Review of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) by Cj W — 04 Aug 2014

The Fellowship of the Ring is not a perfect film, it certainly has its flaws with the script and some of the acting, but even with those flaws, it is outrageously entertaining and thought provoking. This is really a technical marvel with painstaking detail, beautiful photography, and brilliant editing.

Peter Jackson does a terrific job of creating middle earth, he knows that this is a separate fantasy realm, and does a thorough job of making this world not really resemble our world at all. However, the film's ability to engage you comes mainly from the characters, their actions, their characteristics, and what they say.

The photographer, Andrew Lesnie, knows this, and shoots the film in close and personal shots of the characters typically alone in the frame; this allows us to view the characters as individuals united on a quest for a common good.

Although, the editing by John Gilbert, is also a technical achievement, as he does a great job of allowing the characters to say what needs to be said, yet he never leaves a single shot on the screen for too long, which amps up the pace of this 3 hour long film.

The technicality of this film takes us back to Hollywood's classic films like The Wizard of Oz, or Gone with the Wind, but the acting and the script could at times need some work. Overall though, the script and acting is fairly good.

The script succeeds at capturing the essence of the way these characters feel, and beautifully characterises each one of them, however, most of those characterizations come in the midst of an action sequence.

And there are times where the script seems overwrought and overdoing the different form of speech, it becomes a bit melodramatic and almost ridiculous. As for the acting, there are some notable performances, Wood does a very good job as Frodo, Bean is good as Borimir, Astin is surprisingly great as Sam, but Ian Mckellen definitely gives the best performance as Gandalf.

Mortensen is at times very good, and at others he is very bad, which is surprising for him, however, Bloom and Tyler are ridiculously bad, they are so melodramatic its laughable. But to finish up, despite its flaws, The Fellowship of the Ring is relentlessly entertaining and emotionally gripping, it is a technical masterpiece that succeeds in almost every area it was trying to succeed in.