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Notes & Comments 151 “Grace of the Valar”: the Lord of the Rings

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Notes & Comments 151 “Grace of the Valar”: the Lord of the Rings Notes & Comments 151 “Grace of the Valar”: towards completion. This experience The Lord of the Rings Movie1 of two world wars brought Tolkien face to face with the greatest evils of Film critics and many Tolkien fans our time, and especially with the great responded to the three-part Lord of the temptation of our time, that of tech- Rings movie directed by Peter Jackson nological power, which he dramatized (2001, 2002, 2003) with ecstatic in the form of the One Ring. praise. Some claimed it as the cine- matic equivalent of Beethoven’s Ninth Grasping the ring Symphony, Mozart’s Requiem or Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ludicrous It is notable that movie audiences praise of this sort aside, there is a cer- seem to have had no difficulty at all in tain magic about the films—a provi- recognizing the nature of the Ring, dential convergence of the newly although the film’s portrayal of it developed CGI technology with bril- might easily have been confusing. It is liant acting, music and cinematogra- supposed to be a Ring of supreme phy, all at the service of a story pos- Power, yet the only “powers” we see sessing unrivalled mythic resonance in it grant are those of invisibility and the modern world. extended life. It brings the creature For J. R. R. Tolkien’s story was Gollum only misery during the centu- an imaginative response of a cultured ries that he possesses it. In the book European soul to the two World we have the sense that, once mastered Wars that mark the bleak “coming of by its wearer, it would impart to him age” of the modern experiment. a great portion of the Dark Lord’s Tolkien served in the first War, in the magical power over nature and other trenches of the Somme itself, and it wills. We are told that the wearer of was there that his imagination began the Ring will be able to see and con- to explore the darker possibilities of trol those who wield the three Elven Faery. His son served in the second Rings whose destiny is entwined with War, and the letters between them its own. In the movie, however, the written at this time reflect both the wearer of the Ring of Power appears intensity of their relationship and the to become instantly vulnerable— slow progress of The Lord of the Rings because highly visible to those he would most wish to avoid. In the flashback where we see its maker, 1 This paper is the revised version of an Sauron, wearing the Ring three thou- appendix that appears in Stratford Caldecott, The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision sand years earlier, we find it neither Behind The Lord of the Rings (New York: rendering him invisible nor seemingly Crossroad, 2005), 125–32. An earlier version enabling him to quell the vast army of also appears in Flickering Images: Theology and Elves and Men assembled against him. Film in Dialogue, ed. Anthony J. Clarke and Paul S. Fiddes (Oxford: Regent’s Park Indeed the Ring is cut from his hand College, 2005), 193–205. by Elendil’s sword. Much later, 152 Stratford Caldecott Frodo’s possession of the Ring cannot twelve-volume “History of Middle- prevent Gollum biting it from his earth,”2 Tolkien himself explains the finger. Yet we see the corrupting ambiguous power of Sauron’s Ring. effects of the temptation to claim the For him it is the archetypal Machine, Ring in each of the main characters and it possesses all the false allure of who come into direct contact with it, technology in the modern world. In and we perceive it through their eyes his story Tolkien explores two differ- as an infinitely desirable thing, the ent types of technology, two different concentrated essence of all that is most understandings of science, through the lusted after in Middle-earth, like the contrast between the magic of the forbidden fruit proffered by the ser- Elves and that of the Enemy: the goal pent in the Garden of Eden. To the of the former is Art, whereas the aim characters in the movie, the Ring of the latter is “domination and tyran- seems to offer not power but the idea nous re-forming of Creation.” Tech- of power. It promises something it nology always offers more power than can never deliver. it delivers, and its real effect is to make Thus the movie preserves some of us increasingly dependent upon itself, the symbolic meaning attached to the and therefore in reality less powerful Ring, if not quite all. The Ring of in ourselves. Sauron irrevocably places Sauron is perfectly smooth, bearing no a measure of his own spirit into the stone. The writing that appears upon Ring: the Ring enables him to bend it when heated (“One Ring to rule his minions to his purpose, but as he them all… and in the darkness bind