Friday, December 21, 2001 |
14:32 - That's what happens when you get typecast
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It's hard to say what it is about "Fellowship of the Ring" (the movie, that is) that has everyone in such a gape-mouthed state of stupefied silence. I talked to a friend about it this morning who hasn't yet seen it; he was quite surprised that nobody has come leaping around gesticulating and howling about how you HAVE to SEE this MOOvie, like we did when Fight Club came out. But all I could think to say was that it's just not that kind of movie. You see it, you develop your own personal, private relationship with it, just like you do with the books. Tolkien isn't something you proselytize to other people. It just is. If you "get it", and it "gets" you, no further explanation is needed. You can talk detail with other people who "get it", but such aspects as the quality of the storytelling and the appropriateness of this or that plot point or metaphor just don't get talked about. It's what I imagine it must be like to be heavily religious.
That said, though, I can hardly avoid talking about one point of the casting: Hugo Weaving as Elrond. Sure, he does a great job of it-- his quivering-with-desperate-rage "Isildur!" in the flashback is unassailable, and it allows him to bring to the character a hurt bitterness that just wasn't there in the book. Actual character, even-- an area in which the movie actually manages to outdo the book. Elrond has motivation. He has history. He has grudges and hangups. He's a hard old man to impress, especially if you're trying to accomplish a quest whose success will mark the end of his power and influence, AND trying to woo his immortal daughter and convince her to die within an age of Men. This isn't the kindly Santa Claus of the books, particularly The Hobbit. This is a guy whose ability to keep from smacking the Fellowship's members about the head and shoulders with wrapping-paper rolls is truly commendable.
But I was talking about Weaving. I like his face in the head-on shots-- he's a perfect Elrond from that angle. But in profile, he's got that receding-chin-dangling-dewlap thing going on, a trait that I have a hard time associating with an Elf-lord. But what most people are having the most trouble coming to terms with, not surprisingly I suppose, is where we all know this actor from. And I'm not talking about Priscilla.
If FotR ever becomes such a cult hit that people develop a Rocky Horror treatment of it, it will center around the phrase, "Welcome to Rivendell... Missster Annnderson."
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