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A ROUNDTABLE INTERVIEW WITH THE CAST AND CREW OF THE LORD OF THE
RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
On Wednesday, Dec. 5th, Jeffrey Overstreet
joined several other privileged film critics, including Steven D.
Greydanus (Decent Films), Andrew Coffin (World), and Michael Elliott
(Movie Parables) to talk with members of the
cast and crew for the year's most ambitious, exhausting, and gloriously
realized film. Over the course of this week, Looking Closer will be
adding excerpts of those interviews here. Keep checking back!
John Rhys-Davies
(Gimli)
Jeffrey Overstreet:
Mr. Rhys-Davies, you have been part of the two most beloved film
trilogies ever made. In both of them, you have a significant presence.
And yet, in both of them, your character begins as a well-rounded,
three-dimensional, heroic sort, and then seems to narrow into something
like comic relief. I love your performances, but that aspect of the
script sometimes troubles me. Does it frustrate you at all?
John Rhys-Davies:
With the first Raiders,
it was all very fresh. We were breaking new ground. By the time we got
to the third one –– of course, they left me out of the second one, and
it’s a poorer picture because of it [laughs uproariously, and we do
too, agreeing with him] –– I was no longer part of the franchise.
One was more relegated in a way. The new hot thing was the Indiana
[Jones's] father
line. You grabbed what you could and made what you could of it.
For Gimli … the choice was slightly different here. As you remember,
Tolkien sold the original rights for a hundred pounds because he didn’t
think the book could ever be made into a film. And he’s right. It’s
unfilmable. If you are going to tell the story in the book, you will
break all the rules of Filmmaking 101. The structure’s impossible.
And it is to the great credit of Peter Jackson
that he [strives] to make a structure work for the film, but he will
sacrifice structure for fidelity. And I think that’s the right answer
here.
But what are the books? Something’s quite nice, and then something bad
goes wrong, and then there’s a fight, and then something gets worse, and
then there’s a bigger fight, and then things look really
bad, and then there’s a battle, and then things look really really
bad, and then there’s a bigger battle, and then things look REALLY
really bad. That’s the structure of the damn thing. And you can’t
have that mounting tension all the way through. So we needed to find
ways of releasing the tension. And we decided that Gimli was probably
the way to do it. Because there’s something innately funny about Gimli.
There’s an exchange, a drinking scene between Gimli and Legolas, that
will probably be on the DVD [of The Return of the King] that I think
will make you laugh a lot. I suspect that in a way that the film would
have been better with it in. This film is very dark and very… well, I
teased Peter the other day [saying] ‘You realize that the critics are
now going to accuse you of having made a homo-erotic masterpiece.’
[More roaring laughter.] With all of the hobbits and the bed-jumping...it’s
a little bit like Never-land, isn’t it?
[Back on the subject of the “unfilmable quality of LOTR:]
You can’t have that many characters in a film. Look at the stories you
barely get a snifter at. Faramir and his father. That’s a story you want
more time to spend on. There’s a family tragedy here that is just so
unspeakable and you want to know more about those relationships between
those two brothers and the son that is favored by a father.
You remember that marvelous line of Kipling’s. Kipling was very gung-ho
and jingoistic and very keen on WW1. You know, ‘beating the Hun’ and all
that sort of thing. He sent his 17-year old son off to the war and he
disappeared. He disappeared. He was seen by a sergeant, he’d been hit in
the face and he was making his way back to a medical facility. The
sergeant didn’t spend much time with him because the boy was crying … he
was in such pain and then he disappeared. Obviously a shell landed or
something like that. And they may have found his remains about three or
four years ago. At the end of it, about 1921 or 22, Kipling wrote a poem
that has these lines in it:
If they ask you why we died
Tell them because our fathers lied.
And that just came to mind when I saw that about Faramir.
Steven D. Greydanus:
One of the key things about Gimli’s character is his relationship with
Legolas. And the thing that makes it so poignant in the books and also
in the film is that it comes from a place where dwarves and elves had
never really gotten along. There’s a cultural antagonism between them.
And yet this dwarf and this elf become fast friends. Did this have any
personal significance for you as you were playing that role and
deploying these themes?
