Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Keepers

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the world of Russian cinema and also to… Middle Earth? Yes, let’s bask in the glory of “Khraniteli” AKA “The Keepers” AKA that 1991 Leningrad Television adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring.” (originally published 8/13/2021)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. This is Rob Lamb. Hey,
there's a lot of Lord of the Rings in the
air once more. We've got that new season of The
Rings of Power out now. And for my own part,
I just finished rewatching nineteen seventy eight The Lord of
the Rings with my son, and we also rewatched the
old animated Hobbit and the old animated Return of the King.

(00:30):
Those are from the years nineteen seventy seven and nineteen eighty.
But hey, this one is a lot of fun. This
is an episode Joe and I did a while back,
because we're talking about the Keepers. This is a Russian adaptation,
a Russian TV adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring
from nineteen ninety one. You can find places to stream this.

(00:52):
I'm not sure offhand of it's had a more official release,
but it is out there. You can breathe it in.
It is. It is fascinating because, as we'll get into,
like the pacing is rather interesting. A lot of time
is devoted to things like Tom Bombadil, which is great,
big Tom Bombadill fans here, but at the expense of
what else, I don't know. It's got some nice synth

(01:14):
music in places, and the ring Raiths look really cool.
So without further ado, let's dive right into the keepers.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind, A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're doing Lord
of the Rings. We're entering the Tolken verse for Weird
House Cinema. Now, I assume you are immediately thinking, Okay,
the Peter Jackson epic series, you know, the New Zealand Journey.
Of course, that's not what we're doing, because you know,
we're not going to go with that mainstream that we
did recently do Deep Blue cy But no, no, no, no,

(01:59):
we're not doing that. You know what we're doing, of course,
it is the nineteen seventy eight Ralph Bakshi animated version
of the Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
And feeling a little more obscure, right it makes sense.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
No, I'm just kidding. No, we're not doing that. Of course,
what we're actually doing is the nineteen eighty Return of
the King.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh yeah, where there's a whip, there's a way of course.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
No, actually I'm kidding. We're not doing that. The adaptation
of Lord of the Rings we're doing today is the
nineteen ninety one Soviet made for TV production Kronatelli, which
translates directly as Keepers, which was made for the Leningrad
TV station in nineteen ninety one as the Soviet Union
was collapsing. And wow, this is one of the most

(02:40):
amazing films I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
It is so much fun. This what it recently emerged? Right,
It seems like you've've certainly been making the rounds recently.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
It was thought lost for like thirty years until I
think it was just earlier this year, maybe around April
of twenty one, that the TV station that Leningrad TV
turned into I think it's called Channel five or five
TV now. I believe they were responsible for locating the
originals and publishing it to the internet. I think they

(03:13):
just put it up on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I think I read that one of their employees
wandered down into the basement and won the lost footage
in a game of riddles for a subterranean creature, right.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Uh huh. And so and also some beautiful Soul was
kind enough to create some English subtitles, which is what
we're going to have to be working off of here.
The original was of course in Russian, and the best
we can do is whatever these user generated subtitles are.
But I don't know. I got a good feeling from them.
I trust them. I feel like they're mostly accurate.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yeah, I mean, we know the source material and this
film will discuss the changes, but it's mostly accurate to
the source material. It's honorable to the source material, with
some caveats, and you get some weird characters thrown in,
like I had a lot of crucifixes thrown into my
my subtitles, but it was still there were decent subtitles.

(04:08):
So if I'll go ahead and put this out there
that if you want to find these YouTube links that
we're discussing here, I'll include them on the blog post
for this episode at samooda music dot com. That's se
m U t A m U s C dot com.
That's just a blog I have, but it's the only
place I can put stuff up like this right now,
So go there if you want to see it, or

(04:29):
just go look it up on YouTube. Doesn't matter to
me as long as you see it and hear it
and feel it.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Now, if you are hoping to encounter shelob or see
the battle for Minas Tirith, or see the Hobbits go
into Mordoor or anything like that. Unfortunately, that is not
going to happen in this part of the story because
if you're familiar with the arc of Lord of the Rings,
you know it was originally published as one gigantic novel,
but broken into three volumes. You had Fellowship of the

(04:56):
Ring and then The Two Towers and then Return of
the King. This movie adaptation is just the first third,
is just the Fellowship of the Ring.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Right, And I have to say, they really, they really
let it breathe. You know, they spend they spend two
solid hours. They cut out some stuff that you might
not expect them to cut out.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Very strange choices about pacing and how to allocate the
plot into the two hours they had, Right.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
But then they also they show a lot of love
for sections of the book that are traditionally cut out
of all adaptations, or at least all that I'm familiar with.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yes, so one of the most notable things about Kronatelly
is that it includes Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs,
which is so exciting to me.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yes, Yes. I was excited for this as well because
I have recently my son and I have recently started
listening to the audio book of the Fellowship of the
Rings and we just finished this section with the Barrow
Whites and Tom Bombadill, and so he's had a lot
of thoughts about it, and like I was telling him
about about all this, and I was like, you know,

(06:02):
most most film adaptations cut Tom Bombadil out. And he's like, no,
Tom Bombadil is an important character. I mean, not that
he would know, yes, right, made it that far into
the book. At this point, he seems very important because
he's essentially like a nature god who showed up and
saved everybody twice.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
I think Tom Bombadil will come off as especially essential
and uncutable to people who have listened to the audiobook
narrated by Rob Nglis, who does the you know, his
own wonderful renditions of the songs that Tolkien only wrote
the lyrics to. You know, there isn't music in the books,
so but Rob Engliss's interpretation of the melodies for the
Tom Bombadil songs is actually quite haunting and interesting. Yeah, Hey,

(06:43):
dol Mary dol ring a Dingadillo.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, yeah, like the lyrics are fun.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Like.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
One of the things about reading Tolkien is, of course
you get a lot of songs, and if you're reading
them to yourself, you don't. I find myself kind of
reading quickly through the especially the multi page song lyrics.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
And then if I'm reading them aloud, say to my son,
as we did with the Hobbit, I'm not I'm I'm
fairly musically inclined, but not enough to wear. I can
just randomly sing these lyrics to a tune. So the
audiobook is is a real treasure when it comes to
these songs, because he does a Yeah, he does a
great job bringing them to life, and and they even
you can kind of get earwormed by Tom bombadill find

(07:23):
yourself humming this song through the rest of your day.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
I listened to part of these audio books on an airplane,
and the next day I was wandering around London in
a in a fog of jet lag, just singing no, no, no, no,
He's a merry felloo. Yeah, but it was bright as
jacket is and his boots are yeah hello, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
A lot of lyrics about just how merry he is
and what he is wearing and then.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
The rhythm daughter about goldberry, goldberry, Ye, fatty lumpkin, all
about the ponies. Yeah, I love a song about a pony.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah. So it's really good stuff. And yeah, and when
you're reading Lord of the Rings, it is a weird
and counter because he's just this merry, godlike and mysterious character.
Like there's still scholarly articles that are that are trying
to tear apart exactly what Tom is and what he
you know, what he descends from in you know, the