does so his personal power is dimin- them”) is invisible at room tempera- ished, “spread out” among those he ture. It is a circle of gold representing controls. The loss or destruction of the self-loved Self, impregnable to the Ring therefore means a loss of others, cut off from genuine relation- control, even of his own bodily shape. ship, closed. No wonder it makes the The film picks up on the theme of wearer invisible to others, unreachable “bad technology” and plays on con- by light! Also it is a ring never re- temporary environmental awareness ceived but always taken; not placed by pitting the wizard Saruman—an upon the finger as a gift, but claimed for oneself. As such it seems ironic that the prop used in the movie was a 2 See, for example, Letter 211 in The Letters wedding ring that belonged to one of of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey the film crew; for the One Ring in Carpenter, published by George Allen & the story is the very antithesis of a Unwin in 1981, and the discussion of technology in my Secret Fire: the Spiritual wedding ring: it is the symbol and Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien (DLT, 2003), 44–49. agent of isolation and domination The History of Middle-earth, vols. 1–12, edited rather than communion. by Christopher Tolkien, was published by In his Letters and at various places Allen & Unwin and HarperCollins between 1983 and 1996 (see especially the volume in the posthumously published entitled Morgoth’s Ring). Notes & Comments 153 ambitious pawn of Sauron, engaged in but instead she made Galadriel simply genetic experiments and the destruc- weird, and a bit sinister. In general the tion of nature to fuel his factories other Elves appear more insipid, —against the Ents, the tree-people, smug, and pompous than the strong who exact their spectacular revenge yet ethereal, serious yet fun-loving upon Isengard in the second movie. Elves of Tolkien’s masterpiece. We see them mainly at night or in twi- The failure of the film light, whereas Tolkien finds them often (and certainly in Lothlórien) Yet it is important to note that the delighting in the broad light of day, film is flawed in many important brighter and more colourful than respects. Tolkien himself would un- anything in the world we know. The doubtedly have loathed it. The action Shire, too, is slightly mishandled by is noisy and unrelenting, the emo- the filmmakers (although the recon- tional scenes often sentimentally over- struction of Bag End is convincing wrought. Major characters have been enough). Probably only an English distorted. Perhaps the most obvious director could have understood quite example is Frodo himself. Infantilized how the balance of humour and seri- like the other Hobbits, Frodo has also ousness was to be maintained in the been stripped of almost all the strength case of the Shire. It was, after all, of character and inner nobility he supposed to represent the world of demonstrates in the book. At one real life within the novel, and point he allows Gollum to turn him Tolkien’s telling caricatures of rural against Sam, at another he exposes the English folk were gently affectionate. Ring to the Nazgul (in a gratuitously For Jackson, the caricature element invented scene set in Osgiliath— prevails, the Shirelings become too amusingly Sam rightly protests, “We clownish, and much of the complex- are not even supposed to be here!”), ity of Tolkien’s exploration of the and at the Crack of Doom he contin- English psyche is lost. This matters ues fighting with Gollum, almost most at the end of the third movie, falling into the fire himself. Other when the Scouring of the Shire (the characters suffer almost as much or necessary culmination of Tolkien’s more at Jackson’s hands—not story) is omitted completely, and the Gandalf, perhaps, nor Boromir, who Travellers return to a homeland that are quite well realized for the most has been completely unaffected by the part, but Faramir, Elrond, and even great events away down South. Aragorn in some respects bear little Of course, much can be said in resemblance to the characters in the mitigation of these failings. Several book. Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel was scenes correspond closely to the book. a misjudged performance—perhaps I think, for example, of Gandalf’s fall she was trying to inject some other- in Moria, Gollum fishing in the For- worldly mystery into the character, bidden Pool, the death of Boromir, 154 Stratford Caldecott the lighting of the beacons along the earth. Across that Sea the angelic Valar White Mountains, the Ride of the preside over the Land of the Blessed, Rohirrim, and the wonderful final and the music of the Sea echoes a scene on side of Mount Doom as the Great Music that was before time, and fires engulf Frodo and Sam and the was the archetype of time.
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