As a matter of fact, historically, just to correct you slightly––Dwarves
and Elves had been close at one point and then dissension had grown
between them and they’d become enormously suspicious and hostile with
each other. And indeed the only reason the dwarves showed up at the
Council of Elrond is that they don’t want to see the Elves get any
advantages out of this thing. But it’s interesting that once Gimli tries
to resolve the thing by smashing the Ring with his axe, and ends up
breaking his axe and landing flat on his back, it is from that moment he
realizes it is the power of the Ring and the power of that evil, and
he’s hooked there.
The development of the relationship between them is of course helped by
his encounter with [Galadriel] the queen of the elves. And there’s that
wonderful thing in the book where he talks about an enchantress. “If men
just set eyes upon her they fall forever under her spell.” That’s scary.
[And it] is exactly what happens. He takes one look at her and he is
completely in love with her forever. And that helps him make that bridge
with Legolas. That friendship doesn’t come immediately. It comes with
that grudging respect they develop for each other.
There is a lovely thing that in a way we couldn’t do because we have Ian
Holm’s character going off on that last boat. But in the book at the
end, [you have this] eternal and young and youthful Legolas and … this
very aged dwarf with white hair and they take him off on the boat as
well.
Jeffrey:
How much of Tolkien’s Catholic beliefs and perspective resonate with
you?
I’m burying my career so substantially in these interviews that it’s
painful. But I think that there are some questions that demand honest
answers.
I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And
if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their
civilization. That does have a real resonance with me.
I have had the ideal background for being an actor. I have always been
an outsider. I grew up in colonial Africa. And I remember in 1955, it
would have to be somewhere between July the 25th when the school holiday
started and September the 18th when the holidays ended. My father took
me down to the quayside in Dar-Es-Salaam harbor. And he pointed out a
dhow in the harbor and he said, “You see that dhow there? Twice a year
it comes down from Aden. It stops here and goes down [South]. On the way
down it's got boxes of machinery and goods. On the way back up it’s got
two or three little black boys on it. Now, those boys are slaves. And
the United Nations will not let me do anything about it.”
The conversation went on. “Look, boy. There is not going to be a World
War between Russia and the United. The next World War will be between
Islam and the West.”
This is 1955! I
said to him, “Dad, you’re nuts! The Crusades have been over for hundreds
of years!”
And he said,
“Well, I know, but militant Islam is on the rise again. And you will see
it in your lifetime.”
He’s been dead
some years now. But there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of
him and think, “God, I wish you were here, just so I could tell you that
you were right.”
What is unconscionable is that too many of your fellow journalists do
not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a jewel
it is.
How did we get the sort of real democracy, how did we get the level of
tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely
alien to you around this table, and yet you will take it and you will
think about it and you’ll say no you’re wrong because of this and this
and this. And I’ll listen and I’ll say, “Well, actually, maybe I am
wrong because of this and this.”
[He points at a female reporter and adopts an authoritarian voice, to
play a militant-Islam character:] ‘You should not be in this room.
Because your husband or your father is not hear to guide you. You could
only be here in this room with these strange men for immoral purposes.’
I mean… the abolition of slavery comes from Western democracy. True
Democracy comes form our Greco-Judeo-Christian-Western experience. If we
lose these things, then this is a catastrophe for the world.
And there is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody
wants to talk about, that we daren’t bring up because we are so cagey
about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there
is a cultural thing as well.
By 2020, 50% of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of
Muslim descent. You look and see what your founding fathers thought of
the Dutch. They are constantly looking at the rise of democracy and
Dutch values as being the very foundation of American Democracy. If by
the mid-century the bulk of Holland is Muslim—and don’t forget, coupled
with this there is this collapse of numbers ... Western Europeans are
not having any babies. The population of Germany at the end of the
century is going to be 56% of what it is now. The populations of France,
52% of what it is now. The population of Italy is going to be down 7
million people. There is a change happening in the very complexion of
Western civilization in Europe that we should think about at least and
argue about. If it just means the replacement of one genetic stock with
another genetic stock, that doesn’t matter too much. But if it involves
the replacement of Western civilization with a different civilization
with different cultural values, then it is something we really ought to
discuss—because, g**dammit, I am for dead white male culture.
You do realize in this town what I’ve been saying [is like] blasphemy…
…but we’ve got to get a bit serious. By and large our cultures and our
society are resilient enough to put up with any sort of nonsense. But if
Tolkien’s got a message, it’s that “Sometimes you’ve got to stand up and
fight for what you believe in.” He knew what he was fighting for in WW1.
[With that, he departed our appreciative and applauding table,
saying:] Try and put verbs in my sentences.
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