And It Still Gets Me....

I just finished a two-day rewatch of the Lord of the Rings films, and I think as the last credits are rolling, I might be able to stop crying now.

Every time.  Every. Time.

Some of the tears are happy; some are not.  However, as Gandalf says at the end of Return of the King, "I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."

So many different parts of these call out the strong emotion.  There are the tremendous acts in battle, the moments when the great leaders take their forces out against overwhelming odds and the best of courage can be seen.  There are the small moments, too, when an individual makes a choice, makes a difference.  There are victories over self and others; there are deaths and returns.  There are reunions and partings.  It would be almost impossible for me to make a list of every scene that moves me.

Each of the major characters is something we all wish we had.  Aragorn is the strong and trustworthy leader.  He is reluctant at first, but once he becomes committed, he refuses all obstacles.  Legolas and Gimli are true friends, loyal no matter what comes. Merry and Pippin show that everybody has the ability to grow up and put away silliness in order to "make good" of himself.   Frodo is the one who will sacrifice himself for a great cause even though he sees no special ability in himself.  Sam is the one who helps the one who is heavy-burdened when that one cannot help himself.  Gandalf is the source of wisdom who is wise enough to know that all too often the path has to be discovered step-by-stumbling-in-the-darkness-step by those who are walking it.

I think every person has a character with whom they identify.  Mine has always been Eowyn.  She always wants to do more than has been "ordained" for her.  She feels that she should be choosing her own path, defining herself and following the actions that she understands to be necessary instead of conforming to something that does not fit her, even if that conformity would give something like safety.  It is all summed up nicely in this exchange between Aragorn and her, which made it into the film pretty much unchanged:


ARAGORN: What do you fear, lady?

EOWYN: A cage. To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.

I am mostly afraid of the same thing.  There is so much, so very much to see, to do.  It is hard, though, to get out of the cage.  It is hard for me, like it was for her, to know where sane balance ends and the bars begin.

Look what happens, though, because she does leave the cage! I will always love Tolkien for stealing that bit from myth, that the Witch King falls only because she dares to follow her own ideas about how her life should be lived.  Sure, she winds up in love with Aragorn and that does not work out for her (yes.  I am aware that this pattern of useless dreams of guys who are already in love with the "elf chick" is also me.  so you can just shut up.), but she is a heroine in her own right.

I don't watch the LotR movies often, but I wanted to see them all back-to-back (or as reasonably close together as that can be done and a person get some sleep) because I realized that it had been a long, long time since I'd seen more than five minutes of them as I was flipping past a marathon on cable TV.  The beauty, the grandeur, the wonder of the whole story and the whole world Tolkien created still gets to me.  From the Ents to the Nazgul, from Moria to Gondor, from the beginning to the end, I don't think there could ever be a time when it was stale or "old-hat."  There is always some encouragement to be found, some new lesson to take away, some new facet of its loveliness to enjoy.  How marvelous.  How reassuring.