National Geographic: Beyond the Movie: The Lord of the Rings (2001)

I've been a Tolkien scholar for nearly 30 years, I know many Tolkien scholars, and I have presented papers as well as keynote addresses and emceed at national and international Tolkien conferences. So I know and have read almost everything about and by Tolkien. This documentary serves as a well-grounded introduction to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movie but especially to the works, life, and creative impetus of J.R.R. Tolkien. (Anyone who complains that the two are unrelated is a twit.) In his letters, Tolkien asserted that "Hitler wasn't big enough!" to be a model for Sauron and the atom bomb certainly does not prefigure the One Ring; yet this documentary is spot-on and accurate when it cites Tolkien's World War I soldiering at the Somne and the industrialization of his idyllic pastoral Sarehole as primary influences in his depictions of war and evil. His legendary love for the Finnish language and the Kalevala is well depicted in a modern as well as a historical context, and the Beowulf-era discoveries at Sutter Hoo (two years after his still-classic Israel Golancz lecture on Beowulf in 1937) are thrilling to behold. True, the DVD includes an unrelated ten minutes on deforestation in Gabon that put me to sleep, but in every other instance, I found the actors' and producers' and experts' pronouncements to be wholly relevant, illuminating, and inspiring. Four stars.