The Hindu : THE FANTASTIC AS REAL

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 03, 2004

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THE FANTASTIC AS REAL

IT IS EXTRAORDINARY that at the end of a typical Oscar awards ceremony — a familiar and meretricious mix of giggle and glamour — the enduring image should be that of an Oxford don who specialised in Old and Middle English. The moment may have belonged to Kiwi director Peter Jackson, whose highly praised The Lord of the Rings (Return of the King) took home 11 golden statuettes thereby tying with Ben Hur and Titanic to become the three most honoured films in Oscar history. But in many ways the time belongs to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973), whose fabulist tales of hobbits, orcs, wizards, elves and other fantastic creatures that populate an invented universe with its own history, genealogy and topography continue to captivate a worldwide audience many decades after they were written. Over the years, reactions to Tolkien's fiction have oscillated between the ecstatic and the unkind. In his time he was not exactly a favourite with the English literary establishment. But over the years, his books have spoken for themselves, weaving their magic over millions of readers, an astonishingly complete and powerful work of imagination that will endure as great literature.

At this juncture, the huge revival of interest in Tolkien has coincided with a tremendous growth in crossover fiction, particularly that which is overlain with magic or fabulism. The hugely popular J.K. Rowling and the extraordinarily gifted Philip Pullman are two of the best-known exponents of a genre that, in fictional terms, is all the rage. Any assessment of Tolkien — as well as that of his contemporary and friend C.S. Lewis, whose Narnia chronicles are going to be adapted for cinema by Disney — must take into account how far ahead he was of his times. His two best-known works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, were written in 1937 and 1954-55, well before crossover novels had evolved into a separate genre and much before fabulism became a literary fashion. During the awards ceremony, Peter Jackson thanked the Academy for recognising fantasy, a genre that is slowly but distinctly becoming more and more popular in cinema. Happily, his Return of the King, the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, won in every one of the 11 categories for which it was nominated, including best film and best director. Since The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers were honoured only for technical achievement, the clean sweep of the Oscars this time is recognition of an epic movie-making effort that, against all the odds, proves worthy of Tolkien.

There is a measure of critical agreement that the trilogy has got better with each instalment. In Return of the King, the final battle is joined as Gandalf tries to rally the forces of good against the legions of darkness under Sauron. The fate of the former, and the future of Middle Earth, depend on whether one hobbit is able to make a successful journey and cast a ring into the fires of Mount Doom. Against the backdrop of this grand and fantastic saga of good and evil, Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's epic becomes a canvas to explore a range of everyday issues such as commitment, friendship, betrayal, and trust. In a significant way, Tolkien fabulism is rooted in the social environment and the natural world, a quality that makes the body of his work appealing not only to lovers of fantasy but also to those who read and enjoy different kinds of fiction. Jackson has understood this brilliantly and the success of his adaptation hinges on his appreciation that the fantastic can also be real.

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