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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), Steve Beard
(Thunderstruck), 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!
Sean Astin -
Samwise
Jeffrey Overstreet:
Compared to Sam’s part in the first and the second film, this one felt
like a marathon of emotion and torment and physical trial for you.
Sean:
[pretending to brush it off, like it was nothing] Nah!
Jeffrey:
How much of that was real?
Sean:
Yeah, that
was real. All of it. And when it wasn’t we did it again. Glad you
noticed.
It’s so funny … it’s
almost like because you are experiencing this or the first time, I have to
pretend [that it just happened.] But we’d done all that three years ago, four years ago.
It’s nice to see people noticing it and acknowledging it, and not have
to be patient … wondering what people might be seeing eventually.
Press:
I heard one critic say that … [regarding Peter Jackson’s perspective on] the
movie, at the end of the day there was only one guy who really
understood that this really wasn’t Frodo’s story, but it was Sam’s
story… and that was you. Is that right?
Sean:
[seems surprised, muses quietly:] Um… hm… critics
[laughter around the
table]
I don’t agree really
with that. To me, I was the advocate for Sam. I am the ambassador of
Sam. In my interpretation of Sam, I wanted to be strong.
Press:
But would you say it is Sam’s story, or is it the ring-bearer’s story?
Sean:
The story’s the story. I think that Frodo sacrifices more than Sam … by
degrees.
It’s probably the
hardest thing of the adaptation, really. There were tricky things
technologically to accomplish, and logistically there were a lot of
things that were a challenge. But … if you want the movie to connect
with people, on some level they have to really care about the
characters. One of the biggest challenges was dramatizing the sacrifice
of Frodo and the torment of Frodo. Short of having Elijah get addicted
to heroin or starving him for months on end … how does a serious
committed actor communicate [that idea]? [It’s the same] with Gollum who
is supposed to be the real expression of those ideas in the extreme—he
has to be animated, because you want to service that gaunt, emaciated,
tormented idea. In the writing, in the literature, you can go into these
ideas.
I think that Sam
wouldn’t have wanted to be thought of as the hero of the story. Tolkien
saw Sam as his surrogate [and] I think Peter does too. And Peter has a
New Zealand stoicism and reserve.
And Elijah … has
been the lead in the movie—he’s on the posters and he’s the ring-bearer.
They thought that … if he wasn’t more proactive, it would be
unsatisfying for people on some level. I don’t think it has to be one
over the other. I don’t think you have to choose one sort of hero.
Press:
But Sam is the one who has to live in Middle-Earth with this knowledge.
The rest of them—except for Aragorn, who becomes
the king—the rest get to go away.
Sam has to live in Middle Earth with the knowledge of the journey. Sam
goes back to Hobbiton. He’s got the burden of knowledge.
Sean:
I kinda like
what you’re saying: You say “a burden of knowledge.” If Hobbiton is a
place, an ideal, worth wanting to manifest real human life, now … it
can’t happen without some awareness of what’s going on in the real
world. It’s maybe a little bit sad that children just can’t be children
in a pure kind of world where there’s no danger and there’s no threats.
But it’s the responsibility of the mature to preserve the sanctity of a
world worth living in with that knowledge. I think Sam is the
beneficiary of his experience and he does get to survive. Part of the
punishment of longevity is having to endure loss in real life. So he has
to pass through those experiences like anybody who lives.
Andrew
Coffin:
What are Sam and Frodo fighting for?
Sean:
I think a lot of times Sam is fighting for Frodo and Frodo is fighting
to save the Shire. One of my favorite lines—a lot of people are talking
about how “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you” is one of the
great cinema lines in cinema history. But then the line that Frodo has
where he says, “We set out to save the Shire, Sam, and it has been
saved, but not for me…”, that’s a pretty powerful line.
When Elijah said that line, I, Sean, heard it with a kind of newness and
a kind of wonder. Every time he said it … even when I said it right now
… there’s almost this idea that ‘I guess that’s what Sam really was
doing.’ I don’t think Sam was really aware of that. I think Sam was
fixed on helping Frodo.
Somehow… I don’t
know if a Freudian analysis is appropriate, but I think on some deep
level, that wasn’t in the forefront of his mind, Sam knew he was doing
his duty to be there for [Frodo.] I don’t think he had … this idea of
what was really at stake. Frodo sees the vision in Galadriel’s mirror of
the scouring of the Shire. Sam doesn’t see that.
SDG:
What is it about the Shire, about hobbits in particular, and about
Samwise especially that makes this such an attractive ideal that is so
different from the more traditional idea of the hero?
Sean:
Well, human achievement is relative.
