Opinion

The Fellowship Of The Ring

Tolkien's epic comes to the live-action big screen for the first time, and all our Christmases for the next three years already have a trip to the cinema on the schedule. The story, for those who don't know, involves a ring, created by the dark lord, Sauron and found (in The Hobbit) by Bilbo Baggins. Years later, the ring is inherited by Frodo, and the arrival of the wizard Gandalf signals Frodo's journey to Mount Doom, the only place where the ring can be destroyed. To protect him along the way, Gandalf assembles a Fellowship of hobbits, dwarfs, elves and humans.

Like the Harry Potter film, with which it has frequently been associated in recent weeks, this is a film which comes with a great deal of baggage. And like the Potter film, broadly speaking, The Fellowship delivers on its expectations. Director Jackson has created a film of epic scope and nail-biting drama that is somehow entirely cinematic, escaping from its literary origins and succeeding on its own merits. Arguments about the liberties which have been taken with Tolkien's plot in order to create a couple of halfway decent female roles aside, this is a generally faithful adaptation, but re-imagined in another medium.

The performances generally match up to the challenge presented by creating the realisation of characters which generations of readers have already perfected in their imaginations. Wood particularly offers an effective mix of innocence, determination and outright fear, and is ably supported by the rest of the Fellowship (with the odd exception; Sean Bean just playing the same as he ever does). The effort that has gone into making the elves suitably not-quite-human in particular being especially effective.

The other thing that Fellowship shares with Harry Potter is of course that it sets up a story which is to continue in later films. Jackson succeeds better here than Columbus did a few weeks ago, perhaps because the structure of this film is more clearly open-ended. The set-up here makes clear that something epic is to come, and given the scale and impact of this first film, that's saying something.

In realising Middle Earth, Jackson has made extensive use of CGI to create effective armies of non-human races, but the biggest asset he has is having filmed the three movies in the series in New Zealand. The impact of the landscape and its contribution to the effect of the film cannot be underestimated.

This isn't a fanboy gush - there are problems with the film - the opening segment is, dare I say it, tedious; the promotion of Arwen's role in the interests of that beefing up of the women never entirely convinces, coming across every bit as the token gesture it is, and Jackson occasionally sacrifices depth for spectacle, intensity for scale, but these things aside, The Fellowship Of The Ring is an entirely enjoyable way of whiling away a few hours this Christmas.