Boy Movies #36

A lot has happened, or: the Lord of the Rings issue

You’re reading Boy Movies. Today, as this newsletter’s Blockbuster Month extravaganza rages on, I’m ignoring the (correct, sensible) urge to discuss something topical and/or even remotely relevant, as well as all the wonderful suggestions I received from friends when I asked them what I should write about this week. Sorry and thank you, everyone. I love you!

Here at the end of all things

Don Draper was onto something when he said a lot has happened. A lot has happened — to him, and in general, and always, but especially lately. For me, for you, for the world. If you’ve been physically near me in person (either because you chose to hang out with me or just because you, like, happened to be sitting at the table next to me at brunch; I’m a loud talker) or spoken with me at all in the past month, you might already know that my definition of “a lot” genuinely does mean “a lot.” I won’t get into specifics, but I will say that the line I’ve been spouting off to friends over the past week or so has been, “I’m truly on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” (I’m fine, I swear.) I generally like to throw in a laugh after I say that. Not because I think of mental health as a joke (BetterHelp I will do ads for you please just say the word), but because it’s such a funny little human thing to feel like your brain is constantly a Mission: Impossible bomb’s amount of time away from oozing out of your ears and continue slogging through anyway. A lot has happened, and still we must clock into work. A lot has happened, and still there is laundry.

It’s hot in New York. It’s so hot that it’s all anyone can talk about. We’re in the throes of a wretchedly airless summer; I’ve spent a lot of time idly concerned about whether the air quality is safe or if I should further inflate my electric bill by holing up in the AC until November. This past weekend, I ended up in a brief, awkward dance of hands with another girl in a movie theater bathroom as we both reached for the only working soap dispenser at the same time. We needlessly exchanged apologies and then had a laugh about it, as women are wont to do. “What a fun time we’re having in here,” I joked. “Better than whatever’s going on outside,” she said sagely. I, drenched head to toe in sweat after the short walk from the train platform to the theater, could not disagree. It’s hot. Hot and humid and exhausting and weird. A lot has happened, and still we who resign ourselves to this life must deal with the oppressive heat of a New York City summer.

All of this is to say that I’ve been thinking about the Lord of the Rings movies recently. Maybe because I rewatched two out of three with my friends while on vacation a few weeks ago (we didn’t have time for Return of the King but I came home and promptly set aside four hours to watch the extended edition on my own, don’t worry; a lot has happened, and yet we must always make time to watch the entirety of Return of the King), or maybe because there’s something about being stuck in the emotional trenches that reminds me of Lord of the Rings.

We talk a lot about how spectacular these movies still look after twenty years, because they do, in a way that astonishes me anew every time. They make most of the big blockbusters we get these days look like, forgive me, dog doody. Marvel movies increasingly seem cobbled together using only school glue and a dream. And not to invoke Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One in an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, but for a film that looked relatively fantastic on the IMAX screen, even they couldn’t figure out how to make Tom Cruise’s face look the same in each scene. Visually, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is seamless, and its seamlessness makes it timeless. I would argue that all three are perfect films, and that even the things about them that get mocked — Return of the King’s several endings, for example — are there to enhance the evolved viewer’s experience.

And let’s talk about those very many endings, which are not only good but also necessary. I’m far from the first person to say this, but every ending is in some way about the ways that life, no matter what, goes on, which feels central to the whole thing. One ending finds Frodo and Sam — physically and spiritually spent after their arduous journey to Mordor, the Ring destroyed and so much lost in the process — exchanging what they believe will be their final words before they burn to death. They’re rescued by their friends, of course, which leads into the second ending (the sweet, memeable Fellowship reunion), which leads into the third ending (Aragorn’s coronation: the king, returned), and the fourth (the Hobbits go back to the Shire), and the fifth (Frodo continuing the book Bilbo began), and the sixth (Frodo sailing off to the Undying Lands with Gandalf, Galadriel, and Bilbo), and finally the seventh (Sam, resigned to his heterosexual nuclear family era). Roll credits. Hello, Annie Lennox. How could anyone be mad at that? At the risk of sounding too sensitive, how could anyone even make fun of that?

There’s a certain resilience to all of Return of the King’s endings. Aragorn accepts his destiny. The Hobbits rebuild. Frodo tries to move on after the things he’s seen, after sustaining wounds that won’t heal, but comes to understand that he has to leave in order to find any sort of peace. He figures out his own way forward. That’s sort of what the Lord of the Rings is about: how to keep going even when you can’t keep going. Every time some big, frustrating event disrupts my existence, there is inevitably a point in the aftermath where I look around and am surprised to discover that the world has continued to go on all around me. Even more that I, too, am going on. It’s entirely shocking each time it happens, probably because I’m fortunate enough to not experience big, frustrating events all that often. But, like Frodo, I always manage to find a way forward. Survival, despite it all: A lot has happened, and yet!

That being said, if anyone knows of a gorgeous paradise I can sail away to with a wizard and Lydia Tár, please let me know, I could really use the time off. I promise to come back, obviously. A lot has happened, but I still have to see Barbenheimer.

• To be clear, the Lord of the Rings trilogy is tough to categorize, but my final verdict is that it falls under the boy movie umbrella while being composed of very many girl movie traits.