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Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings reportedly sold more than 100 million books. Now the movie version of the first volume in the series, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is finding box-office success.
The plot of the film is simple enough. A gold ring recovered from the severed finger of a slain warrior at the beginning of the film carries magic power over all things. Forged in a hellish inferno at the end of Middle Earth, the ring has been turned to the service of evil and can only be redeemed by returning it to the fires from which it sprang.
The ring turns up in the home of Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), a youthful and pure-hearted lad who becomes a reluctant recruit to carry the ring back to its primal furnace. Mentored by an aged wizard, Gandalf (Ian McKellan), Frodo sets out joined by three other youthful male hobbits
(a cheerful race of “little people”) in search of adventure.
The trip is hardly begun when Frodo is threatened by ghostly figures riding giant horses in the night who are out to capture the ring. Frodo and friends are helped by a brave human, Aragorn, to elude the “wraiths.” Shortly Frodo’s companions include two other humans, Boromir and Gimli (a dwarf), and Legolas, an elf. Together they form the Fellowship of the Ring, resolving to help Frodo safely transport the ring to the fiery furnace at Mount Doom on the other end of Middle Earth.
The movie traces their journey in the face of life-threatening obstacles from scaling the highest snow-covered mountains to descending into the deepest mines in the earth. The physical hazards are made increasingly more dangerous because of malicious attempts on their lives by subhuman killers and because of magical power turned against them by a good wizard turned bad.
The Fellowship of the Ring is a dark film. The confrontation of the fellowship’s goodness versus the powers of evil is heightened by the ugliness of hateful creatures born out of the mud and the violent conflicts that repeatedly put the lives of the fellowship in extreme danger. Hope is always present in the person of Frodo, however, and in the Wizard Gandalf.
Much has been made of the fact that Tolkien was Catholic, and of the moral universe created in his books and evoked so effectively in the movie. This is a world where power corrupts (and absolute power corrupts absolutely). It is a world where the antidote to evil is found in selfless dedication, acceptance of responsibility, in loyalty and integrity whatever the risks may be. This unambiguous world is primarily male.
The box-office success of The Fellowship of the Ring is not surprising given the cult status of Tolkien’s books for two generations. But it is welcome for the clear moral universe that it presents to a young audience through commercial entertainment.
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