Cimorene

(Inasmuch as it was a locked entry, I'll repost the review part here. ;)

I expect a lot of y'all will love the movie. It's got a lot going for it, honestly - lurkerkate, it uses your favorite lines of Tolkien's poetry as a song Pippin sings to Denethor. Pippin and Merry are wonderful, finally coming into their own after one movie of being comic relief and one movie of being mostly clutter. Eowyn is wonderful, especially in her key scene against the Witch King: she cannot fear, she's known fear too long and too well to be crippled by it now. Legolas and Gimli are wonderful, with cheerful teasing back and forth, in to which Aragorn occasionally gets dragged ('You should know by now how stubborn a dwarf can be' indeed): in fact, Gimli got most of the really good (albeit anachronistic) lines in the movie. I wish I'd written down his reaction to Aragorn's suggestion that they buy time for Frodo by marching on the Black Gate so I'd have the exact wording (something like, 'Little chance of success, no hope for survival -- what are we waiting for?'). Aragorn finally stops wishy-washying about and becomes the King: the Paths of the Dead are good for his part, albeit a bit cartoonish in the animation of the dead. Gandalf is wonderful: the first time I cried was in a scene between him and Pippin, where Pippin asks if this is the end, and Gandalf says no, death is a whole new adventure. 'The grey rain-curtain turns all to silver glass and is rolled back, and you behold white shores, and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.' Pippin manages a smile. 'That sounds nice.'

And then there's Frodo and Sam. Yes, I'm reacting very strongly, and your mileage may vary. I've seen reviews already that say it's not that bad. Hell, one reviewer took the scene wherein Frodo awakes -- alone -- in Ithilien, after the destruction of the Ring, and flipped it on its head from the way I interpreted it. But what I saw between Frodo and Sam was distance, reaching out to each other and missing their grip.

I could take Shelob, arachnophobia and all. But not the distance. My heart was broken at the end, but not as I wanted it broken. It's not sunshine and afternoon at the ending, or rather it shouldn't be. It should be evening, and Sam drawn in by Rosie with Elanor on his lap, and the sound of the Sea still and always in his ears. Don't water down my bittersweet, dammit. This isn't a happy ending.