Somewhere buried in the hours of extended features in the
Lord of the Rings box set, director Peter Jackson says that he hopes his films
will inspire 9-year-old boys to become filmmakers, just as he was inspired at
that age by the original King Kong (no wonder he went on to remake it).
Well, I may not be 9 or a boy, but The Lord of the Rings was
the one film that made me think seriously about working in film. My sister and
best friend and I have watched LOTR hundreds of times. We crack up at Pippin’s “second
breakfast? Elevensies?” inquiry, and love turning to each other and saying “I
can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” And ever since my 14-year-old
self marveled at the “how” of the scale models of Helm’s Deep and Andy Serkis’s
motion-capture suit, I have wanted to know the “why” of films. Now, at least
for this trilogy, I have an answer.
Last week, the University of Copenhagen celebrated Professor
Torben Grodal’s 70th birthday with a hyggelig symposium (in typical academic fashion). David Bordwell
gave a pitch perfect presentation on mystery in 1940s Hollywood in his honor,
and fellow Danish colleagues critiqued some of Grodal’s most influential
articles. As a major player in cognitive and evolutionary film theory, Torben has
published 3 or 4 articles consistently, each
year, since 1968. Talk about prolific.
One of these recent articles, called “Tapping into Our
Tribal Heritage: The Lord of the Rings and Brain Evolution” (available
here) is especially resonant for me, because it proclaims that The Lord of
the Rings film trilogy is basically the best thing ever (at least for evolutionary
film theorists). He argues that the trilogy activates and uses the seven major
emotional systems as its narrative and emotional core: the anger-aggression
system, the fear system, the sexual lust system, the care-and-bonding system,
the panic system, the play system, and the seeking system.
At its most powerful center is fear – in the form of a huge
eye, Sauron. In the face of that evil eye comes an epic narrative about male
bonding, adventure, heroism, fear, reward, and fantasy. Grodal writes, “a
central motor of the fascination of the trilogy is that it evokes basic
mammalian emotional systems which produce strong interest in salient scenes.” I
think he’s right; it’s a combination of fascination and emotion that raises our
experience to something innate and instinctual. We care deeply about the
characters, while we simultaneously admire them for being braver than we could
ever be.
So, again, cinema leaves its mark on me. It’s great to know
that there’s a reason why I don’t get sick of LOTR after the 356th viewing!