FilmBlather.com

"Courage, Merry. Courage, for our friends."

I've been known to get pretty emotional at movies on sporadic occasions, but this is something else. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King runs for 200 minutes, and I estimate that I cried for 195 of them, give or take two, including through most of the end credits. I was okay most of the time, calm, raptly attentive, with little more than a frequent tear slaloming down my cheek. Then, late in the film, there is a point -- a scene that director Peter Jackson and actor Viggo Mortensen nail with earth-shattering perfection -- when I absolutely lost it. All sense of decorum went out the proverbial window. The themes feeding that amazing moment aren't very complex -- friendship, loyalty, honor, courage -- and yet out of that simplicity emerges something extraordinary and almost inexplicable in its context: a great, rushing pride in mankind. This despite the fact that the appropriate object of our affections is often not man at all, but hobbit, or elf, or dwarf.

No hyperbole or apologies: The Return of the King is one of the best films I have ever seen, and the trilogy it rounds out is the most significant filmmaking accomplishment I've witnessed. Bursting at the seams with significance, emotion and perhaps most importantly, humanity, the movies not only transport you to the enchanting land of Middle-Earth, but make you love it as if it were your own. The heroism of its characters isn't the dull, stoic nobility of righteous superheroes but the heartbreaking determination of those who, in the face of insurmountable odds, have decided to do that which is brave and right.

I am not the only one who wept through most of the running time, and it is difficult to gauge precisely why we found ourselves crying -- though the film was, in fact, poignant and powerful, the timing of the tears did not correspond to any moments that could specifically be so described. Someone described it to me as an "almost female reaction," a hormonal response to what amounted to sensory overload. The confluence of Jackson's impossibly beautiful and majestic images and the triumphant conclusion of Tolkien's timeless story creates a movie of stunning emotional heft.

Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin), two weariest of hobbits, are still on their way to Mordor with their sinister guide Gollum (Andy Serkis), who is now clearly plotting against them. Seeking to bypass the impenetrable Black Gates, they are led by a back way into the caverns of Shelob, a gigantic spider who, Gollum hopes, will kill the halflings, leaving the ring -- the Precious -- for him alone. Sam never trusted Gollum for an instant and now despises him more than ever; Gollum tries to poison Frodo's mind against Sam.

Sauron, rebuffed at Helm's Deep, sends his armies toward Gondor, where Denethor (John Noble), the Steward of the throne, is slowly losing his mind. Gandalf (Ian McKellen) gallops with Pippin (Billy Boyd) to try to convince Denethor to call for Rohan's aid. He eventually does, in circumstances I won't reveal, leading to several exhilirating scenes, none more exhilirating than the Battle of Pellinore Fields, which all but blows Helm's Deep out of the water in scope and grandeur. Aragorn, the true heir to the throne of Gondor, leads Rohan's armies to the rescue.

Some people claim indifference to this movie, under the guise of "fantasy not being their thing." It's a position I have to accept, I suppose, but one I don't think I will ever understand; why do we go to the movies, if not for this? In its fantasy setting, The Return of the King at some point evokes every conceivable emotion and sometimes many of them at once, to the point where we can't handle it and have no bodily alternative but to break out in wet, sloppy tears. It makes you feel alive.

Others have complained about the multiple resolutions that conclude The Return of the King, and all I can say in response is that these characters have earned their endings. The story is intricate, the plotlines many, and the film doesn't linger on any of them longer than is necessary or desirable. Myself, I could have sat through 12 more endings without a peep. I could also give Peter Jackson a big slobbering smooch for sticking with Tolkien's powerfully prosaic final line of dialogue.

It seems almost redundant to discuss the brilliance of the film's formal elements, and a lot has been said about them already in the context of the series. Aside from Peter Jackson's amazing work at the helm, getting so many things inexpressibly right, there is Howard Shore's musical score, which contains some of my favorite compositions. Cinematographer Andrew Lesnie somehow knows exactly what Middle-Earth would feel like. And then, of course, there are the special effects technicians, whose work is so consistently seamless that we almost stop noticing.

Yeah. This movie is pretty great. Masterpiece