(08:14):
actual annals of mythology. And then the barrel Whites are
just super creepy as well. They are these when you
get into the Morn of the lore, there are these
tortured spirits that have fled the witch kingdom of Angmar
and hid in the ancient bodies of human warriors that
were buried during the first Age of the Sun. And
so they're just like will crushing darkness. And we have

(08:37):
that wonderful creepy scene where the Hobbits wake up in
the barrow mounds and they're there, they've been laid out
and covered in the gold of the dead. Its fabulous stuff.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
But if I were doing an adaptation where I was
trying to render a barrow white, I would not have
thought to dress him as a creepy clown. Yes, And
so the barrel white, I think in this movie I
could be missed, but I believe is played by a woman,
but is voiced by like a like a raspy, deep
voiced man, and the person playing the barrow white is

(09:08):
dressed in full like mime makeup or like I don't
know what you call that classic clown makeup that goes like,
you know, the old style.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, it is. It is not something I would have
chosen for the barrow white scenes.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
They're very creepy.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
It's creepy, but in a way that is perhaps a
little off brand. I don't know, But I don't know.
There's just one detail in the film. There's other stuff
that works a lot better, and I guess, I don't know,
maybe given the budget here, this was a good choice.
Hard to say, I guess one of the problems. And
I'd be interested to hear if you say about this.

(09:42):
Like one thing that I've read about the exclusion of
the barrow white scene from other adaptations is that not
only is there pacing issue, not only is this a
whole encounter that can be easily removed. But potentially if
you put the Barrel Whites on screen, they might be
confused with the Black Riders, oh yeah, the nine Yeah,
and or even if you're not confused with them, they

(10:06):
might take some of the heat away from them. And
so if you take them out, the Ring Raths remain
the primary supernatural antagonist in this phase of the book.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
I can see that. I mean, the other main criticism
that I've encountered, and I know we've talked about this before.
I think what Peter Jackson said is the reason Tom
Bombadil and the Barrow Downs and all that is not
in his version of the movie at all, is that
it does not advance the plot, like you can cut
it out and nothing is really changed.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah. The only criticism I've seen of that is people say, well,
this is where the Hobbits get their initial weapons from
the trove of the Barrel Whites. You know, Tom Bombadil
picks stuff out for them, and without that, you just
have Strider randomly handing out Hobbit sized weapons later on
in the film. But I don't know, I think that's
that's a small, small, small point to harp on.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
But This is interesting because it leads to one of
the major differences in storytelling structure between this adaptation of
Fellowship and say Peter Jackson's. I mean, it's funny in
many ways to compare them.

Speaker 4 (11:09):
Though.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Another thing that's funny is that they only came out
about ten years apart. Yeah, if you can fit that
in your brain.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Ten years and however many millions and millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's also so. The Peter Jackson movies
were a multimillion dollar production, and from what I can
tell I was reading. Actually, there's a very good article
in Variety about the production of Chronatelli that interviews some
of the actors who were originally involved in it. They're
still alive, still working. They talked to Georgi Steel, who

(11:40):
played Bilbo Baggins in this production, who I think is
like eighty nine now or something. He's still acting and
he's a great actor, by the way. I mean. One
of the funny things about this is, despite how threadbear
the production is a lot of the actors in it
are legends of the Leningrad Saint Petersburg theater scene.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah, and it shines through playing Bilbo is great. The
actor playing Gandalf is great. Some of the others I
have notes on, but those two in particular are wonderful.
And yeah, don't dismiss this title on the acting love.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, some of the acting may come off a little weird,
especially if you have certain expectations for some of these characters.
But there are a lot of talented people involved in this.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Well, I've got thoughts about that. I'm going to get
two in a second, but sorry, I started to introduce
this article and then I didn't fully put it out there.
So it's an article in Variety by Rebecca Davis called
Inside the Soviet Lord of the Rings cast details their
epic TV movie Uncovered after thirty years I was published
a few months ago, I think, And this is a
really great article, like I said, because it manages to

(12:44):
get a number of people who were actually involved in
this obscure production on the record to explain what was
going on. And so one of the things emphasized by
several actors here is that this movie had essentially no
budget at all. It was made I think over the
course of an estimated nine hours total of shooting that
took place in a few sessions in less than a week. So,

(13:07):
you know, one of the actors was explaining that they
know they'd sort of come together. They'd rehearse a scene
very quickly, and then they just shoot it and they
do no second takes, and then they just move on
to the next thing. And like all of the stuff
was sourced from just what was lying around the Leningrad
TV stations. With the costumes, the sets, the props, almost
all of them were just repurposed whatever they could borrow

(13:29):
from other previous productions. I think maybe the most complex
things we get in terms of filmmaking are the shots
of people riding horses out in the snow, and so
you get several shots of that that are supposed to
be the nine the Ring Raiths who were hunting the Ring,
and then you also get some shots of the Hobbits
riding ponies out in the snow. And one of the actors,

(13:53):
i think Sergei Shelganov, who played Mary brandy Buck, talks
about how he'd never ridden a horse before shooting that
scene and never he's never ridden a horse since, and
it was the coldest he's ever been.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, there is one thing we should point out about
this film is that there is there is intense, an
intense feeling of winter in this and in fact, there's
a point in the film where Gandalf tells, I think
he's telling Frodo, right, He says, Frodo, winter is coming back.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
Yeah. They keep saying winter is coming over and over.
This also long predates the Germ and it's a it's
an interesting cultural adaptation of Lord of the Rings because
you know, so Lord of the Rings is very much
about weather and landscape and and and traveling across the
terrain and experiencing nature as you're on a hard journey,

(14:42):
but winter and snow don't play that big of a
I mean, the snow is a big part of their
attempt to get over the Karadhras when they're you know,
trying to go over the mountains, and then they fail
doing that and have to go back down into the
minds of Moria. But overall, I don't recall snow being
a big part of the journey in the books. No,
But hey, you know that you got to adapt to
the local terrain, so if you need to shoot locally,

(15:03):
that's what you're doing. But then the other thing is
this this film actually does while it's mostly just shooting
actors doing a first take of a scene on a
set at this Leningrad TV station or maybe at some
other locations around town. I'm not sure. They They actually
do have a couple of scenes that have special effects
in them. For example, there is one scene where the

(15:25):
four Hobbits are dining at the house of Tom Bombadil
and Goldberry, and they recast Bombadill and Goldberry as giants.
You know that they're like not just a little bit
bigger than the Hobbits, but they're like enormous compared to them.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, it's which I don't think they're that big in
the book there, like he's supposed to be kind of shortish,
actually stout but short. But yeah, they're titans in this.
But it's an impressive shot. That's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Some of the articles have not agreed with you there,
but I don't know, I bought it. I was there.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
I mean, taking into account the zero budget. Yeah, and
also just kind of the charm of the production, like
there is there is this made for television like decayed
quality h charm to it, and yeah, you know you
don't want to see a perfect special effect in that.
And then also if I'm going to be more critical there.

