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 Death and the Swift Sunrise
Tolkien did very much believe that "There is a place called 'heaven' where the good here unfinished is completed"; but the glimpse of the far green county and its swift sunrise was not death. It was the miraculous transportation from one physical place—Middle-earth—to another...
Analysis by Greg Wright
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THE RETURN OF THE KING
MONTHLY FEATURE: APRIL 2004
Death and the Swift Sunrise
This page was created on April 22, 2004
This page was last updated on
May 31, 2005
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| Death and the Swift Sunrise |
| One of the more memorable moments in The Return of the King comes in the heat of pitched battle—but it's not the hurtling energy of siege engines, the digital agility of Legolas on a mumak, or the rushing onslaught of the Rohirrim. No. It's a quiet moment behind the parapets of Minas Tirith, after the gates have been breached and as trolls hammer the portal of
the city's second circle. It's a lull prior to impending doom, and Pippin says to Gandalf, "I didn't think it would end this way."
"End?" asks a surprised Gandalf. "The journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one we all must take."
In interviews last December, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh were particularly proud of how this moment in the film plays—its timing, and its execution. Members of the religious press, of course, were pleasantly surprised to find an explicitly positive discussion of death in the movie. They asked whether the scripting was a conscious choice. "It's definitely deliberately done," said Boyens. "But what I loved is that Ian McKellan made you feel good about it."
And what are the words that Boyens and Walsh put in McKellan's mouth? The exchange between Pippin and Gandalf continues as follows:
Gandalf: The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it.
Pippin: What? Gandalf? See what?
Gandalf: White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.
Gandalf: No, no it isn't. |
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| Quite a consolation in the midst of battle. And it reflects the hopefulness of Boyens and Walsh regarding death. As they were wrapping work on The Return of the King, they witnessed the last days of friend and young Kiwi filmmaker Cameron Duncan—"watching him come to terms with the knowledge of his impending death," said Walsh. The real-life experience meshed with cinema. "I felt
very strongly," Walsh continued, that in the films death is "not a negative thing."
Leaving entirely aside the observation that death, for the enemy, is presumably not a positive thing, how is death portrayed in Jackson's films? |
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| The Death of Boromir
The only principal character to die in The Fellowship of the Ring is Boromir of Gondor. From the Council of Elrond on, it's clear that Boromir is the Fellowship's weakest link. At the Council, it is decided that the Ring should be destroyed. "If this is indeed the will of the council," says Boromir, "then Gondor will see it done." Yet Boromir submits to the decision begrudgingly. Ascending the Redhorn Gate, Boromir returns Frodo's dropped Ring, rather
unconvincingly declaring, "As you wish. I care not." In the extended version, Gandalf warns Frodo as they approach Moria: "You must be careful now. Evil will be drawn to you from outside the Fellowship. And, I fear, from within." At that moment, Boromir brushes ominously past them. And in Lorien, Galadriel tells Frodo, "The Fellowship is breaking. It has already begun. He will try to take the Ring. You know of whom I speak. One by one
it will destroy them all." Boromir himself perceives the accusing insight of the far-seeing Lady of the Mirror.
And at the last, on Amon Hen, Boromir finally does confront Frodo, losing his self-control and attempting to take the Ring by force. But somehow, our sympathies are with Boromir. We know, of course, that we would probably be no more likely than Boromir to resist the Ring. There's more to it than that, though: Boromir redeems himself with his valiant defense of Merry and Pippin, and his death is perhaps the most moving moment in the film. "Frodo, where is Frodo?" the dying Boromir asks
of Aragorn.
Aragorn: I let Frodo go.
Boromir: Then you did what I could not. I tried to take the Ring from him.
Aragorn: The Ring is beyond our reach now.
Boromir: Forgive me, I did not see it. I have failed you all.
Aragorn: No, Boromir, you fought bravely! You have kept your honor.
As he dies, Boromir proves not only a loyal subject—"I would have followed you my brother, my captain, my king!"—he is also an unwitting agent of Providence, being precisely the goad which Frodo needs to forsake the Fellowship. For Boromir, death is heroic; it is redemptive, gallant and noble. Not a negative thing in the least, for a warrior. |
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The Death of Haldir
None of the principal characters, of course, dies in The Two Towers. Jackson, Walsh and Boyens go to great lengths, however, to put Haldir in harm's way at Helm's Deep. Elsewhere I've documented the logistical difficulties of getting an Elf of Lorien to the climactic battle of the second film. Here, it's sufficient to point out that such temporal and geographical gymnastics herald the significance of
Haldir's presence.
