oloriel | Et Eärello Endorenna Utúlien; Sinome Maruvan Ar Hildinyar Tenn' Ambar-Metta.

All ye Valar.
Another adventure from the Land of Limited Impossibilities ;)

Sooo, after a rather relaxed morning the journey south-west started at 1:30 pm. I found my way well enough and didn't even encounter the many traffic jams due to snow that I had been warned of. Although it did snow once I'd passed the border to Switzerland.
In Zürich I didn't find my way quite as good, and it turned out that the time I'd actually planned as a reserve was exactly the time it took to get lost, find my way again and find an (impossibly expensive) parking lot. Threw over my costume and went down to the cinema, which, at least, I found at once, so I arrived mere minutes after the official time of latest arrival, which was 4pm. All the dressed-up MEFlers got their envelopes containing another envelope containing the cinema ticket and the ticket for the party at the national museum. The whole cinema was decorated with fake rocks and posters and maple leaves all over the floor (that must really have hurt the Swiss soul, all those dirty leaves...) They were showing the specials of the Special Extended Edition until it finally was 5 pm and the movie started, after the manager of the Corso made a little speech (of which I understood very little because she spoke pure Switzerdytsch). And then we got THE movie in a typical Swiss version, i.e. English with German and French subtitles (as long as they don't add Rätoroman to the mix...). Uncut, I'll just say I loved it all in all, and yes, it is indeed as tear-jerking as everyone says. In the end, it was good we had the subtitles because several people were sobbing so loudly you lost parts of the text...

.
I'll start with the complaints, because that's, actually, not much.
First off: The movie startes with a flashback to Smeagol and Deagol, showing how Gollum became what he is. IMHO that might have been cut a bit, since after the first "precioussss" everyone knows what's going to happen anyway. The changes seem much less drastic than they did with TTT, but again, I don't get the reasons for them all. For example, why is it so necessary to have Pippin light the beacons of Gondor after a dramatic climb? Why does Frodo actually have to send Sam away? I mean, of course that ensures several really heartwrenching moments, but if the original story had been left unchanged in these places, there should have been time for both Saruman's Voice AND the Houses of Healing...
And the Mouth of Sauron isn't there, nor are the Crossroads.
And I don't like Sauron's cool new spotlight ability; and if Denethor had just burned instead of jumping down the cliff burning, I'd been content.

So much for the bad. On the other hand, the film completely reconciled me with Arwen, simply because of the vision of her son and her reciting the last lines of the "Not all that is gold..." poem, because you really get to how deep her decision goes, and because of that finally passionate kiss she and Aragorn share. The Denethor-Faramir-part of the story was tragic and absolutely brilliant. Evil bastard Denethor. At one point, when Faramir is riding back to Osgiliath in this Kamikaze sort of attack, desperate to win his father's love, you have Denethor eating, Pippin singing and Faramir and his men fighting interlapped. And it was unspeakably sad when Faramir rode to battle in the first place, with the people of Gondor throwing flowers on the streets while his father doesn't give a damn... Blew my mind.
So did the two battle sequences. The Pelennor gave Legolas a chance to combine his mad horse-mounting skillz with his mad skating skillz with an Oliphaunt, but oh well. The scape of this whole thing is unbelievable.
The dead are not as cheesy as I feared after seeing the first images. Again, we have slight changes here, such as Aragorn never having heard of the Paths of the Dead, and, of course, his enduring reluctancy to finally accept his destiny and become king (what a difference to the "Still not King" attitude! ;)), but it works out. Actually, everything works out. Even without the Voice and the Mouth and the Houses. I missed them, but it works.
What else. I could recite the whole movie (actually, I couldn't after seeing it once, but you know what I mean) and never come to an end. The muster of the Rohirrim is different, but wonderful. Merry knows it's Éowyn right away, but of course, that wouldn't have been a surprise anyway after all those trailers and commercials and Kinder surprise eggs...
Funny lil' moment with the Corsair ships. "Pirate scum"! Yay! I mean, Yo Ho! It wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped, but good nonetheless.
Shelob is scary even for people who usually are not afraid of spiders. The detail, the size and the speed of that beast are incredible.
Faramir's return, and Denethor's realization that he did, indeed, love his younger son, and that he basically ruined it all - sad. Really sad. Brilliant.
Cirith Ungol and the rest of the final way to Mt Doom is sad and beautiful at once. Mount Doom itself, shown in rapid switching with the Battle before the Black Gate, is, again, mindblowing.
The crowning is, again, different but wonderful. And the return to the Shire is bittersweet even without the Scouring. The Grey Havens are, big surprise, tear-jerking. I absolutely love Galadriel's still sort of disbelieving, overjoyed smile, as if she were saying "I finally get to go back home!" Frodo's reassuring smile to his friends looks astonishingly similar to hers.
And the film ends with the same words as the book: "Well, I'm back."
And, and, and. And. See it again tomorrow, maybe then I'll think of more. Come to think of it, no one is going to read this before tomorrow, anyway, right?
I can't wait for the SEE. There were so many stills and scenes from the trailers that were missing that it seems enough for another movie, so I really can't wait to see them. There we go. It's not over. Another year of waiting.