(16:18):
There are far lousier special effects in this film, like
that's not the one to really, that's not the hill
to die on, the giant tom bomba Delf scene.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, I would say on the on the worst side
of the visual effects present. There's one thing where it
seems like sometimes that we're trying to evoke a sense
of mystery or kind of I don't know, the the
general visual obscurity of fantasy and the deep past by
doing what looks like smearing the camera lens with the
translucent gel of some sort. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, that's something we've seen. I've seen this in other
productions as well, but they're they're definitely doing it here.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
Oh but sorry, I wanted to come back to something
we brought up a minute ago, which is that, you know,
I want to be generous to this, but but I
think it is clear that a lot of the performances,
the acting performances in this are way off base. They're
just bizarre renditions of these now well known and now
beloved characters, despite the fact that a lot of the

(17:14):
actors in this production are actually great actors of the
stage at least, you know, people who have done a
lot of work before and since in the Leningrad Saint
Petersburg theater scene, and they're highly trained, well respected actors,
So what's going on here? I think actually a lot
of the bizarre performances are a result of confusion about

(17:36):
the characterizations themselves, Like something is getting lost in translation
of how to understand what these characters' personalities are and
how we should feel about them. So I would say
one of the big examples is, again I don't want
to single him out because I think he's I think
he's actually a good actor. But the actor who plays
fro Do makes some really strang like in this movie,

(18:00):
especially towards the beginning, is this insufferable alfredy Newman brat,
Like he looks like he should be wearing a sailor
suit and have a lollipop in his mouth.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah. Absolutely, they are shades of got a hint of
Alan Cumming, a hint of mister Bean, Yeah, hint of
pee Wee Herman.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Yeah, mister Bean and Pee Wee Herman. Absolutely, but with
like a red wig on and a wet mouth.

Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah he's so. I mean Frodo and Bilbo too. You know,
there are certainly times where they're written and they come
off as kind of, you know, wimpy and not up
for the journey, and they have to overcome that. But man,
this fro Do, like he has this one line where
at least it was translated as he's talking to Gandolf
and he says, you've spoken for so long it makes
me hungry. And I was like, oh my god, you're

(18:50):
not going to get out of the shire alive. Frodo.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, I know, the worst, but yeah, yeah, what are
his epithets? Frodo worst heart, Frodo, Frodo underwhelm, Frodo underwhelm,
Frodo cries a lot, Frodo lollymouth.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
But even this actor is still around, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
I think so. At least one of the articles I
was reading about it mentioned something about him, though I
don't think he was interviewed. But yeah, again, I don't
want to chalk that up to like the actor being
a bad actor. I would say instead, we now, I think,
especially since the Peter Jackson movies, we have a more
cemented idea of how each of these characters should be received.

(19:28):
What's sort of the canon appearance and tone for their
representation on screen and at the time and place this
was being made. I think something was just getting lost
because even though there has for a long time been
great love for Tolkien's works in Russia and even in
the Soviet Union, there's obviously some difficulty in the adaptation.

(19:49):
You know, there's a translation process going on, and it's
not even always a totally like a free and organic
translation process.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah. So, on that note, let's just start with the obvious.
The title Kronatelly. What does this mean? Well, I believe
it translates from Russian as the keepers and as in
like the keepers or the guardians of the Ring. Incidentally,
this is also the translated title for the Russian release
of the two thousand and nine Zack Snyder adaptation of Watchmen.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Oh, Chronatellio, Okay, I see yeah yah.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
So if you do start doing a search for Chronatelly
or for the actual cyrillic of that, you'll suddenly get
all these pictures of Watchmen, and you may find yourself confused.
You think I'm looking for Lord of the Rings and
instead here is a you know Borshakh.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Wait a minute, though, so how do so? Obviously the
Peter Jackson movies, once those were made, were actually released
in Russia, what do they call the Fellowship there.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I believe the title in Russian is Brastavo Kortsa, which
means Brotherhood of the Ring.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Oh okay, that seems like a fairly faithful rendition.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah yeah. Now, as for Russian translations of the book itself,
this is all very interesting and I think is also
something to keep in mind when we're talking about like,
how are these characters framed, et cetera. Fellowship of the
Ring has an interesting history in Russia. It was originally
published in the West, of course, in nineteen fifty four,
and so you know, naturally English reading Russians could have

(21:13):
conceivably read it as early as that, but the first
Russian translation didn't occur till nineteen sixty six, a short
retelling that didn't see the light of publication until nineteen ninety.
And the translation we see in the film here is
it's apparently based on a nineteen eighty two translation that
was a bridge to comply with Soviet censorship.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
Okay, so what we're getting is a Leningrad TV teleplay
adaptation of a censored and abridged translation of the original novel.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Right right, And for a while this was there have
been subsequent translations in Russian of The Lord of the Rings,
but for the longest this was the only official version
you could get in the r Now, according to Mark Hooker,

(22:10):
the author of Tolkien Through Russian Eyes, cited in Alan
Juhas's excellent New York Times article on this film, the
major stalling points stalling, not Stalin points. The stalling points
that the hang ups surrounding the original text for the
Soviet censors were perceived quote religious themes or the depiction

(22:31):
of desperate Western allies uniting against a sinister power from
the east.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Yeah, you can see how the Soviet censors might not
have been keen on a book that's about allies coming
together to fight an empire in the East.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah. So, I mean, so to say the least, Russia
has a different history with Lord of the Rings compared
to other parts of the world, certainly compared to England
and America. The work itself, of course, has an appeal
that defies borders and nationalities, though based in the mythology
and literatures that Tolkien himself was most familiar with, and
these these include mostly non Russian and Slavic influences. Apparent

(23:08):
I was reading Tolkien had tried to learn Russian at
one point and it didn't take. Here's what he had
to say in one of his letters, quote, I love music,
but have no aptitude for it. Slavonic languages are for
me almost in the same category. I've had to go
at many tongues in my time, but I am in
no ordinary sense of linguist, and the time I once
spent on trying to learn Serbian and Russian have left

(23:29):
me with no practical results, only a strong impression of
the structure and word aesthetic.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, that seems correct. I mean, based on my experience
with Tolkien, it seems like most of the language and
mythology that he tends to draw from is what you
would say. I think mainly like Northern Europeans, sort of
like Scandinavian, Germanic and Celtic.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's my understanding as well. So we
have that going on, and then we have this added
layer of censorship state suspicion of the work, and it's
been sieminglarly longer lasting mixes of both the rich enthusiasm
for Tolkien. I was reading that Moscow has or had
a Tolkien museum of sorts. The photos were not I

(24:13):
mean they looked fun. It looked fun, but it also
looked kind of small but still dedicated Tolkien Museum in Moscow.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
Yeah. Now, one thing that I'm sure of, though I
don't know if this particular question was ever asked to him,
I think other similar questions were put to him. I
know that Tolkien strenuously objected to any attempt to read
Lord of the Rings or any of his works as
allegory for real world or historical events. In fact, he
made clear that he hated allegory, and he thought that

(24:43):
it was stupid and insulting to the audience to like
write a fantasy tale that was supposed to be an
allegory for I don't know, world War two, I think
would be the more often thing. People would be, Oh,
is Mordor supposed to be the Nazis or whatever. I
think his attitude was more, No, I'm writing an original story,
and you may see elements of it that make you
think about things that have happened in the real world,

