Of Cars and Towers

Saw The Two Towers yesterday. One word: wow. This was the one book in the whole trilogy which I thought would be impossible to capture on film. By the way, this little piece contains spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it yet, by all means, do not read on.

The opening scene is overwhelming. I sat there with my jaw dropped down…the one scene I was positive Peter Jackson wouldn’t risk was exactly the one he opened with: Gandalf’s fight with the Balrog. Breathtaking…and so accurate. The Battle at Helmsdeep…wow….a friend of mine said it just right: even though it is a massive battle, it is not depicted with glory and shine…the emphasis is on the human emotions and the personal thoughts of everyone involved in it. The way Jackson builds up to the tension up to the outbreak of battle is spine chilling.

Of course there are concessions to the story….I mean, that second book is almost impossible to depict exactly as it is…but the concessions are not disturbing. The two minor points are (to me that is) the constant switching back and forth between story lines…especially in the beginning of the film that sometimes goes rather abrupt. Gollum is brilliant, and what I found most intriguing is that the film enhances his split personality so well that I think he is portrayed better than in the book. Gandalf however has grown out to mythological proportions. A little too much to my taste. Especially the scenes with Shadowfax were over the top. But hey, what is roughly ten minutes on a three hour film?

The only thing I really found a shame is the way the figure of Faramir is distorted. In the film, he takes Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath because he wants to keep the ring for Gondor. In the book, he lets them go quite soon because he realizes that the ring should be destroyed, not used. The film uses his persona to create even more tension, and in my opinion, that was not needed.

But, all in all, I enjoyed myself immensely…and now the wait begins, again. Until next year!

In other news, I am waiting for the garage to call me back. I am going to try to get that car I talked about yesterday. First I need to see it for real of course and take a test drive. Then comes the trouble of getting the finances. The Man said that we would work it out…don’t know what that means but I think I’ll either be taking on a loan if I really like the car and if it is worth what they ask for it…or The Man might chip in and I will pay him back later. Dunno…I don’t like spending money that is not mine. On the other hand…this might be the perfect deal for me. It is not an incredibly huge amount of money I’d be loaning, I think I could pay that off in two months or so.

We’ll see how that goes. Maybe the thing isn’t half so nice as it looks on the pics. We’ll see.