Return to emotion The Lord of the Rings 3 rings truer BY PETER KEOUGH
	The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Earnest, meticulously rendered, efficiently narrated, and spectacular, the first two installments of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy also suffer from those virtues. For me, much of the magic of the books came not so much from the encyclopædic detail, the outlandish creatures and landscapes, and the hifalutin adventures as from the process of imagining them for myself. Jackson does all that work for you, and for the most part, he does it well and expensively. But the experience is passive, like watching a stunning video game without being able to play it.

No wonder the most riveting performance in the first two films comes from a special effect. Gollum, né Smeagol and "based" on actor Andy Serkis, is perhaps the first figment ever touted for an Academy Award nomination. Part Uriah Heep, part river rat, part Satan, he outshines the rest of the bland cast. The tale of his origin, a kind of Cain and Abel fable, opens The Return of the King. This young Smeagol is Serkis sans CGI, before the baleful influence of the Ring deprived him of his decency, his dental hygiene, and most of his hair. That Return should open with such a human (pointy ears aside) image suggests that it is a return also to the emotional core of Tolkien’s great epic. Although still denied the participation of their imagination, viewers this time at least get to have their hearts stirred.

Given the complexity of the narrative, never mind the mechanics of rendering such an imaginary world, that’s no mean feat. At this point, you’ll recall, the Fellowship formed to destroy the Ring of Power and deprive the evil Sauron of the weapon he needs to take over Middle Earth has divided into three parties. Gimli the Dwarf (John Rhys-Davies), Legolas the Elf (Orlando Bloom), and Aragorn the Ranger (Viggo Mortensen), having survived the onslaught of Sauron’s Orcs at the Battle of Helms Deep, try to rally Théoden (Bernard Hill), the king of Rohan, to come to the relief of their allies in Gondor. Gandalf the Wizard (Ian McKellen) rides to Minas Tirith, Gondor’s towering capital, to rouse its crapulous leader, the steward Denethor (John Noble), to face the threat from Sauron’s hordes. All of which is a side show to distract Sauron from Frodo (Elijah Wood) and his trek to Mount Doom in Sauron’s backyard of Mordor. Frodo must toss the Ring to its destruction in the fiery pit while eluding capture and resisting the Ring’s lure of omnipotence.

The outcome: three or four battles increasing in scope and intensity and a mounting existential psychodrama involving Frodo, his pal Sam (Sean Astin), and his guide and nemesis Gollum, all punctuated by giddy shots of thousand-foot drops, surprise visits from a giant spider, and weird references to The Wizard of Oz. It’s much the same drill as in the first two films, but this time Jackson adds pathos and subtlety by his choices of point of view. The penultimate Battle of Pelennor Fields, for example, is seen mostly from the eyes of Éowyn (Miranda Otto, putting in perhaps the finest performance of the trilogy), Théoden’s fiery niece. Barred from battle because of her gender, Éowyn disguises herself in men’s armor and joins the Rohirrim cavalry as they take on the vastly more numerous forces of Sauron. Few moments in the film are as moving as the close-up of her face, her terror and determination not quite masked by her helmet, as she beholds the eldritch abominations aligned against them — eight-story elephants, demonic Nazguls astride flying dragons, a half a million misshapen, semi-human Orcs. Neither is any of the many rallying cries in the film as eloquent as her defiant, "I am no man!" Jackson’s empowered females (two of the film’s scriptwriters are women) are a definite improvement on Tolkien’s sexism.

Meanwhile, back at Mount Doom, Frodo is fading fast as he ascends the Stairs of Cirith Ungol to accomplish his mission. Picking up the slack is the Joe Six-Pack of Middle Earth. Sam, whose wheedling, vaguely homo-erotic subservience to Frodo in The Two Towers made Gollum’s treacherous sycophancy seem refreshing, here takes on an Everyman heroism that’s inspiring. His triumph of the common man, or hobbit, is a sentiment that rings true.

Unlike some of the uni-corny images and dreadful lines of dialogue, which keep reminding you that this adaptation is not just a dazzling collage of myths and an exploration of historical anxieties but also a calculated and massively commercial product and a burgeoning pseudo-religion. Ian McKellen is a great actor, but with the white robe, beard, and stallion, he looks like an escapee from a Dungeons and Dragons convention. And every time suspension of disbelief settles in, it’s dispelled by clinker lines like "The Eye of the enemy is moving!" and "All that you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given you." For the three-hours-plus of The Return of the King, what your imagination does has already been decided for you.