(25:05):
but that's your prerogative. This is not meant to be
taken as an allegory for any events past, present, or future.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah. Yeah, and yet once you certainly have say, state
suspicion concerning the work. I guess that's kind of hard
to completely eradicate, and I feel like this is probably
best encapsulated in a book by Russian author kiro Eskov
came out in nineteen ninety nine, at least in parts

(25:33):
of the world in Russia, titled The Last Ring Bear,
which spins the story of the Lord of the Rings
by taking the view of Mordor as a state misunderstood
by the victors who wrote the history.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Right, So it's kind of a sequel to Lord of
the Rings, but it says, Okay, you've read Lord of
the Rings, but now consider this. Lord of the Rings
is the version of the story you're getting from the elves, basically.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Right, the idea that the elves have a grudge in
all of this, and of course they're going to depict
more Door as this awful, stinking, you know, death realm,
as opposed to what The Last Ring Bear frames it
as as the cultural and the technological center of Middle Earth.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
Yeah. I think the way this novel reframes it is
that Mordor is a place that kind of eschewes magic
and is trying to create a scientific and technological civilization
and it almost casts Again, I don't know how much
the author would agree with this, but just having read
summaries of the plot and some of the themes in it,
it seems to me almost like the Elves and Gandalf

(26:38):
might be somewhat equivalent to the Axis powers in World
War Two, and that they're, you know, trying to promote
this kind of fantasy, romantic mysticism view of the world
and trying to destroy the society and culture and people
of Mordor before they can grow too powerful through scientific
and technological means.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah, as a thought experience, it sounds fun taking, like
essentially doing what some would accuse Tolkien of having done.
But that being said, yeah, I don't think Tolkien would
have approved of this, and I know the Tolkien estate
would not approve of this, and that's one of the
reasons you'll find no official translation of this in the

(27:20):
US now.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
As for other film or TV adaptations of Tolkien's works,
in the Soviet Union, I was reading, I think there
was an adaptation at some point of The Hobbit that
has some major plot changes but does involve Ballet. And
I've never seen this, but I would like to. But
I was also reading an article in The Guardian by

(27:41):
Andrew Roth, who I think is one of their Moscow correspondents,
that was about this release of chron and Telly, this
adaptation of Fellowship from nineteen ninety one. And Roth notes
a couple of other interesting things about the history of
film adaptations of Lord of the Rings in Russia. So
one of them is that he mentions there was a

(28:02):
nineteen ninety one animated version of The Hobbit that was
going to be called something like The Treasure under the
Mountain that was partially animated, but it was never finished.
But he links to this clip that somebody has put
on the Internet of allegedly what is like six minutes
of what was going to become this movie, and I
checked it out, and this is gorgeous. I wish they

(28:22):
had made this whole adaptation. I mean, it looks phenomenally
beautiful to me.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, it is. It does have a lot of charm
to it, and in a way it makes one wonder
what it will be like when, when and if? Who
knows how Copyright laws could potentially change in the future,
But at what point Tolkien's work becomes the you know,
the property of the people at large, you know, and

(28:50):
when you reach the point where just about anybody can
can do some sort of retelling or spin on Tolkien,
you know, what would it be like if you had
What would a Japanese Lord of the Rings be like?
What would a Mexican Lord of the Rings be like?

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Oh, I'd love to see that. Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:05):
What would say a Minds of Maria horror film be like?
I mean, there's so many different directions you could go
in in Middle Earth where you know right now, certainly
if you're putting out any kind of like major production,
it needs to be very much in line with what
the estate will approve off. I understand.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
There's another really funny thing noted in that article by
Andrew Roth about this concern is something we were talking
about earlier tone getting lost in the translation to the
Russian version, which is that when the Peter Jackson Lord
of the Rings movies were released in Russia, there was
one version of them, one dubbed version that was popular,

(29:42):
that was dubbed by somebody who was a translator named
Dmitri Puchkov, operating under the pseudonym Goblin, and allegedly, according
to Roth, I've never heard this myself. His dubbed version
of Lord of the Rings was noted for being filled
with profanity that was not there in the original text,
and other funny things like, for example, Frodo in it

(30:04):
is called Fiodor, and Legolas has a Baltic accent, and
like aer Igorn is like yelling, like is like cussing
at his troops.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
All right, well, I don't know if I approve of
cussing in the Lord of the Rings, but that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Nonetheless, that really would change the tone for me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Well, we don't have a trailer per se, but I
think it's high time we give everyone just a little
taste of the sonic wonder is to be found in
this film.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Oh you know what we should play is the is
the opening music. We haven't even talked about the music yet,
which is like the how do we go this far
without the music? The music is like one of the
greatest selling points of this right.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
The music in this film is not what you might
expect from a Lord of the Rings adaptation. It is
in no way traditional. It is all over the board
there so I kuint of it. Something like five different
genres of music used to tell the story, and I
have to say, I love it. It's very liberating. You
don't know what you're gonna get.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Okay, let's get that opening song. That is I think
that the words in this song are a Russian translation
of the inscription on the ring that's in the book.
So you know, seven to the dwarf floors in their
halls of stone, nine immortal men doomed to die. That
kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
Here you go, easier.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Do I love it? Russian folk rock?

Speaker 3 (31:47):
This movie is full of Russian folk rock also, though,
I love the way that, like you said, it just
pulls in every possible genre. One of my favorite musical
touches is that Gandalf's wizard word powers include the ability
to cast spells of folk music.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yes, yeah, that is one of the great sequences that
if you don't watch the whole thing. I'll also include
the highlight reel that somebody put together. I'll include that
on the some moody music dot com yeah blog post
for this this episode, because in that you'll see a
lot of the points we're talking about here, including the
funky magic of of Gandolf the Gray.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Now, we would normally do a section here where we
go in depth about a lot of the people involved
in the production of this, especially the cast. That's going
to be harder to do in this case because a
lot of these people didn't do a lot of films
and are more kind of in the say, Leningrad or
Saint Petersburg commune theater community. And to the extent that

(32:44):
they did do films, they're not really films that we
would be that we're familiar with. There are a lot of,
you know, Russian movies.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, so certainly, I know we have some listeners out
there who are who are who are Russian or have
have a greater understanding of Russian cinema. So if if
if you have any notes on people that we're mentioning
here or not mentioning at all in any detail, certainly
ride in and let us know. But we'll try and
we'll cover some of the high points and at least
a couple of the people that are connected to Western

(33:13):
films of note or Russian films that are of note internationally.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
So the director was somebody named Natalia Cerebryakova, who I
think she went by Natasha. Actually is Natasha like a
normal and a nickname for Natalia. I'm not sure I
would assume that, but she One of the main things
I was reading about her was that several of these
articles mentioned that she was really insistent about getting the

