on each other for their very lives." Gee, how many characters in LOTR could we apply that to?

Gacked from , my only friend from Space: 1999 fandom with an LJ, so far as I know!


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