Mechtild's

Notes: Very long essay ahead, wrapping up the final part of my last Frodo screencap series. I don't plan to do any other large-scale capping projects. I'll still make new caps to illustrate reflections or poems, but the ongoing project I've been working on since 2005 is at an end. I'll post a brief entry providing links for browsing the full collection in the coming days. But feel free to skip the essay and go straight to the caps and poem. As with the previous entry, in addition to my caps there are several spectacular caps by Blossom. Don't miss them. And visit Blossom's gorgeous Frodo website, In Dreams. Also featured is the brilliant conclusion to jan-u-wine's Lórien Suite. It appears below the fullscreen caps.

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I love the caps for this scene. Except for "Nuclear Gladys" (as it was called on the messageboard I frequented while the films were coming out), the scene is uninterrupted cinematic gorgeousness. It's a different animal from the book's Lothlórien scenes, but as cinema it really works. The book's Lórien, with its images of jewel-fresh nature sparkling with "poignant freshness" under a golden sun, becomes a world of shadows , cold and luminous as if lit by a winter moon. Instead of a sense of safe haven, the Fellowship enters a realm pulsing with a feeling of foreboding and danger. Their Elven hosts warn rather than welcome. My book-reading self says, "this is wrong, wrong, wrong!" but my film-going self is mesmerised. Why does it work, and why does it seem faithful, even though it is so wide of the original? I think it's because it strongly evokes what Tolkien elsewhere said about Faerie.

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