(33:41):
shots of the horses riding outside to really like heighten
the heighten the sense of place in the movie. And
because and it's good that you did, because otherwise almost
the entire thing would be shot indoors in these closed sets.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yes, yeah, I think this was a great choice on
her part, because, yeah, those were some great scenes arrative.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
Like, well, the greatest thing about them actually is that
so when you saw the nine, you know, there weren't
nine of them in the production. Sometimes there'd be like
two ring raids. You'd see them riding through the snow
and they've got these black hoods on, and it is
playing synthesizer sequencers like I think, I don't know if
they're Mogus or like Moge sequencers, Like you know that
that kind of like thrumbing, pulsating synthesizer music that actually,

(34:24):
I mean, you wouldn't think normally, Yeah, yeah, put electronic
synth music in Lord of the Rings. But hey, it works,
it's good. I like it.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I Yeah, I absolutely loved these these moments where they
dropped in this ring rais synth because it has this again,
this kind of like ninety early nineties TV synth vibe
to it. It really gave me the warm feels and
it actually reminds me of some of the sounds that
Boards of Canada were using in some of their early works,

(34:54):
some of their their their early tracks have this exact
same sort of vibe. So it really got me. In fact,
let's not just talk about it, let's have a quick
sample of these vibes. You so good, so good.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
I love that. Watching a production like this, actually it
makes you question things that you had not even realized
were assumptions you had made, like the assumption that the
proper musical aesthetic for a fantasy film is like classic
is orchestral classical music basically, or you know, liv Tyler

(35:37):
singing somber a cappella dirges for for elf kind. But
it makes you actually ask the question, wait a minute,
why shouldn't Lord of the Rings have electronic music? Why
why shouldn't it have mode sequencers and funk bass and
weird saxophone and stuff. And it makes you you say, Okay,
is there a reason or is this just the received

(35:59):
aesthetic that I never even bothered to think about. I
respect the boldness of these musical choices, and I'm not
even sure if the people who made this realize they
were bold. Maybe they were just working without some kind
of mental shackles that we've put on ourselves about fantasy here.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Yeah, I mean, they were making this film without these
other expectations. And I mean I'm one certainly to say, yes,
any film is better off with an electronic score, even
if it's not very good, it's better. But then again,
like we recently talked about regarding Cannibal Apocalypse, you know,
there are also certain standards within a given film culture.

(36:38):
There are certain expectations about the music and what you
can do with music. So you know, maybe that's the
answer here.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
Oh yeah, Well, like we talked about in Cannibal Apocalypse,
if you watch Italian horror thriller movies from the seventies
and eighties, one thing you'll notice is that for some reason,
the Italian directors seem to think that funk is scary
or the disco music heightens tension, and American audiences don't

(37:06):
seem to agree with this, like it feels incongruous, it
doesn't fit, but it just kind of proves to you
that the moods evoked by certain genres or sounds of
music or not universal, they can be highly culturally contingent.
For some reason. To the Italians, it makes sense for
the funk music to kick in while somebody's creeping up
with the knife. But to American audiences that sounds funny.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, And perhaps for Russian audiences, or at least for
the filmmakers involved here, an accordion is the appropriate instrument
to play when Frodo is stabbed by a ring wraith.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Oh my god? Yes, yeah that was true, wasn't it. Yeah, Well,
maybe this brings us to somebody else we should definitely
mention as being involved with Cronatelli. And this is Andre Romanov.
I think he may have gone by Diusha, but Romanov
had several roles with this film. He was a composer,

(37:57):
so I think he did all or most of the
music for the movie. I'm almost positive he did the version,
the musical version that you heard earlier. That's the adaptation
of the inscription on the ring that somber haunting, almost
kind of like old church chant folk rock. But in
this he's also the narrator of the film. This is

(38:18):
another choice that it makes that I really like this.
Lord of the Rings has a fully embodied narrator, like
you know Masterpiece Theater. He just sits there and he
smokes a pipe and talks into the camera telling you
the story.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
And sometimes he does just sit there. There are times, yeah,
he doesn't seem to be in a particular hurry to
tell you the story of the Fellowship of the Ring.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see Gandalf chase down Gollum and
he's like, hey, stop lying to me, pal and galums squirming,
and then it might cut to him and he's just
sitting there packing a pipe for a couple minutes, and
then he'll start telling you what happens next.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
But the other thing I didn't mention is that Romanov
was a member of the famous Russian rock band Aquarium
or Okvarium, which I think was based out of Leningrad.
Was first formed in the early seventies, when I think
it was tough being a rock band in the Soviet
Union in the early seventies, but I think as Glasnos
came on in the eighties, they had more musical freedom,

(39:16):
and now this is one of the most famous Russian
rock bands. I know they you know, they played Leningrad
clubs all the time, and they've got a ton of albums.
I was listening to some Akvarium while I was making
my coffee this morning, and it definitely made me want
to like Hugh Wood with Grandfather Mushroom. I think they've
done a bunch of different genres, a kind of eclectic

(39:38):
musical group, but a lot of it sounded basically to
me like electric acoustic folk rock.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
It reminded me a lot, and I don't know if
this is a fair comparison. Reminded me of the music
of Al Stewart to a certain extent.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
I don't think I really know Al Stewart, so.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Oh, you know, he did well, I guess ironically. He
did a song called Roads to Moscow that's rather good.
But he else did You're the Cat Old Admirals. Yeah.
But he did a lot of tracks that had hit
a track titled Nostrodamus, so he had a try a
lot of number of tracks that were kind of lengthy
and had historical settings to them. Good stuff. I like

(40:16):
Al Stewart. I fire him up every now and then.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
Okay, well, I'll say I not only love Romanov's music
in this movie, but I love him as the narrator.
I really enjoy the way he makes us sit and
wait for him to tell us something else.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
While we're talking about the music. I also want to
go ahead and drop one more audio sample, and that
is some of the excellent Galam music. Because the Galum
music is also seemingly in a slightly different genre. It's
our kind of creepy vocal reverb kind of soundscape. I
don't know how you would describe this, Joe.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, I don't know. It's very echoey. Gollum growls in
this movie. He growls like a dog, and then Gandalf
growls back at him.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
And it should we have to stray us. Gollum kind
of dances kind of has extended dance sequences that that
that should you have to see them to believe them.
They're pretty wonderful. Let's have just a sample of that.

(41:19):
Isn't it dreamy? That's one. I mean, that's almost like
I'm the reminded of stuff like Nurse with wound or
robbing gristle there.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
This movie has a number of so I watched it
with Rachel and she she said that the movie was
hypnotating her it does.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
I fell asleep once during it in a very pleasant way.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
The Gollumn sequence was one of the most hypnotody of
the entire movie for.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Me, absolutely all right. So I'm I'm not gonna really
spend a lot of time on any of the other
cast members, but I do want to mention two actors
that are in it because they have some interesting connections.

