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Joseph and Jacob wouldn't have had right ring to them
THE quest is almost over. In the depths of mid-winter, valiant
Frodo will venture into Mordor on his mission to destroy the
One Ring, and Aragorn will lead the forces of Good against
the Dark Lord's armies.
The Return Of The King, the final part of Peter Jackson's
astonishing movie version of The Lord Of The Rings, is released
worldwide on December 17.
The coming two months will witness a crescendo of hype, beginning
tonight (Friday) with a screening of the first part of the
trilogy, The Fellowship Of The Ring, on the vast Imax screen
at London's Science Museum.
Even the trailer has won rave reviews. Harry Knowles, the
internet's supreme geek and editor of moviewatch website Ain't
It Cool, said: ''It's so beautiful that it makes folks whimper
and ask for honey . . . It's a 'Wow' trailer, so watch and
go, 'Wow'!''
Everything about this trilogy is immense. The extended versions
of each part run to more than three hours apiece, a total
of 10 hours of eye-popping cinema. Every kind of box office
record has been shattered; every imaginable award has been
scooped; every film fan from Sacramento to Osaka and Rejkjavik
to Rio is grinning with anticipation.
Little-known actors like Liv Tyler, Orlando Bloom and Elijah
Wood have been propelled beyond stardom to the movie immortality
which only the original cast of Star Wars have tasted before.
For the big names - Sir Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Sir
Ian Holm - it is as though their distinguished careers were
nothing but excursions into amateur dramatics.
Lord Of The Rings is, quite simply, the most successful movie
ever made, on every level - financially, artistically, culturally.
And it all stems from a 50-year-old book which, when it first
appeared, was deemed so unlikely to succeed that its author,
JRR Tolkien, couldn't even command a royalty: his publishers,
Allen and Unwin, insisted the cost of printing such a huge
manuscript, more than 1,400 pages, was prohibitive.
Tolkien had to make do with a contract promising to share
the profits 50-50 - a deal which made him a multi-millionaire
by his death, two decades later.
The novel enjoyed minor cult status until a scandal over
pirate copies took it to the top of the US bestseller charts.
An unscrupulous American firm called Ace reprinted the book
without bothering to sign a deal with Tolkien first - and
without paying him a penny.
The writer's loyal fans staged protests, and in 1965 protests
were big news. After Vietnam love-ins and civil rights marches,
the US media was ready for a Free The Hobbits movement. In
the 21st century, The Lord Of The Rings faces another pirating
epidemic, but one this time driven by the fans.
It seems certain that within hours of the movie's first previews,
low-quality copies will be circulating on the internet, taken
from handheld camcorders smuggled into cinemas. In the history
of entertainment, there is no parallel for the phenomenon
of The Lord Of The Rings.
The original Star Wars movie certainly had an exceptional
impact, but it began with a bang and it began as a movie.
There was no slow-burning build-up. And with Star Wars, all
the sequels and merchandising have been mere spin-offs.
The Return Of The King, by contrast, is a true climax. But
there is another cultural phenomenon which bears comparison:
the birth of a new religion. The story that begins with one
man, be that Moses, Buddha, Jesus or Mohammed; the slow spread
of believers, most converted by the enthusiasm of friends;
the sudden, international explosion of faith and evangelism.
This is no accident. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, conceived
his imaginary world, called Middle-Earth, as a place where
sacred rites were threatened by the shadow of evil, where
talismans were holy and prophesies guided men's steps, where
even the trees and the rivers had souls.
He reworked the myths of the Celts, the Saxons and the Norsemen,
in an avowed attempt to create a unified mythology for England.
What he achieved was a new myth for the entire world.
There are no Jews in Middle-Earth. This had nothing to do
with antisemitism, even though the book was written during
the Thirties and Forties. Instead, it's a sign of Tolkien's
determination to keep conventional religion out of his imaginary
land - ''I have not used names of Hebraic or similar origin,''
he noted in one appendix.
After all, how would a Jacob or a Joseph have come to Rivendell,
Gondor or the Shire? He would be as out of place as a Mary
or a Christopher, an Ibrahim or a Singh. The Frodos and the
Pippins, the Arwens and the Elronds, the Faramirs and the
Smeagols, these are universal names, for a universal myth.
Muslims in Mumbai and Sikhs in Leicester can interpret the
narrative in their own ways. Christians in Jerusalem and Jews
in Buenos Aires understand the story instantly. Rastas in
Paris, Buddhists in Toronto, Hindus in Sydney, Confucians
in San Francisco can all open their hearts to the truths in
the tale. The conflict between God and Satan is at the core
of The Lord Of The Rings.
It is also at the centre of every religion. By removing all
the religious divisions from his story and simply presenting
us with the battle of Good and Evil, Tolkien gave us a myth
which reveals how all human beings respond to the fundamentals
of faith.
Could there really be 'one ring to bind us all'? And can
a movie really change the world? I can't wait to see it and
find out.
Email
him at uri@urigeller.com
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