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The Council of Elrond discusses the fate of the One Ring.
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Gollum trapped him in a cave.
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Unlike the Peter Jackson film, the mysterious Tom Bombadil plays a key role in this interpretation.
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Frodo and Aragorn are ready for battle.
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Gandalf fights against his enemies. It is impossible to capture how wild battle scenes are with a static image; you will have to take care of yourself.
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Boromir’s monologues for the camera.
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A narrator smokes a pipe while framing the story.
After 30 years, a TV adaptation of JRR Tolkien Lord of the Rings long-lost thought has resurfaced. The 1991 Soviet television adaptation was uploaded to YouTube in two one-hour videos.
The film focuses on the events of the first book of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, and features many elements that were excluded from the popular global theatrical release by director Peter Jackson, including an extended sequel featuring the character Tom Bombadil – one of the biggest omissions in the 2001 biggest budget film that many of us have ever seen.
Originally broadcast on TV in 1991 (and never aired again), the film was considered lost in time by those who saw it. But, as reported in The Guardian, Leningrad’s TV successor, Channel 5, uploaded the movie to its YouTube page with little fanfare, surprising fans who gave up on seeing the production again. It is believed to be the only adaptation of these books produced in the Soviet Union.
For better or for worse, the primitive special effects and low budget are very evident – more so than in many other B films of the time that you may have seen. The grainy arms of the characters are cut in the middle of the frame, as they are placed against false and diffuse backgrounds. And the film uses a visual language totally unrelated to modern cinema, with sets and costumes that look more at home in a low-budget theatrical production and characters that look directly at the camera when they speak with a frightening commitment.
In other words, it is not a masterpiece by Andrei Tarkovsky. But the nostalgia is strong, in particular thanks to the soundtrack by Andrei Romanov, who performed with the popular Russian rock group Akvarium.
Entitled Khraniteli (“Keepers”), the film is believed to be based on a Russian translation of Tolkien’s work by Vladimir Muravyov and Andrey Kistyakovsky, and of course it is in Russian. But if you don’t speak Russian, don’t worry: the English subtitles automatically generated by YouTube are adequate enough to give you the essence of what’s going on.
Part 1
Part 2
List image by 5TV