We got to meet Sir
Edmund Hilary [who climbed Mount Everest] on the movie. He came to visit
Peter. He’s a famous New Zealand figure who is on the New Zealand five
dollar bill. He came to the set and I shook his hand. And I thought,
‘Well, if this towering mammoth of a man couldn’t walk up that mountain,
no human being could!’ He’s so huge. His achievement is measured on a
different scale of human experience.
But every individual human being
has to find some way to survive and thrive in the world, and so
achievement has to be relative to what the strengths and capacity of
every individual is. And the success of anybody’s figuring out how to
live a good life isn’t diminished because Edmund Hilary got to walk to the top
of Everest. So the fact that this movie says “The smallest of us can
achieve what the greatest of us cannot” is kind of a cool idea.
Somebody asked me,
‘What cartoon figure do you identify with?’ I might have said ‘The
Tasmanian Devil’ or any one of a number of things throughout my life.
But I saw a little clip of ‘Peanuts’ while I was channel-surfing the
news last night, so I just said ‘Charlie Brown.’ I think if I can see
myself as Charlie Brown, then I think it’s pretty easy for anybody to
see themselves as a Hobbit. In a world where you never know when the
next terrorist event is going to hit… it’s so hard to have any
significant impact or control of what’s going on on the face of the
earth right now in any positive way. You can write a song, you can write
a poem, you can build a building. But what’s really going to change the
face of the earth right now is a collection of tens or hundreds of
millions of simple individuals leading good lives. I think this movie
amplifies that idea.
Press:
How do you conceptualize Sam’s relationship with Frodo? Are there any
relationships in your life that you can project [onto that]—a brother,
best friend, caretaker, mentor? Who was Frodo to Sam?
Sean:
The prism that I looked at the relationship through was what Peter said
to me in my first in-person audition with him. He told me about the
British army in the first world war. These officers would have
assigned to them an enlisted attendant or aid, and how those “batmen,” as
they were referred to, were characterized by
their loyalty and their bravery and their sense of duty. On some primal
level, I just understood that. I really understood that.
Being deferential to ‘Mr. Frodo’ was very comfortable for me, and I sort
of attribute it to working people. The idea of being polite and serving
others is one that is really ennobling to the spirit. Those ideas are
what I gravitated to.
If I’m really honest
with myself … I’ve been disappointed in myself and my own inability to
be more like Sam with my friends. I don’t know if I can in order to
survive, in order to be a good husband and a good father and have a
career. I try, in moments, to manifest the better angel of my nature
with my friends, but I’m not as good a friend to my friends as
Sam. It’s a little bit hard to be the sort of emblem, to portray the
character as an emblem for those things, and to know in my own life that
I can’t. Or maybe, if I can, it’s going to be somewhere in my future
when I’m more mature.
Press:
Sam and Frodo are buddies. Why does Sam call Frodo ‘Mr. Frodo’?
Sean:
Basically, Sam’s father worked for Frodo’s uncle as a gardener.
Have you ever had a
gardener? There is an amazing kind of reciprocity and mutual respect
when you don’t know how to cultivate your own soil. You want to walk out
and look at a nice garden and when somebody’s doing that for you, you
tend to appreciate them. But there’s something about it—Does the
gardener just walk in the door? Does the gardener just walk in the
house? No. There’s something about when [a person] tends the land for
somebody … it’s class-based. There’s some feudal inheritance there. The
lords of the land figure out the economics of it, but it’s the peasants,
it’s the serfs who work the land.
So, how do they
relate to each other? Hobbits are not people of letters, really. They
look askance at Bilbo’s writings and the fact that he’s tucked away in
his hole reading books and thinking about the big world.
I played Rudy [in
the film Rudy] who was this working class hero. [But] I come from
this bizarre hybrid of the acting class in America. It’s an interesting
tradition. If you’re working in television or films, you make more money
than almost anybody in society except the barons and the corporate
titans and those sorts of people. You make more money than 99% of the
rest of society, but you’re not part of the intelligentsia necessarily.
It’s an interesting thing to come from that world as a second generation
performer. I feel a kinship. I married a girl whose dad was a
firefighter and my mom married a guy who is a soldier. We weren’t smart
enough to be ambitious and strategic about our relationships. We like
the Rockwellian idea of America.
That working class
ideal is alive in the spirit Sam. And to call [Frodo] “Mister” is a sign
of respect, but it’s not something that puts him necessarily in a sort
of subjugated role, because there is mutual respect. The key is mutual
respect.
So Mr. Frodo shows
that Sam has the dignity of himself…
[Elijah Wood has
just entered the room and crept up behind Sean Astin. He interrupts:]
Wood:
You’re my manservant, and you know it!
[laughter breaks out
as Sean looks astonished]
Wood:
So stop yakkin’ off.
[Sean gets up and
embraces him (in a rather subservient and humble way) as the press
applaud the unexpected conclusion of the interview.]
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