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Features
Actors: John Howe (II), Phil Crowley, Peter McHugh, Oliver Muirhead, Alan Lee (II)
Directors: Lisa Kors
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Language: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number of discs: 1
Rating: 
Studio: Nat'l Geographic Vid
DVD Release Date: February 19, 2002
Run Time: 60 minutes
Average Customer Review:
  (57 customer reviews)
Reader Reviews
A promising feature, a tie-in with a popular movie and with snippets of interviews with the director and a few members of the cast of "The Fellowship of the Ring". But this feature has little to do with that movie. Ostensibly a biography of Tolkien, it alleges to uncover influences that lead to his creation of Middle-Earth. They did fine to a point, detailing Tolkien's youth in the English rural countryside and his experiences in the First World War (he was in the battle of the Somme). It skimmed like a stone on water across his academic career, and his work as a philologist, though it did have a word or two about his creation of a language. Then the show turns its focus to the Kalevala. True, Tolkien loved that collection of Finnish legends, but he was not exclusively Finnish! He liked Icelandic sagas and also (especially) Anglo-Saxon. He was not as solely obsessed with the Kalevala as they make out, and the digression that goes into a sob story of the decline of ancient Finnish culture, while it would make a worthwhile show on its own, is out of place here. A curious omission was any mention of CATHOLICISM. His devout Catholicism was usually written off -- except by Tolkien. He stated on many occasions, especially in primary sources like his letters, that Catholicism was the guiding force in his life and writing. One might argue whether Lemas is supposed to be the Eucharist, but it's undeniable that Tolkien's Catholicism was very real and Sacramental (he kept a rosary by his bed when England was bombed in World War II). Whatever National Geographic's stand on Catholicism (I suppose it's against it), the makers of this film, in honesty, ought at least have mentioned it, since it was so vital to Tolkien himself, even if the documentary makers only to laugh up their sleeves at him for being a brilliant academian who fell for some silly superstition (though they praise some old Finnish codger in the film for his obsession with the Kalevala). I'm not a Catholic and have no brief for the Church, but in this documentary, Tolkien's staunch Catholicism is the two-ton elephant in the middle of the room that no one is comfortable talking about, ignoring to the point of absurdity. And though Peter Jackson, quite correctly, states in the documentary that the Lord of the Rings transcends politics and no political party can claim it (as should be the case with all true art), the documentary peters out to an "environmental" message, making it look almost like Tolkien was an obsessive environmentalist. His love for the countryside, his reactionary view of progress, and his Christianity (of which stewardship of the environment is an important theme) made him sensitive to environmental concerns, but he probably would have aligned himself more with the "fair use" people. The last part of the show isn't about Tolkien or the Lord of the Rings at all, but a grafted on story of some kook hiking through the Congo, giving a very political anti-development message. It's fine to present a show with that sort of bias, but I believe National Geographic exploited Tolkien and the movie for its own crass political message, just to turn a few bucks. Extensive footage of "The Fellowship of the Rings" is shown, but this show doesn't go into the making of the movie at all. And the few clips of the director and the handful of actors they talked to are of so little substance it's not worth watching for their points of view, either. They probably had more to say, but their interviews were so truncated they come off as vapid and unnecessary. Overall, this flick is a waste of money and time.
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National Geographic Beyond the Movie - The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring
List Price: $19.98
Available from Amazon
Price: $9.99
Updated on 12-6-2008.
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