Return Of The King vs Heavenly Creatures

There’s a certain kind of girl who’s really into The Lord Of The Rings. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I know her when I see her. Maybe when she was younger, she was into horses, and she’s no stranger to internet fan-fiction. She knows the origin of her name, and the hidden meaning of her birthday. On more than one occasion, in her life, she’s had her ears pierced all the way up, and possibly experimented with shaving her head on one side, or maybe growing her bangs down over one eye. You definitely knew her back in college, but where is she now?

She’s at Return of the King, and she’s loving it. The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King has arrived, and for the first time in a long long time, a film trilogy ends on a high note. Return of the King does everything the third part of a trilogy is meant to do, and a little extra. It’s one of the few of its kind to exist on its own as a good movie.

I was a little less enthusiastic about the first two Rings movies than the rest of humanity. I thought the first one was good, but a little heavy on the quaint, cutesy, wee Hobbit village stuff. The second one was good, but let’s face it: it was mostly walking, napping, and sitting up in a tree. An alternate title could have been, Meanwhile, Up A Tree. Ah, but Lords 3 (How glad are you that’s not the title?) is a rockin’ good time, a moving story, a huge sweeping epic, and the cap to a series. How, you ask, is it possible to make a movie like that without it being three and a half hours long? Well, it’s not, but you’ll be fine. Get some rest, have some sugar, go #1 before you leave home.

Return of the King, thankfully, picks up where Two Towers left off, with very little in the way of catching the audience up. Frodo, Sam and Gollum/Smeagol are out hiking to drop the all-powerful Ring into the fiery fires of whatever. Aragorn, Legolas, Gandalf, and Gimli are still out kicking Orc ass, worrying about Frodo, and pining for Liv Tyler. Pippin and Merry are under the care of Treebeard, and pining for—come on, you’re thinking it too—each other. And, that’s basically it. The journey continues, and we see that, incredibly, Peter Jackson has crafted The Lord Of The Rings to be watched marathon style. Some rainy day soon, your DVD player is gonna get a workout.

As you’d expect, Return of the King is visually stunning. There’s a lot of CGI showing off here, kids, but none of it shows. Besides Smeagol/Gollum, we get giant, winged dragons swooping down out of nowhere (once to get their asses kicked by eagles. Rock.), giant, multi-tusked elephants stomping about (once to get their asses kicked by Legolas. Rock.), and of course, endless armies of Orcs. One odd effects choice is the obvious use of child actors for certain shots of Hobbits. It seems like with all the CGI available, a miniature Frodo could be achieved through more than putting a curly wig on a third-grader.

Return of the King is structured a little better than the first two, finding a better balance between the storytelling and the endless battle scenes. Don’t get me wrong, I love the battle scenes; they’re tense and brutal. But there’s always another battle, and when it’s over, it’s never really over, but merely just waiting for more bad guys to show up. During a battle scene late in the movie, an aerial shot reveals an army of Orcs three times as big as necessary to be obnoxious, and just big enough to be really awesome. Just when you’re thinking “Okay, enough already,” director Peter Jackson finds a way to make you think “Okay, maybe just a little more.” This time though, the storyline seems to lead into the battles, rather than holding a place while they set up the next shot. Frodo is coming perilously close to losing his mind to the Ring (and perilously close to the edge of cliffs. Seriously, that dude falls a lot.) His “traveling companion”, Sam, is becoming increasingly weary of their journey to destroy the Ring, and increasingly suspicious of Smeagol, their withered, former Hobbit guide. He’s also becoming annoyed with Smeagol. Wait, that’s me. Smeagol, of course, is half Gollum. He’s also half Andy Serkis, and half CGI. He’s becoming more and more dangerous and violent, especially to Sam, “the fat one”. Gollum suggests to Frodo that Sam is jealous and will ask for the Ring. When circumstances bring that about, Frodo sets out on his own. Gollum has devised a plan that will trap Frodo in a dark tunnel and leave the Ring up for grabs.

That sequence, with Frodo alone in the tunnel, is thrilling. The tunnel, as you may have deduced from the trailer, is actually a cave, with maze-like hallways and dark, shadowed corners. Oh, and sticky webs everywhere, and a big-ass spider. The scene recalls the meeting of the Alien Queen in Aliens, complete with Sam stepping in with his own spin on “Get away from her, you bitch.” This moment, besides being scary as hell, is perhaps the most important of the series, because it shows us, once and for all, that The Lord of the Rings isn’t a story about a Hobbit. It’s a story about two Hobbits. At one point, Sam tells a possibly-dying Frodo “Don’t you go anywhere I can’t follow,” a simple, true expression of friendship, in a moment that in other hands would have been overdone.