Oh, and the ugly. Well, orcs. Especially the chief orc leading the attack on Osigiliath. Wrgs. And they do shoot the severed heads of the fallen Gondorians into the city. Another wrgs. And Frodo loses quite a lot of blood on Mt Doom, and that hand really looks ugly. Which is sort of disgusting but excellent, in terms of story and all.

And with that, back to Zürich, which is a beautiful city and definitely worth a longer visit. First I was smart enough to use the ATM so I could later get my car back (22 CHF for 5 hours of parking, dear me), but stupid enough to leave my envelope there. I noticed once I'd reached the National Museum... since the admission ticket also was the train ticket, I had to buy another train ticket to get back to the Bellevue. But thank Eru at least I found my envelope again (on the street, in the wet :(). Then I released my car (now I knew where the museum was - thankfully it's right beside the main train station, which is more or less easy to find) and searched for a free parking lot, which I found a mere half hour later. Eh. That left me with an hour at the party if I wanted to keep my schedule.
The National Museum was lighted so its originally sandy fascade was fiery red and yellow, with the eye of Sauron on the tower in the middle. Inside they had a skating place. Ice-skating. It was indeed frozen. When I came in, a few Rohirrim and a few Haradrim were just fighting, wrecking their choreography on the ice because every other time someone slipped... eventually, Atall/ Éowyn won.
Then we tried to dance, and I even was asked to dance *blush* even though I'm totally helpless as a dancer, but after a few minutes, the music stopped anyway because apparently the system had decided it was too cold and snowy for it to work. So we had to sing ourselves, which was difficult because most of the people only knew the texts of songs like "Ten Orcs", "A Voice from the Gallows" or "The Elves are going to die, fallara", which are not exactly the best ones to dance on. We tried a bit of line dance, though. Someone had brought a hookah, there was lots of mead for the happy ones who didn't have to drive and Glühwein without wine for the other ones, like me. So we sang and stood around the fire watching the other people underestimating the ice, heh, heh. I was good though and left after the one hour with those who had to catch their train, noticed that the station of Zürich is really rather big when you don't remember where you parked your car, finally found it, drove home. Between Baden and Augst, it was snowing severely and I got really scared because there was only a white plain, no real highway, but after Augst, it was turning back to almost normal, and after the border, the snowing stopped altogether. At the border, there was a bit of a queue because the police were picking drivers out for some sort of control, but they just waved me through, thank Eru, I wouldn't have known how to explain my costume...
And that was that.

The film was so good I can't even be really sad because it's all over now. Hmmm. Maybe tomorrow, when it finally sinks in. But this is not the day! This day, we fight!(unquote)

I'm sort of dehydrated. Damn it. Headache. Which was not good when I really had to concentrate on the Swiss snowy highway. But it worked out alright.

Jörg dear: I hope all works out alright for you as well. I'm really sorry you didn't make the damn exam, especially when you couldn't help it at all. Hope you can sort it out. I'm thinking of you, here. Would've liked to have had you in Zürich, as well.

And now to bed, and now to bed...