dangermousie | Rewatching Fellowship of the Ring...

Yesterday, I restarted my Lord of the Rings rewatch, and before I passed out, Mr. Mousie and I got as far as the Nazgul attack on the hobbits at Weathertop (where Frodo gets stabbed with the Nazgul blade).

Oh God. I still love this movie to bits: the dreamy lushness of the shire, the menace of the Nine (I was grabbing Mr. Mousie’s arm), the fluid camera moves, and the characters all perfectly stepping out of my imagination, from Frodo’s big-eyed wonder and Sam’s sturdy sense, to Aragorn’s intensity and quiet voice. And Merry and Pippin. Oh, I’ve forgotten how I loved the two. Merry is definitely the pragmatic, ‘thinky’ one even so early on, and Pippin is the baby of the group.

Mmmmm. Aragorn. Still awesome (My favorite character, I admit). I get the same sense of security when he first appears (especially when the hobbits are lost as to their course of action) as I did in the book: knowing nothing truly horrible can happen as someone so capable is there. Of course, horrible things can happen still, but you forget for a moment.

A few things really get me on rewatch:

1. Bilbo telling Gandalf that Frodo is still in love with the Shire and so shouldn’t leave. That just makes it incredibly heart-breaking, as you know after his journey the Shire will be forever poisoned to him. It’s not as if he is Bilbo, wanderlust hobbit who is bored and on to the next thing after Shire. He saved the Shire and he loved it, but he never got to enjoy it at all. (Just as Bilbo’s comment of there always being a Baggins in Bag End makes me tear up a little).

2. The hobbits are such civilians at this point: lighting a fire at Weathertop etc etc. And why should they know any better, have any other instincts like that? It’s sad that they learn.

3. The passing of the Elves fills me with sadness as well. You get the sense of something more special than every day world leaving forever, the connection with living myth. But Sam’s comment about never being able to sleep in the wilderness..oh yeah, bittersweet.

4. When Aragorn tells the hobbits of the Nazgul and says ‘they were once men’…he is thinking again of being bound by the common guilt of his ancestors, isn’t he? Even though he shouldn’t as it isn’t his fault. And some of these are literally his ancestors probably.

5. Aragorn singing the song of Beren and Luthien. I am so struck that his answer to Frodo’s question as to who was Luthien and what happened to her is ‘She died.’ Because Luthien was and did many many things, including prying a jewel from the crown of the current Big Bad’s Boss (!!!) but all Aragorn is consumed by is the thought that an Elf Maiden loving a mortal made her mortal as well. That is the only thing he can see. No wonder Elrond convinces him to give up Arwen, he is consumed with guilt.

6. Gandalf the Grey has so much hope, and humanity, and despair in him (you can’t tell whether he is devastated or relieved when for a second it looks as if the Ring isn’t the One Ring). I am never as in love with Gandalf the White, more remote.

7. Attention to detail point 1,458: when they leave the inn at Bree, Aragorn has clean hair. Because he’s stayed in a town, after all. But not so later, when they are out in the wild: his hair gets matted a bit, and his fingernails have grass and dirt stains. And he is STLL hot. Ummm, slipped out…

Btw, I love the story of Beren and Luthien. It would probably make a neat movie (or a really horrible one). There is this super long Russian-language fanfic about them which I had book-marked ages ago but haven’t read (По Ту Сторону Рассвета, Ольга Брилева). Time to pull it out.