oh viggo! (not a spoiler)
Wednesday 17 December 2003 | I like a cookie
It’s nearly four a.m. and I’ve literally just walked in the door from seeing ROTK (no link, you know where to find it), barely pulling off my coat before sitting down to type. There’s no one I can talk to, and I can’t not talk, or not write, or not do something. To sit stock-still for a three-and-a-half-hour-long heaving, clashing, blasting, eye-poppingly miraculous epic and then just turn in for a bit of shut-eye: not humanly possible. We lumpishly park ourselves in stadium seating to watch our depicted kin do incredible deeds of nobility and valor, vanquish impossible foes, sacrifice their lives again and again for the love of each other and the common good, and what am I supposed to do with all this roar and rush of battle-lust and species-pride thusly aroused in me? Bravely start my Pontiac? Valiantly put on the kettle for my hot water bottle? Ancient ancestral DNA surges in me, wants to dress in chain mail and kill Nazgûl and guzzle mead and demand war chants of the harpist. Or, to be the harpist. To sing of Merlin, Gwydion, Perceval.
So let it be here noted, without further delay and kerfaffle, that Viggo hath given one of the sexiest screen kisses in film history. To future generations of leading men who will wish to imitate him, here’s the secret: Stare at your beloved in disbelief, as if you’d never expected to see her again, and then suddenly seize her, opening your mouth well before it gets anywhere near hers.
NB also that Aragorn, while not the sharpest knife in the drawer, sure is plucky as all get-out (and somehow doesn’t suffer from PTSD). Mr. Mortensen, who’s actually athespianly clever—a poet, photographer, painter and political thinker who runs his own publishing company to boot—as well as being Exene Cervenka’s ex!—nonetheless manages to make me, the brain-slut, fall totally for an unkempt, greasy-haired guy who sleeps with his armor on and grabs the nearest sword immediately upon being awakened—who doesn’t think, who just charges.
Let it also be here noted that Orlando Bloom is Middle Earth’s sassiest rock climbing elf (he bags one particularly impressive pitch) and that David Whoosis is not the total washout I feared he would be as Faramir. Also that a wizard’s staff has multiple uses, dragons make a particularly nasty high-pitched metallic ripping sound, Peregrine is still an adorable fool of a Took, and the dead glow luminous green (rather like that firstborn-son-killing ectoplasm in The Ten Commandments).
Now I draw a curtain of silence over my brain concerning this final chapter from Peter Jackson lest Mandarin throttle me with the bony digits of Gollum, cos she hasn’t seen it yet. Someday she and I will hole up with toaster waffles and watch all three extended version DVDs. Then we will either wake up in the Shire or they’ll find us cold and extinguished, but smiling.
One reverberating memory, though: that of being thirteen and yearning for nothing more than to be a shieldmaiden of the Rohirrim. Wandering in the groves of oak down by the creek which borders my parents’ farm, declaiming to the brambles: Forth Eorlingas! Bending over the saddle to my horse’s ears (Norma, a fiesty little brown Appaloosa mare, fiendish with cattle and ill-tempered with riders) to whisper encouragement in Elvish. Wondering if I could ever be as brave as Eowyn, if I would have the strength to lift a sword at the end, when there is no strength left. Wondering if I could ever resign myself to bow the knee with grace and dignity before a king who would not love me.
The Librarian and I stood outside the theater together briefly; his wife and son were both using the restroom (but not, of course, the same restroom). We stood apart, separated by a stream of gesticulating, nervously swallowing, trying-to-seem-cool-while-gabbling-with-excitement and totally overstimulated teenagers, exactly none of whom will wake up for school tomorrow. We smiled shyly and a little sadly at each other, both feeling somewhat lost in this world of linoleum and retail gates and security guards. When the stream of adolescence subsided, he joined me by the posters for upcoming idiotic movies. “I’ve never been in the mall at 3:30 in the morning,” I confided. Then wished I hadn’t wasted precious seconds saying that. He laughed politely. “You’d better seize the moment, then; this may never happen to you again.” His son emerged and punched me companionably in the arm, and I thanked him for suppressing snorts along with me at the few unbearably corny moments. I feel less alone when my seatmate sees through the Spielberg quotations and has to muffle guffaws alongside me. Then we all went to our cars and now I’m here.
And I feel like I haven’t been kissed in this lifetime. And like I’ve just mislaid my sword somewhere—as if there must be something clouding my eyes, something to prevent me from seeing with perfect clarity, otherwise I should look for it, find it, again feel with a kind of peace or relief the cool smooth heft of its shaft fit perfectly, with a thick soft slap, into my curled palm.
post your glowing encomium (or bitter philippic) »
Follow this heated, lively discussion through its very own feed; also, you can pingback or trackback from your own doubtlessly much more interesting site.