It's interesting that the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring gives us a little more time with Haldir in Lórien. He graciously welcomes Legolas, acknowledging his father Thranduil, and greets Aragorn as a known traveler. Yet there's still precious little screen time for Haldir—so when he shows up at Helm's Deep in The Two Towers, we almost expect to see him wearing one of the red shirts from Star Trek. Why then are we so moved by his almost predictable death?
Part of the reason is what Elves represent in Jackson's films. "One of the things that's in Tolkien's book too," Jackson has remarked, "is this feeling that the elves are this perfect race. They're intelligent, they're sophisticatedc they're spiritual. If you have the elves in charge of the world, there will be no wars, there will be no hatred." Whether we theoretically agree with Jackson's assessment of Tolkien's elves or not, the sense of them that Jackson describes certainly comes
across in his films. So we naturally grieve at the loss of something so noble and pure.
Jackson stacks the deck, too, by placing women and children in jeopardy at Helm's Deep—and the extended edition ups the ante with extra shots of the distraught and frightened. Tension builds, and our emotions are on edge.
But what's the significance of Haldir's death, in the context of the film? It's perhaps best described by the text which accompanies the trailer for The Return of the King: "There can be no triumph without loss, no victory without suffering, no freedom without sacrifice." Haldir's death is loss, suffering and sacrifice. But we know that on the other side of the balance sheet there's triumph, victory and freedom: not a negative thing at all, in the big picture.
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The "Death" of Frodo
Oddly enough, some of this goes akimbo in The Return of the King—not in a bad way, really, just a rather strange one. In the death of Théoden we do, after all, get affirmation of the lessons learned from the previous films: the redemptive power of valorous sacrifice, and the acknowledgement of victory on the other side.
But the denouement, for Jackson, is about something surprisingly different. In interviews last December, Jackson remarked that he "looked upon the ending" (Frodo's departure at the Grey Havens) as Tolkien's "metaphor" for "somebody's death." And Jackson "tried to honor that. We tried to give it that sense of sadness. I feel it's extremely poignant that Frodo effectively is ultimately killed at the end of the story; I mean, he does ultimately die in the film; he can't live. And,
yeah—it just makes it very sad."
The irony here is twofold: first, that Jackson is somehow saddened by the whole thing, while his creative partners Boyens and Walsh find it rather hopeful. "I feel that something lifts from Frodo," said Walsh, "when he turns and looks back at the hobbits."
But the real kicker is that the stirring description of death which Boyens and Walsh provide for Gandalf, that line which also fueled their Oscar-winning song—"White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise"—is taken from the very passage in which Tolkien describes Frodo's departure from the Grey Havens. |
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Tolkien did very much believe that "There is a place called 'heaven' where the good here unfinished is completed"; but the glimpse of the far green county and its swift sunrise was not death. It was the miraculous transportation from one physical place—Middle-earth—to another. Frodo was not passing from this world into death, he was sailing via the Straight Road on to Aman, a mystical but very physical place.
It's doubtful that, for Tolkien, this was even a metaphor for purgatory, much less death. It does serve, however, as a useful metaphor for what Boyens and Walsh see in death, if not for what Jackson sees.
But would Tolkien have agreed, in accord with the implication of the cinema's Gandalf, that death is a positive thing in general? Not in Middle-earth. In "The Dialogue of Finrod and Andreth," the human plight is clearly articulated. Death is not a release, nor a "going home." It's a grave evil, because—in Middle-earth, as in our world—the original divine design has been marred. Men are spiritually lost. For Tolkien, Middle-earth offered no release in death; the only honorable course
was to live well and die well, and hope for nothing more. The architect of Middle-earth knew that the answer lay in the future, in our own world: it is faith, and faith in a Christian hope, a hope that does not disappoint—hope in the body and blood of the resurrected Jesus Christ.
"There is a nice symmetry in this: Death initially came by a man, and resurrection from death came by a man. Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ." (I Corinthians 15:21-22, The Message) |
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