(42:07):
First of all, there's Sergei Parshon, who plays Tom Bombadill.
He was born nineteen fifty two. I believe he's still around.
I'm not sure if he's acting or not. He's known
for such films, at least in Russia as The Plane
Flies to Russia from ninety four the Fall of the
Empire in two thousand and five, but he's been in
some titles with a bunch of Western names in them

(42:27):
as well, and these include Bernard Rose's nineteen ninety seven
adaptation of Anna Karenina that stars Sophie Marceau, Sean Bean,
Alfred Molina, Fiona Shaw, and Danny Houston. So this actor
is our bridge, the bridge we need to connect this
film to Peter Jackson's two thousand and one adaptation.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
That's amazing, and this reminds me so Sean Being, of course,
plays Borimir, the hero of Gondor in the in the
Peter Jackson adaptation, and Sean Bean absolutely wonderful in that role.
You know, the best Boromir you could hope for. But
there was something I think it was in that Variety article.
If not, it was in one of the other ones

(43:09):
I was reading that had an interview with the actory
of Guiney Solyakov, who plays Borimir in the in Kronatelli
and so Yakov apparently is a big fan of the
Peter Jackson adaptations, and I think they caused him to
wish that he had portrayed Borimir differently than he did.

(43:31):
So there's I just want to read. From that article
and Variety by Rebecca Davis. Here, quoting Soyakov, she writes,
watching the film for the first time last month, he
felt he perhaps hadn't been quite ready to take on
the complexities of the flawed hero. Quote. I don't think
I played the role to the fullest. I wish I
hadn't been so emotional when I was trying to explain
why I wanted the ring. I should have remained very

(43:53):
composed and I think that's interesting. So seeing like actors
who were in this having watched later movie at as
and saying like, oh, okay, I didn't really understand the
character I was supposed to be playing. But like, now
that I saw the Peter Jackson adaptation, like saw Sean Bean, like,
Borimir makes more sense to me, And here's how I
should have done it. You know, you should have. Like

(44:14):
one thing that's great about Borimir is you know, Borimir
has a point. Borimir in a way like his heart
is in the right place. He's saying, give me the
weapon of the enemy, so that I may defend the
world against it.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
M hmm.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
But of course in this movie, it's quite funny actually,
because they're having the counsel of el Ron where everybody's
you know, they're talking about what to do with the ring,
and Borimir just starts going like, give me the ring,
give it, give it to me.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't doesn't work quite as well, does it.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah. It kind of makes you think, like, well, why'd
they bring him along if in the initial meeting he's like,
it must be mine.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Now, I know what a lot of you are wondering.
You're you're thinking to yourself. All right, you guys have
been able to find an actor in this film that
connects it to the cinematic universe of the Peter Jackson
Order of the Rings movies. But can you connect it
to the cinematic universe of Eli Roth? And yes we can. Okay,
that's because we have an actor by the name of

(45:11):
Lillian Malkina who plays I believe the matriarch of the
Saxville Baggins is.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
The Sackville Torbens is.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Oh, it's the Sackville Tourbinson's.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Well, no, no, no, it's the same thing, because in
this it's Bilbo Torbins and Frodo Torbins. I don't know
what that change means, but they didn't go with Baggins.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Well, at any rate, she's the matriarch. She has several
notable scenes here standing around with Bilbo. She was in
Eli Roth's hostel too, and she was in his Thanksgiving short,
the fake trailer for Thanksgiving Like a Thanksgiving nineteen seventy
slasher film, in which she plays the grandmother.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Oh, so I think she gets murdered and then like
dressed up like a turkey.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
I think so. Yes. Yeah, Now, another actor in this
that went on to appear in some some Western productions.
Galadriol is played by Elena Solive, who appeared in the
Lost City of Z and also in The Sopranos. And
on top of this, she won an award for Best
Supporting Actress in the film Factas at the nineteen eighty

(46:14):
one Cans Film Festival. So that's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (46:17):
In The Sopranos, I believe she plays Junior's nurse, taking
care of him when he's under house arrest. It's not
a major role. I think she plays the cousin of
one of Tony's girlfriends.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
But she's perhaps the only actor from the Sopranos to
appear in an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
Right, as far as I know, what if.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
You had to had to recast The Lord of the
Rings using only actors who appeared in The Sopranos, Now
there's a challenge.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Okay, Robert Loja as Saar Ruman, I'm gonna go with
I'm gonna go with James Gandolphini rest in peace. But
assuming they're all still James Gandolfinis, Borimir perfect Bormar.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
You're not tempted by the Gandolphini Gandolf connection.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
There No, and he's not Gandalf like, but he is
like Bormere. He's got that kind of that kind of
reckless complexity. Hm hm oh oh oh oh. Seth just
chimed in with the best possible suggestion, which of course
is Steve Bushmi as Gollum. There you go. Oh man,
my name's Meatl.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Hello, Fellow Ring Bears. So many awesome directions you could
go in. You sho't's wonderful. He would have he would
have been able to nail it for sure.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
So good. Okay, the guy who plays Furyo, that's that's
our lego less I believe. Anyway, Okay, we got to
move on. I figure at this point we should just
mention a few things that we took notes on while
we were watching this. I mean, obviously we're not going
to recap the story because you know, either you you
basically know the story of Fellowship the Ring, or if
you don't, you've probably stopped listening at this point already.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah, let's see, So we'll just touch on some things
that that struck us. I will say, the Hobbit scenes,
the Hobbits partying at Bilbo's birthday party, pretty great. I
feel like they helped to convey the sort of universal
fulkiness that is found in the Shire. You know, just
about any culture can relate to that on some level,

(48:14):
though I don't know. The Hobbits felt perhaps drunker than usual,
Like there was kind of a dwarven level of drunkenness
to the Hobbits. And I didn't think we had dwarves
at all in this adaptation, did we?

Speaker 2 (48:25):
So?

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Dwarf and I had Gimley, we had Gimbley.

Speaker 4 (48:27):
Was Gimmy there?

Speaker 1 (48:28):
I just thought Gimley was absent? No, Gimley was Gimley Gimley.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
He was the guy in the Red Cape and Hood
after the Fellowship formed. He has a Gimley And legalists
are almost non existent in this adaptation the Fellowship. So
we mentioned the strange plot structure. It crams about half
of the Fellowship of the Ring into the last fifteen minutes,
so the Fellowship is not formed until there are like, yeah,

(48:54):
like fifteen minutes left to go out of this two
hour production, and instead it decides to spend almost all
of its time with things going on with the Hobbits
at the beginning, and then Tom Bombadill and the barrel
whites and explaining the story with Gandalf, and then the
scenes at the ends at like Brie and with Farmer Maggot.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yeah, like they really started acting like they needed to
land this thing in a hurry, which, as we know
from Peter Jackson's treatment of the films, that's just not
how you do Lord of the Rings, right, start acting
like you're in a hurry, you're just not going to
be able to tell it. So, yeah, the pace of
the pacing is weird here.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Well, the other thing. I was going to mention this earlier,
but I guess we got sidetracked. One of the things
about this is clearly that they made a choice to
emphasize scenes that could be shot with people like standing
around or sitting around not moving and discussing things, and
any sequences that would have involved major action or movement

(49:53):
or outdoor sets. Those things they try to skip over
as lightly as they can, and so most of the
stuff that gets cut is the more adventury stuff, you know,
where you know, you don't get really much of anything
about crossing the mountains, going through the mines, fighting the orcs.
I mean, there's a little bit of fighting the orcs,
but Mostly it's just they reuse some footage they shot,

