Favourite Movie Scenes #4: Gandalf and Saruman at Isengard, from The Two Towers

For this post, I'm almost at a loss what to say. 

I have a strange feeling that any commentary I can make on this scene will almost be an insult to my readers. The camera angles, the set, the blue filter, the acting performances, the dialogue, the moment where Gandalf sees the Eye of Sauron...every moment is pure movie magnificence, concentrated and compressed and triple-filtered.

As with everything else, one can make objections. To be honest, I never particularly liked the choice of Ian McKellen for Gandalf. My reason for this, I'll freely agree, is rather stupid: I don't want an outspoken progressive atheist playing a character who is more or less God's emissary. But acting is acting. That probably shouldn't matter.

I've also always felt that McKellan had the wrong face for Gandalf, but that's even sillier.

Christopher Lee, of course, might havea been born to play Saruman.

The Lord of the Rings occupies a strange place in my life. I "read" the books when I was about seven, but I barely took most of the story in. After finishing them, for all the rest of my juvenile years, I only had continuing access to an incomplete copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. Still, Middle Earth made such an impression on my mind that it would be difficult to quantify it. (I can remember being told, at the time, that it would be impossible to make a film of the book.)

I'll try to explain the significance of Lord of the Rings in my childhood with a metaphor. Imagine some early Christian missionary had found himself on some island that was cut off from the rest of fhe world. The missionary himself only has the basic knowledge of Christianity, and perhaps a few pages from one of the Gospels. Then he dies of a fever. The islanders embrace the faith with great gusto, it pervades all their lives, and they weave all sorts of devotions and folklore around it. But they still only have a shaky knowledge of it. That was me and Lord of the Rings.

Funnily enough, this scene-- Gandalf and Saruman's concentration at Isengard-- wildly excited me as a child, more so than almost any other literary scene I can remember. (Sherlock Holmes's description of Moriarty in "The Final Problem", which has obvious similarities, excited me in the same way.)

This passage especially:

'For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors!'

I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colors, and if he moved they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.

'I liked white better,' I said.

'White!' he sneered. 'It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.'

'In which case it is no longer white,' said I. 'And he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.'

But even now, after I've read the trilogy all the way through three times or so (as an adult), I'm still not equipped to enter a conversation with Tolkien afficionados who can name every character's horse, sword, and grandmother. (I did push myself to read The Silmarillion when I was seventeen but remember next to nothing about it.)

Then the films came out just as I'd started my career in UCD. Everything seemed new and exciting. I loved all the coffee-break conversations about the movies-- not just among movie buffs, but among everybody. It was one of those films, like The Exorcist or Star Wars, that became a pop cultural landmark, and indeed a cultural landmark. I had never lived through such a moment in cinema history myself, so I relished it. (The release of the Director's Cut DVDs, a year after each film, were also a part of this cultural moment.)

Of course, a lot of people who loved the books hated the movies. There were things I hated about them myself. I hated all the laboured hobbit humour, which actually made me cringe-- even though you could say, fairly enough, that these scenes were in the spirit of Tolkien's book. I hated Cate Blanchett's ham-acting, as I saw it. There were other things I didn't like.

On the whole, though, I think the trilogy is a triumph that deserves all the plaudits heaped upon it. There are a few other scenes that I expect will feature in this series.