As Sam, Sean Astin is terrific, and earns his happy ending more than just about anyone else in the movie.

The rest of the cast is fantastic as well. Sir Ian McKellen is the least hammy of his generation of British thespian. His Gandalf is intelligent and loyal, and in crucial moments, a total bad-ass. Likewise, Viggo Mortensen is a forceful screen presence and underplays as much as possible. He’s as subtle as a person can be, charging forward with a giant sword. As Legolas, Orlando Bloom has little to do besides shoot arrows really quickly, but he does so convincingly, especially when he’s taking down one of those humungous elephants. Also, he’s go the shiniest hair in all of Middle Earth.

As with the previous two installments, the female characters are basically afterthoughts. I kept expecting Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett to flesh out their characters some, but they barely register at all. Tyler has some important moments in Return of the King, but we’re only given glimpses at a time, and her sacrifice—a pretty big deal—is played out as if she got a new haircut. Blanchett’s character is only called on randomly, and I must say, her portrayal in Lord of the Rings is one of the more comforting ones in movie history. When she comes on screen, I think, “Whew, it’s Cate Blanchett. She’ll make everything okay.” Miranda Otto fairs better, as Eowyn, who disguises herself to fight alongside her father and friends. She makes a forceful warrior, and has one of those moments where she pulls off her helmet and—Hey! That’s a girl! Where did this debut, Bad News Bears? Little Rascals? The Bible? No matter, it’s a good scene, and by the time we’ve seen that much Orc mayhem, a little cliché goes down quite easily.

Through all three installments of Lord Of The Rings, I found myself thinking of characters from one of Peter Jackson’s earlier films, Heavenly Creatures.

Heavenly Creatures tells the true story of Pauline and Juliet, two girls in a New Zealand prep school in the 1950s. Pauline, is nerdy, dumpy, shy, naïve, and fascinated with art and music, despite not having much talent of her own. She loves to draw horses. She’s become somewhat obsessed with her new friend, Juliet, who is rich, beautiful, witty and imaginative. Best of all, Juliet likes Pauline too, at first because of the scar on her leg, and later because of their common bonds.

Juliet covets Pauline’s stable, if ordinary, home life, and Pauline covets Juliet’s well, everything. The girls become inseparable, creating a fantasy world to live in. They write stories and sculpt clay representations of their characters. They’re obsessed with the singer Mario Lanza and with Hollywood movie stars, especially Orsen Wells, who they see as a villain chasing them home through the woods. As Pauline and Juliet grow closer, their relationship starts to alarm Pauline’s family, who suspect—they’re right on the money, by the way—that Pauline and Juliet might be developing a sexual relationship.

When Juliet is quarantined because of illness, the relationship between the girls reaches its breaking point. Pauline and Juliet write to each other as their fictional characters, and Pauline decides in her diaries that she and Juliet could be together forever if they were to run away to Hollywood and make movies. But how can they do that, with Pauline’s busybody mom in the way? How, oh how?

They’re going to have to kill her.

Heavenly Creatures is an incredibly creepy movie. That it’s completely original and flawlessly acted is a bonus. Peter Jackson’s direction is stylized along the lines of movies from the 1950s, but with modern editing and cinematography. When the girls retreat into their fantasy world, the clay figures take human size and leave no doubt whatsoever that this was the man to direct Lord Of The Rings. As Pauline, Melanie Linskey is perfect. She’s so peculiar and moody, in the way that only a certain kind of girl can be (see above). Likewise, Kate Winslet is incredible in her film debut. As Juliet, Winslet gives every line a melodramatic flourish, as if the conversations between Juliet and Pauline were taking place on a stage. She’s constantly theatrical, and would be annoying if not for the fact that the same young girl who sculpts clay knights and runs giggling through fields in her underwear, is the same young girl with a big rock in her purse, ready to lure a mom down a narrow path in the woods. Once you’ve seen Heavenly Creatures, you’ll never look at Kate Winslet the same way again, and you’ll never look away.

Amazingly, Heavenly Creatures is a true story. By law, Pauline and Juliet can never see each other again (both are still living. Juliet is the mystery novelist Ann Perry). I assume they’ve kept that promise, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they snuck out one evening and watched Return of the King. When you see it, and you hear the clapping I heard for Eowyn drawing her sword and saying “I am no man!” or for Aragorn leading the charge of ghostly warriors, you might wonder: just who are those girls anyway?

Rent Heavenly Creatures, and you just might find your answer.

Return of the King: A
Heavenly Creatures: A