(50:14):
or maybe not even footage. I think it's just a
series of still images of people in these costumes with
horns on their helmets, and these are the Orcs, and
you see them going ah at the camera, and then
you see the actor playing Aragorn swinging a sword for
a minute, and then the battle's over.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Now. One thing I applaud it for is that they
they made the choice to genderflip Legoless's character. Oh so
Legoless is a female elf for a how do they
refer to the female elves in the Hobbit prequel movies
from Peter Jackson women? Else elf women something like that.
At any rate, we have a female Legoleiss in this,

(50:52):
and I feel like it was actually a pretty good choice,
because otherwise you have a very male oriented tail here.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yes, a long observed about Lord of the Rings. I mean,
this is a very duty story. But yeah, so I
like the idea of making Legalists a woman, but Legalists
and Gimley have basically I don't think either of them
has any lines in this adaptation. I mean, again, they
don't show up until there's like something like twenty or
fifteen minutes left and then they say nothing. They just

(51:19):
you see them standing there. Though.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
Yeah, I want to point something out that it took
me a while to realize what I was comparing it to.
But Gandolf in this looks so much like Vincent Price
in The Witchfinder general. Yeah, it's like a very similar
hair and facial features, and I mean also his facial feet,
Like he has a very Vincent Price esque knows this.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Actor very good observation. I would not have caught that myself,
but you're so correct.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
And we've already talked about Frodo and what he looks like.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, you know what, I bet that actor who plays
frod is great. I'm convinced now that it was just
like he had the wrong type of character in mind,
and that's the problem here.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
I feel like casting Hobbits is probably a very difficult task.
I mean they I think Peter Jackson's productions were able
to pull it off, but there's so many ways it
could have gone wrong, you know, if you weren't going
with actors like like I mean, Ian Holm of course
was terrific, but also the younger Bilbo whose name is

(52:20):
eluding me at the moment, and also the kid playing
fro Do in the actual Lord of the Rings films
by Peter Jackson. They're altered, terrific, and they're able to
pull off this character that I think could be mismanaged
in so many ways.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
You mean Elijah Wood, the kid playing fro Do.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Yeah, Elijah would. Oh yeah, he's great to say.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Is he a kid? I think he's older than me.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Well, at the time, he was younger and had a
very youthful uh comparence, and technically and technically he was
a hobbit though he was what thirty three at the time.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Oh yeah, that's like, I don't know what for hobbits.
That's like being sixteen, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, I'm maybe screwing up my hobbit math here, But
at any rate, he's terrific, and of course he's gone
on to produce a lot of really cool stuff as well.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Well. Another thing is that it's not just fro Doo.
I mean generally, other than Bilbo, the Hobbits in this
movie are grotesque the whole party. This movie really deemphasizes
Samwise Gamgee. He has maybe like three lines in it,
but they did make the choice to give him purple hair.
He has a purple ponytail, and he has additional eyebrows,

(53:25):
so he's got his eyebrows, but then he's got big
eyebrows drawn on on top of his real eyebrows.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
Is he which one is the one with the giant sideburns?

Speaker 3 (53:34):
I think, well, I think there are multiple ones with
giant side But this movie is a very mutton choppy movie.
Like Bilbo has mutton chops that are clearly not human hair.
They're like some kind of animal fur. They look like
a mink stole, but they're glued to the sides of
his face. And several of the Hobbits in the Fellowship
have mutton chops. Maybe they all do, except Frodo or

(53:57):
I don't know. At least I think Took does, or
as they call him in this movie.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Pin have we talked about sarmon the White yet we
have not.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
So one of the things we get in this movie is,
of course, the sequence where you know it's famously in
The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf disappears for a while,
what's going on, and then he meets the He meets
the characters back when they get to Rivendell, the Land
of the Elves, and you find out what happened to Gandalf.
It's that he went to talk to Sarimon the White,
the great wise Wizard, the chief of his order, and

(54:28):
Sarruman reveals a great betrayal that Sarmon has concluded that
it is impossible to stand against the armies of Mordor,
so you have to join them or else die. And
Gandalf is like, no, I'm not going to join them
with you. So Saramon's like, well, I don't like that,
you know, So it's it's paying time for you, and
I guess.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
You're going on the roof.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, You're going on the roof until you change your mind.
So Sarimon the White, the greatest of the Wizards, is
supposed he's supposed to be like the guy you can
really count on, but he is a betrayer and he
join the enemy. And it's one of the great parts
of the book. It's great in the it's great in
the the Peter Jackson movies, of course, with Christopher Lee
playing Soomon.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Christopher Lee was always the Even before these films were
in any way put together, I was like, Christopher Lee
should play Saramon, Like this is the only person to
play this role. Yeah, and he's terrific and he in
him those films. He looks like so many of these
classic illustrations of the character. I'm thinking about the Hildebrandt Brothers.
They did a wonderful version of Soromon that I've absolutely

(55:33):
loved for ages.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
In this movie, Saruman looks like he would have been
Hans Gruber's Hinchman and die Hard.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yeah, he's like thirty five and is clean shaven and
has kind of a kind of a manic energy to him,
like a cocaine Yeah, like he should be this character
should be a drug dealer in a nineties action film,
Like he should be about to get his next snapped
by Jean Kles That damn bizarre choice.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
Yeah, he's like sweaty, so he's kind of damp and
he's he's freaking out. He doesn't have that Saruman composure
where he's like, you know, you will join or die. Instead,
he's like, oh, give me the ring.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
He's kind of like bora mirror is yeah, yep.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
Now there's another choice that I really took issue with,
which we've talked many times about how much we love
the weird music in this but one musical choice that
was very strange to me is that Tom Bombadil does
not sing. Instead, Oh yeah, he has theme music that
plays every time he appears, but he doesn't sing it.
It sounds like some kind of I was trying to

(56:40):
think what band it sounded like. It's almost kind of
like a nineties sound is like very Reverby on the vocals.
It's got that kind of like rushing sound effect on them.
It's almost a little bit like nineties U two vocals.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's weird because Tom Bombadil finally
shows up in an adaptation, you expect him to sing,
because he sings a lot in the book. It's it's
like this amount. Yeah, that's like that's what he does,
So it is it's an interesting choice that he does
not actually sing. It makes me wonder what the reasoning
for that was. Was this actor not a singer? Did

(57:15):
did it get cut for time? I don't know. I
mean music is also key to his power. Tom Bombadil's like, hey,
if you get into any trouble, you need to sing
this song and I'll show up and I'll sing my
heart out and defeat whatever is bothering you.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
Essentially does Frodo actually sing the song, though, I think
he's just in the barrow down. He's like under the
barrow and he just goes like Tom Bombadil Bombadil, and
then he shows up and he's like hello.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
Yeah. I mean it's still great that Tom Bombadil shows
up at all, yes, but but yeah, it is weird
that he doesn't sing.

