Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Streaming on Prime Video.
I’ve
always stayed away from mainstream fantasy films, and this is almost my first exposure to
this genre. The film has a terrific prologue, where it talks about the story of
a ring. The story is so rich that it almost feels like it’s not something that’s
been created on paper. And it also feels vast and epic because of the timespan
of the backstory. The ring has travelled for thousands of years, and it finally
lands up in the hands of a young boy, Frodo Baggins. The ring is capable of a
lot of destruction in the world, and the task of the boy is to make sure that
the bad guys don’t find the ring, and to destroy the ring. I always like
stories where characters are put into situations that they are not ready for.
The young boy is definitely not ready for this, and he in the process of this
epic adventure, becomes a better man. So it’s also a coming-of-age story of
Frodo in a way. Though the film is set in a fairy tale kind of a setting, the
conviction of the storytelling makes us feel like it’s an existing epic or even
history.
In
this journey Frodo Baggins takes up, he makes a few friends, a few mentors, a
few people who save his life and faces a lot of enemies too. We see all
archetypes of supporting characters – a friend, a comic, a mentor, a villain,
and more. Though at every stage of the film, the forces of antagonism are very
physical and visual, the turmoil that our characters go through to face them,
or after facing them is deeply emotional. After Boromir tries to take the ring
from Frodo in the ending, Frodo loses trust. He feels so betrayed that he decides
to go on the journey alone. Though the setting of the film is epic, what the
events does to the characters is deeply intimate. And then comes my favourite
moment in the film, Sam insists on going with him even if Frodo won’t let him –
because he promised someone. I really enjoyed the humane moments more than the
action set pieces, and I’m looking forward to watching the other two parts.
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