"Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost. And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."
--- JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (Book VI, Chapter IX)

If I could only stop crying so I can write about what I thought of Peter Jackson's Return of the King, which I have seen twice already (and a third time waiting to happen on Monday). But, I can't seem to put my thoughts into words.

I could strip it down into great scenes and badly adapted scenes, but what's the point? In the end, I know it will be one of my favorite movies of all time. Not that I am a film buff.

That I was such a freak about LOTR will surely be one of the silly things people will remember about me. And some would probably not understand why a fantasy novel has moved me so much.

People would ask if the last film did justice to the last volume of JRRT's epic. Here's the thing, the lump in my throat and the heavy feeling in my chest that I had reading the last paragraphs of ROTK were there when the film's credits rolled to Annie Lennox's beautifully rendered end-title theme Into the West.

So here we are in a bittersweet farewell, at the end of all things, reluctant to let the journey end. But, it has.

Labels: books, tolkien