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The second in a trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers opens with a flashback of the
battle the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and Balrog, the fire-and-smoke monster.
Gandalf triumphs and together with Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas the elf (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli the dwarf (John Rhys-Davies) proceeds to Rohan to warn the bewitched king Theoden (Bernard Hill) of a forthcoming attack by Saruman (Christopher Lee) whose army is composed of 10,000 creatures bred for the sole purpose of annihilating the human race. Meanwhile, the hobbits Merry (Dominic Monagham) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), fleeing from the Orcs, stray into Fanghorn Forest and find themselves clutched in the limbs of Treebeard, a benevolent walking, talking giant tree shepherd. At the same time, Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) get lost on the way to Mordor to destroy the ring. The humanoid Gollum (Andy Serkis) who has been following them attempts to steal the ring but is captured and turned into a virtual slave to guide and take the hobbits to Mordor. Back in Rohan, Gandalf frees Theoden from Saruman's spell, enabling him to rally his 300 "men and strong lads" into a suicidal battle with Sauruman's bloodthirsty creatures.
The Two Towers is a first-class visual thriller, and may yet become a bigger success at the
box office than Fellowship of the Rings. As a fantasy-adventure, the film mesmerizes the viewer through every moment of its 190-minute run, presenting an exquisitely
believable world born of a marriage between human creativity and computer technology. The film doesn't have the whimsy, charm and depth of characterization shown in
Fellowship of the Rings since the story shifts its focus away from the modest little hobbits in their enchanting world and on to the swashbuckling heroes combating carnivorous
monsters. Nonetheless, an anti-hero hero surfaces unexpectedly in the film—Gollum.
It doesn't matter whether he's a real human being or a computer-animated character—he deserves an Oscar for Best Actor.
A creature at once repulsive and pitiable, Gollum becomes the medium for the message of The
Two Towers, a film on the eternal fight between good and evil. Everywhere else in the movie, good is clearly good and evil, clearly evil—whether they're persons,
principles or creatures—and they're constantly at war with one another.
But in Gollum, both good and evil are present in a moral tug-of-war, perennially raging on in that space between his ears. It is in Gollum that the ageless good-vs-evil conflict is distilled into dimensions so abstract yet so palpable. As former possessor of the ring now around Frodo's neck, Gollum is fixated on stealing it, but is too grateful to betray Frodo who has saved his life. His dark side hisses at him to reclaim the ring, while the other side resists, until he firmly commands the former to "Go away and don't ever come back!" Humans can easily identify with Gollum, and may even be led to a higher spiritual plane if the character is taken seriously. For if such a vile creature can have a heart and a conscience, how can you, a child of God, lose faith, hope and love?
(Date Reviewed: January 24, 2003)
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