Lord Of The Rings - Off My Bucket-List!!!
Back when 'Lord of the Rings' movies released in 2001 - 2003, I was in India. I very vaguely recall the movie releasing in theaters. Unfortunately, I wasn't that into the world of books to have had an appreciation for anything Fantasy related. In fact, I started Harry Potter in 2002, I read the first page, thought it ridiculous. Closed the book. Never went back. I was THAT naive about fantasy literature. Thanks to my friend Sean Sonki who told me that I would appreciate LOTR movies. I LOVED them. I would watch them once every year. I usually try to watch all three the same day back-to-back so that I have the experience of transcending into the world of Middle Earth.
Everytime I watched them I regretted that I never got to watch them in the movie theatre. So I had it on my bucket-list that someday I'll get to watch the Trilogy in some movie theatre somewhere. I had no idea that that someday would be yesterday and that that some place would be Houston.
For the past month, I have been counting down to June 14th. Almost all my friends in Houston knew that I was going to watch the LOTR. Even if I were to get married, I doubt if I would have publicised it as much. Oh well, perhaps not the marriage, the engagement wouldn't have been as publicized. (I'll let the world know when I get married) :) So finally, on June 14th, my heart was beating a tad bit faster through out the day. It sort of feels AWESOME when you know that you are taking something off your bucket-list, something that is tangible but also transcends into the intangible.
I walked into the Edwards Marquee Cinemas at 6:30 and there was a queue at the counter, which was unusual for a weekday. I had booked my tickets a month in advance the perpetual procrastinator with everything in life not withstanding. After all, one may not get two chances to check an item off the bucket-list. God knows how on earth I landed in Houston around this time. Nevertheless, I was gonig to make sure I didn't miss LOTR this time around.
There were two guy dressed as the 'Black Riders'. I smiled. I walked into the movie hall with about 15 minutes to spare, but even as I was walking through the narrow corridor, I could hear the murmrous crecendo building up... The auditorium was almost full. The energy was palpable. By the time the movie started I couldn't see a single vacant seat.
The show started with the legendary LOTR director Peter Jackson saying that we were the first people in the world to watch the re-mastered version of LOTR movies, not to mention that they were extended versions too (with some cool extra scenes I had never seen before). Following Peter Jackson's revelation, there was a spontaneous applause. The avid movie goer that I am, the only other time I remember people clappping in the movie theatres in Houston is at the end of 'Inception' where to 'top does not topple' making the end pretty darn ironic and open-ended.
When the applause and hoots had died down, the movie started with Lady Galadriel's melancholic voice, "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air". I thought, "Well, this is IT". I know not, how time flew for the next 3 hours and 30 minutes. In spite of having seen LOTR so many times, the scenes were fresh and MOST spectacular. The images got ingrained in my mind all over. I was IN Middle Earth for 3 hours 30 minutes. When the movie was over at 10:30 PM, people applauded again. What a way to get something off the bucket-list.
The truth is, I had never read LOTR. Graduating from college, I decided not to read fiction anymore, unless there was good reason to. About a month ago, I realized that I could take LOTR off my bucket-list. It seemed like a good enough reason to read the Trilogy. A couple of weeks ago, I was at Church reading LOTR on my Kindle and West walked up to me and asked what I was reading. I said LOTR. He replied, "Knowing you, I am surprised, I thought you would have read it long ago". Oh well, I am sort of a late bloomer... Of course I didn't tell him that. After all, I am grateful that I get to read LOTR with quite a few years left in my tweens. :)
I am not done with LOTR yet. I am just at the point where Sam and Frodo meet Gollum. I kind of slow as I am juggling Horton, Packer and Tolkien. And my favorite character until now is Tree Beard. I fell in love with Tree Beard when he said something like, "Oh well, I don't think anything is worth saying anything unless it is worthy listening to for a long time". Tree Beard is heavenly is that he lives in a 'timeless' world and speaks for a long time. He says his name is long because he has a long history. How SO AWESOME!!! I also love Gimli, he is a man's man and a child's child. He is brave and he blushes. He bows when he greets! And he's got an AAAAxe with strong arms to wield them. You would be hard pressed to find such strength and sweetness mingled in one person.
A week ago, when I told one group of my friends (who knew LOTR forwards and backwards not to mention silmarillion), about LOTR coming back to the theatres, one of the guys said sarcastically, "Who'll want to go and see it?". Another ones rejoinder was, "Oh, Emmanuel for one...". Looking at the packed theatre, I felt vindicated. I was glad that I wasn't the only one who was crazy about the movie form of the timeless Trilogy.
At the movie theater, even though I didn't know anyone there, except for my friend Allan, there was a sense of kinship with all - a sense of being with Friends who, as C.S.Lewis says in 'Four Loves', are shoulder-to-shoulder seeing the same thing (actually, quite literally in a movie theater). Friends don't look at each other, says Lewis, they sit beside each other shoulder-to-shoulder and look at the same world, eye-to-eye. To be in the midst of such a 'transcended space' and then subtend to the view that human beings endowed with such incredible abilities to create and admire and cherish beauty, came out of chance + time + slime is such an incredible leap of faith.
If the Lord had not made the flower beautiful, where would we have gotten our ability to cherish beauty? If there weren't a Real Other world we could Transcend into someone day, how could we ever TRULY cherish our fore-transcendence into the world of Fantasy? Thank God for putting into the world fallen as it is, the abiltity to fore-transcend to experience the Beauty that awaits us the Timeless Realm of the Lord. After all, Frodo lives in the Realm of the Lord and we shall too!