Return Of The Poseur

Brian at Boviosity tackles Roger Ebert's review of Return of the King.

Ebert had this to say about the movie:

That it falls a little shy of greatness is perhaps inevitable. The story is just a little too silly to carry the emotional weight of a masterpiece. It is a melancholy fact that while the visionaries of a generation ago, like Coppola with "Apocalypse Now," tried frankly to make films of great consequence, an equally ambitious director like Peter Jackson is aiming more for popular success. The epic fantasy has displaced real contemporary concerns, and audiences are much more interested in Middle Earth than in the world they inhabit.

Fantasy?

The story is about good versus evil - something that faces everyone, in some way or another, every day, whether it's in parking in a handicapped zone or cheating on ones' spouse or in fighting international terror. It's about faith and redemption and belief in a Messiah and the higher, transcendental ideals for which the messiah stands, and for which we live and fight in our bigger or smaller ways, and sometimes choose to live or die for.

Fantasy?

Oh, wait - he's not done:

Still, Jackson's achievement cannot be denied. "Return of the King" is such a crowning achievement, such a visionary use of all the tools of special effects, such a pure spectacle, that it can be enjoyed even by those who have not seen the first two films. Yes, they will be adrift during the early passages of the film's 200 minutes, but to be adrift occasionally during this nine-hour saga comes with the territory; Tolkien's story is so sweeping and Jackson includes so much of it that only devoted students of the Ring can be sure they understand every character, relationship and plot point.

So - the story is "silly", but the special effects sure are cool!

What to say? Well, Brian says it best:

I suppose when a movie doesn't support your particular worldview, it must be airily dismissed as "archetypes" lacking in "psychological depth." You keep saying that movies aren't about what they're about, they're about how they're about what they're about. I've always admired that stance and I guess it's true, unless they're about the reality of Good and Evil and the need for Good to sacrifice some of its easy complacency when Evil is determined to kill it. Then they just need to be dismissed as "for adolescents (of all ages)."

Even adolescents know a shite-spewing poser when they see one, Rog, and I'm looking at one right now. If you'd had the ring, you'd still be using it to sneak through Bill Clinton's secret service coterie and give him big sweaty bear hugs...right up until you got run through with a rusty Nazgul sword, of course.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Mitch at December 26, 2003 10:26 AM