One of my big adventures in media lately was watching all three Lord of the Rings (LOTR) films in fairly quick suggestion. This is not, I'm coming to understand, the most original thing in the world to do. Two of my friends, that I know of, have done the same. In fact, my boyfriend did it as a kind of media-facilitated retreat, preparing to go back to Georgia to deal with his mother's illness (which led to her death three weeks ago, already mentioned in this blog).
I think that's a good way to look at it: as a mediated spiritual exercise. That was close to my approach as well. I wanted to recapture some of the feeling I had in high school when I was a die-hard Tolkienite. A shy, bookish teen, I basically lived in Middle Earth. I couldn't wait to escape to my room, to escape to Middle Earth. This was before I became a very religious person, but I can see now the underlying spirituality of the books. They may have played a big part in leading me to Catholic seminary, and then the Catholic Worker. Which makes sense, since Tolkien himself was a devout Catholic.
The story subtly builds in power while watching the three-films. That makes sense since the three films were basically filmed together. I think that such deep immersion causes the film-watcher to become more invested in the story, making it a more enjoyable and, yes, spiritual experience.
And I really didn't mind the violence as much while watching the three films together, which surprised me. This either speaks to an anesthetizing effect of long-term exposure to violence (10 hours worth), or a deeper contextualization of violence--that is, you see the why and wherefore of the violence, which makes it somehow more acceptable, for me anyway. As a rule I don't like violence, but I will accept it if it's a plausible part of the story and doesn't titillate (my main argument with LOTR's cinematic coeval--the Matrix films--which I thought made violence look sexy and chic).
I will certainly admit that, after my epic act of movie-watching, I was tired and could easily understand why Frodo got on that boat to the Western paradise of the elves (besides the fact that such a mythology is deeply ingrained in my Irish soul). He was bone tired and ready and deserving of his reward, which is kind of how I felt.
Tolkien's West was not our West, however. The Western paradise we come to after crossing to the other side of the LOTR films is the U.S. style consumer paradise of 2005. Which makes me want to get in that boat and go back. Or at the very least, stick disk one back in the DVD drive, and hop onto Gandalf's cart, slowly making its way to the Shire...
Posted by jeb at August 18, 2005 6:02 PM | TrackBack