The Manley arts: too good.(The Lord of the Ring series and The Fellowship of the Ring motion picture)(Brief Article)

Several years ago, in the midst of a literary midlife crisis, I asked the readers of B00klist to send me the titles of five books that they felt everyone should read before they died. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series ended up right near the top of the list, behind only Shakespeare and the Bible. This master of fantasy clearly cast an enchanting spell upon an entire generation of readers. Using elements of Celtic, Nordic, and English folklore, Tolkien created an elaborate legendary world that many Booklist readers indicated was like a favorite vacation spot they visited every five years or so. In this fanciful world, which he called Middle Earth, Tolkien spun an engaging story around an unlikely hobbit named Frodo, who, against his will, is charged with the grave duty of destroying a powerful ring that the evil tyrant Sauron intends to use to control the planet for his own nefarious purposes.

Lord of the Rings was conceived within the classic tradition of the heroic epic that dates back to Homer and beyond. Frodo's quest to save the world is an old theme helped along with an enchanting new setting. Although it was first published in 1954, the Lord of the Rings series did not become widely known in this country until it became a cult favorite in the antiwar counterculture of the 1960s. During those turbulent times, the Lord of the Rings paperback boxed set was a necessary part of every college student's dorm-room decor. Tolkien's good-versus-evil theme resonated in a country torn by war and racism. The trilogy had the staying power, however, to transcend its '60s cult status, and by 1980, it had staked its claim as the one book that had best captured the imaginations of an entire generation of readers.

The popularity of the recent movie based upon the first volume of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, is not surprising. cn the afternoon when I went to see the film, the audience was filled with aging baby boomers like myself. For us, the movie was not so much a trip to Middle Earth as it was a journey back in time to the days of our young adulthood, when the inscription "Frodo Lives" was a popular piece of graffiti expressing our youthful idealism and self-righteousness. Although the movie was certainly an impressive visual panorama, well cast and expertly produced, it didn't capture my attention as the books had done 35 years earlier. For me, the movie was almost too good for its own good. The cinematic grandeur, the meticulous attention to every little detail, the adrenaline-pumping musical score, the seamless, computer-generated touch-ups, and the unfailing faithfulness to Tolkien's narrative were all simply too good, too much, too perfect. The problem with perfection is its mechanical aspect. To use a '60s catchword, the movie lacked soul. This is a major flaw for a story whose popularity stems from its essential mysticism.

There is something about fantasy that is best left to the written or spoken word. When fantasy becomes too real, too visual, and too precise, it ceases to be ...