(Originally posted at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat.)

I've now watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring so many times it's like a form of comfort food for me. Having a three-and-a-half hour version of your favorite movie comes in handy when your wife is out of town and you only get about 15 channels that aren't Spanish or Home Shopping. Today I was watching it with the director & writer commentary track playing, and it's still a tremendously entertaining film, in part because of the incredible level of detail and love (they wouldn't have bothered with the former if they hadn't had the latter) invested into every shot by the production team. A few brief musings three of my favorite moments in the film:

1) The post-Moria mourning scene. If I had to guess, I'd say it was this sequence that made moviegoers realize they weren't just watching a great action film, but a great film, period. Most action movies gloss over the death of even the most important characters, content with someone shouting "Noooo!", then having someone else pat them on the back, toss them a cold one, say "He was a good soldier," and then it's back to ass-kicking. Here we emerge from the incredibly intense and dark underground realm of Moria into an otherworldly, blindingly white hill, the sun blazing down. The diegetic sound is removed, leaving us instead with a single mournful boy-soprano voice singing a song of grief. The individual reactions to the fall of Gandalf by each member of the Fellowship are catalogued in uncomfortably intimite close-ups: Gimli the Dwarf enraged, struggling to return to the mines and slay the orcs who brought them to this sorry pass; Boromir of Gondor, holding Gimli back, his face showing that he knows only too well how futile the seeking of vengeance would be; Sam the Hobbit, collapsing to the ground in sorrow; Merry & Pippin, clinging to each other, seeming to wonder just how culpable their silly antics were in their friend's death; Legolas the Elf, a look of stunned surprise on his face, one totally unaccustomed to seeing the death of a friend up close; Frodo, who in the words of director Peter Jackson has a look of grief on his face "so powerful that it should frighten the audience"; Aragorn the ranger, who allows himself only a moment of pure sorrow before reluctantly assuming the mantle of leadership placed upon him by his fallen friend. Boromir says of the hobbits, "Give them a moment, for pity's sake," but Aragorn insists on spurring them on, knowing that the orcs on their heels will show no pity should they catch up to the grieving fellowship. The performances are amazing, but the imagery alone--the white light, the barren hill--say almost all that needs to be said. This was when everything clicked for me, sitting there in the theater: "This isn't just great--it's a masterpiece."