Speaker 3 (57:48):
Man, there's so much that I'm not even remembering at
this point. But one of the things that I think
is a very strange choice. Like I said, they really
they really shorten the adventure part of the story, like
once the fellows it gets together, that part's just on
like fast forward to the max, jumping over everything, and
they completely cut out the death of Gandalf. There's no

(58:09):
there's no bell Rog. I think they're just they go
into the minds of Maria for a minute, and we're
to understand that they're fighting orcs because they show those
orcs going with their horn helmets and Aragorn's swinging his sword,
and then they're like leaving the minds and they say like, hey,
what happened to Gandalf? He must have gotten lost somewhere
back there. That's it. No Bellrog, no bridge of Kaza

(58:30):
Doom or wait, no, there is a bridge because you
see er Gordon like trying to balance on it.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
Oh and Aragorn is like fourteen by the way.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Oh yeah, he has a big scar on his face. Yeah.
But but yeah, there's no that Gandalf doesn't doesn't die
like that is That's that's an interesting choice as well,
because this is one of the most emotional moments in
the entire saga. Yeah, really one of the most emotional
moments in I would say like like Western fantasy, like

(58:58):
modern fantasy literature in its entirety.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
Yeah, it's like it's a great storytelling choice because up
until then everything has been about Gandalf is the person
who knows what to do. Everybody else is confused and
they're scared, and Gandalf is always the person who can
figure out what to do next, and so you always
look to him. And then he suddenly he's dead, He's gone,
and what are you supposed to do? Then it's like

(59:23):
it's so great. It really heightens the tension of the story.
And I guess he does disappear from this story, but
there's only like ten minutes left when that happens, and
they don't even say what happened to him. They're just like, oh,
I don't know. I guess he got lost back there
or something.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
He had to take a leak or something. That he's back.
That's okay, We're good to go.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
And then immediately they're just in Loath. Laurian and the
elves are dancing around. There's just people in like wearing
garlands of flowers and wearing white robes and they're doing ballet.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
This is when I almost fell asleep for the second time.
This is a very hypnotic sequence as well.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Yeah, and then of course we do get the sequence
with Galadriel being tempted by the ring and passing the test,
and she does pass the test. She's a very good
Elf queen. And then basically it's pretty much over. I
think we very quickly get bora Mer saying again like, hey,
give me the ring, and Frodo's like no, and then
he will.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Then we also have sorrow and uh, I mean sorry
saarn himself. Oh at least the eye of sorrow on. Yes, yeah,
that part shows up very funny and has exactly the
same energy as all of these uh, these these these
ring junkies. Because Saarron's just like you're gonna give me
that ring. That's basically what he does, like this oozing
eye with like purple ooze behind it. Yeah and yeah,

(01:00:32):
exact same tone as everyone else who wants to ring.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
But it ends extremely abruptly because Borr is like, give
me the ring and Frodo's like nah, and then uh
and then he starts to walk off, and then Sam
Wise Gamsey shows up with his purple wig and says like, hey,
I gotta go with you, and Frodo's like nah. And
then he says he says, well, who's gonna cook your
food and light your fires for you? And Frodo's like okay,
and then they're just on horses and then it's over.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Yeah, this is kind of the riding off into the
disc and it's kind of like the end of an
incredible Hulk TV episode from the old days. Yeah, and
then I think we hear the theme song again, so.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
I don't know in the end. Obviously, this is a
you know, beyond micro budget production. I mean it's essentially
a no budget production that was made you know, made
on the fly, shot in less than nine hours, according
to one of the actors, and given what they had
and also working on source material that was through several

(01:01:28):
several different filters of derangement. I got to say, obviously,
like it's funny what we're looking at on the screen,
but I respect their work.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Yeah, yeah, and it's again just knowing they were working
with no budget. I feel like they did a pretty
good job. And it makes more wonder like what would
have happened had had the same energy gone into this
film as had gone into previous Soviet fantasy epics. Because
we should of course drive home that that there are

(01:01:58):
some tremendous Soviet and Russian fantasy epics that have come
out in the years since, but certainly in the years
before this, including the Jack Frost movie Rozoko from nineteen
sixty five, but also films like Sampo or The Day
of the Earth Froze, the nineteen fifty nine Soviet Finnish

(01:02:20):
film that is based on the Kalevaga. Both of those films,
even though you many of you might be used to
sort of a decayed copy of the film that given
the Mystery Science Theater three thousand treatment, if you find
restored footage of these motion pictures, it's incredible. These are beautiful,
high budget just beautifully rendered films. So I can't help

(01:02:44):
but imagine, like, what would it have been like had
the energy that went into into Frosty or into the
Sampo film, what if they had gone into this into
the creation of the Fellowship of the Rings.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Yeah, that would have been so magical. And apparently in
Russia the interest was there. Like I was reading an
article for the BBC that included an interview with somebody
named Irena Nazarova, who they identified as a Russian artist
who saw Chronatelli on TV when it originally aired in
ninety one, and they say like, well, wait a minute,

(01:03:19):
Like is Tolkien a big thing in Russia anyway? Like
what you know, would people have been into this? And
I want to read her response, He's massive. After Jackson
made his great trilogy Interests soared Back. Russia is full
of fans, cosplay and everything. A friend of mine was
out looking for mushrooms in the countryside near Moscow and
she ran into a band of elves with bows and arrows.

(01:03:42):
I know a blacksmith who makes a fairly decent living
from hammering out swords and helmets, and he told me
about a gangster who'd ordered gates for his mansion. Quote
like in Mordor. Oh my god, so some like Russian
oligarch crime lord is also a lord of the rings
and has outfitted his datcha to be I don't know,

(01:04:03):
the barador or something.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Oh m hmm, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
Okay, maybe we need to wrap it up there. But Rob,
I have so enjoyed going on this, uh this, this,
this hero's journey with you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Yeah, this has been a lot of fun and uh,
you know, a chance just to discuss token adaptations in general,
but also this, this particular attempt. It's it's pretty it's
pretty interesting. So again I advise folks out there who
are interested, even if you don't have it in you
to watch the entire two hours, you should at least
check out that highlight reel. Though that highlight reel is

(01:04:35):
not going to give you everything.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
No, no, no, no, especially some of.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
The musical qualities we've been talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
If you don't have it in you to watch the
whole two hours, you just you're weak. You know, you
don't you don't have you don't have intellectual will power,
you don't have the courage the heart. Come on, if
Sam and Frodo can journey across all of Middle Earth.
You can watch this two hour Weirdo stage production.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Absolutely so uh yeah again, I'll put I'll put embedded
versions of these videos up at Samouda music dot com,
along with some of the music we were talking about
the aquarium music for example, so you can check that
out as well. All right, well, yeah, we're gonna go
and close it out then, But if you want to
listen to other episodes of Weird House Cinema, it publishes
every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.

(01:05:23):
We're primarily a science and culture podcast. Our core episodes
come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You'll also find an
artifact episode on Wednesdays, as well as a listener mail
episode on Monday. So certainly right in if you have
thoughts about this particular film, if you have, especially if

(01:05:43):
you say watched it on Russian television back in the day,
or you have you have, I know, we heard after
we watched Teens in the Universe or Children in the Universe,
we heard from at least a couple of listeners who
who had Russian backgrounds, and we got to learn so
much about about the viewing of that film and interpretations

(01:06:03):
of that film. I would love to hear what you
have to say about this one as well.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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