Lord of the Rings

A recent holiday afforded me space to watch the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, followed by a re-reading of Tolkien’s original books on which the films were based. These two classic works share a common thread but differ significantly in depicting the journey of Frodo and his companions in the battle for Middle Earth. It is a difficult exercise to turn a classic and well-loved book onto the screen – the different media requires words to be translated into visual form. The screen offers in background formations that which the text may take many words to describe, while much background history and poetry of the book do not lend themselves easily to the screen. Peter Jackson’s rendition is a classic in its own right, but many significant and creative aspects of the book have been omitted.

The relationship between book and movie makes for an interesting reflection, particularly for those faiths which bear a strong relationship a book. The Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic faiths are themselves grounded in texts, much of which takes the form of story. The living out of the truths of these texts is itself an act of translation from one form into another – from the written word to the lived world. The balance to be struck between faithfulness to the text and relevance to the lived world is an enduring challenge of interpretation and application, between idealism and lived realities.

The lived world is never identical to the written world, yet the truths of one can readily be applied into the other. This challenge faces not only the film producer, but all people of faith - the battle between spirit of the text and the imagery and words. Judgements must be made about the supremacy and centrality of particular episodes within the text. It is impossible to translate any book to the screen in full satisfaction of every viewer. Words evoke different images and emotions, stories and events tap into different memories for each reader. What emerges is the fruit of a dialogue between imagination and memory, literal word and figurative meaning, subject to reinterpretation after each expression. Re-reading the books helped provide contexts for particular actions and differences in the movie – the death of Saruman in the movie obviates the need to explain the purging of the shire on Frodo’s return which the book details. The omission or reshaping of particular pericopes results in loss of imagery and context for particular actions.

Whilst the film-maker seeks to make a faithful retelling of the original story in its original setting, the life of faith seeks to incarnate the spirit of the text in an entirely different context. In this enactment, some stories will hold greater sway, and those which are overlooked pose new questions and challenges which might ultimately change one’s perspective. To relive the spirit of the whole text requires interpretive cues and frameworks which enable one to live faithfully, yet tentatively towards the ideal.

Far from being a stricture to the life of faith, the presence of a book provides a continuing interpretive and reflective resource for every believer. The life of faith is ever a dialogue between text and action, image and reality. In this dynamic tension lie the seeds of reflection on actual events and frameworks for future action and a basis for reflecting on what is, and for shaping what might be.