A late-Soviet adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring is at times laughably primitive — and at other times surprisingly endearing. Thank you, Internet.
A late-Soviet adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring is at times laughably primitive — and at other times surprisingly endearing. Thank you, Internet.
I t began with the writing of The Lord of the Rings. Three volumes were given to J. R. R. Tolkien, immortal, wisest, and fairest of all fantasy writers, though he saw his epic as one complete work. Multiple adaptations followed over the years. One was given to Jeff Bezos, a great builder and hoarder of gold. And three, three films were given to director Peter Jackson in the early 2000s — movies that, above all else, achieved commercial success. For within these tales were bound the strength and worth of Tolkien’s astounding literary vision, which has kept The Lord of the Rings the most enduring work of fantasy literature in history.
But they were all of them deceived. For another adaptation was made. In the land of the Soviet Union, in that polity’s dying throes, the team of director Natalya Serebryakova forged in secret its own adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of the work’s three volumes: Khraniteli, or “Keepers of the Ring,” made for Soviet public television. And into this adaptation, they poured lousy special effects, baffling casting and production choices . . . and an undeniable charm and unexpected faithfulness to certain parts of the source material that ultimately endeared me to the final product.
Like the One Ring itself, Khraniteli was thought lost but was rediscovered, though not in the River Anduin; it was recently uploaded to YouTube in two parts. It is, as much as it can be, a straightforward attempt to depict the well-known events of The Lord of the Rings: Hobbit Frodo Baggins, a humble creature from a far-off corner of the fantasy realm of Middle-Earth, comes into possession of a mysterious Ring, and, with the help of his friend, the wizard Gandalf, he learns that it is a tool of great evil forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, who seeks to dominate Middle-Earth. He and Gandalf join with others to destroy the Ring in the evil place where it was forged. That is, so far as I could tell, what this Soviet film is about. It does not attempt to transform the story into a Marxist parable — perhaps because, by its 1991 release, mere months before the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, no one there really believed in Communism anymore.
It is possible I missed something, however. After all, I don’t speak Russian, and YouTube did not supply reliable subtitles. I had to use the translation capabilities of YouTube’s closed-caption feature, which translated the dialogue with somewhat less clarity than Google Translate, though enough that I could usually get the gist. It wasn’t hard to figure out what the “Ring of Omnipotence” was, who was playing Gandalf and Frodo, etc. Much harder, though, was to discern who of the other hobbits was who, and, in particular, what they were babbling on about in some extended moments of crosstalk between the four of them that defeated the captioning utterly.
The movie also has a strange cast — Aragorn looks to be in his late 20s and Boromir in his 40s, while Frodo has the mien of a foppishly aristocratic Mr. Bean, and Legolas is played by a woman — and costuming, such as Gandalf’s definitely not-gray purple cloak. Its sets do not rise above what is essentially a filmed play and are at times laughably cheap. What outdoor scenes there are all must contend with Russian cold, constantly commented on by the characters in a notable though understandable deviation from the source material. And the production seems to have only four horses, three black and one white, to work with; a single steed-studded scene meant to depict the Nine Nazgul (Ring-corrupted servants of Sauron) simply plays on loop when the script requires.
Much of the story itself is made bewildering by the fact that it is usually possible though frequently difficult to decipher what Khraniteli is attempting to depict. Many of the most unintentionally hilarious moments involve Gandalf, understandably a character who would strain the budget and talent of such a poorly resourced production. Gandalf’s elaborate fireworks consist of two still color images of lights that may well have been made on construction paper. At a moment when Bilbo, Frodo’s uncle and famed former Ring owner, feels seduced by it once more before giving it up, Gandalf famously uses magic to essentially scare him into yielding it over (though, fortunately, not to Gandalf himself). This is a striking scene in the book and in the Jackson film; in the latter, perspective changes and a change in lighting make Gandalf a truly frightening figure. In Khraniteli, Gandalf rolls his eyes and stands up, a disco beat starts playing, and he waves his hands at Bilbo. And when the Fellowship’s journey through the caves of Moria comes to an end, Gandalf’s struggle with an ancient demon known as a Balrog, a famous part of the book and Jackson film . . . simply happens off-screen, as the rest of the Fellowship notices that Gandalf is gone, thus answering my question of how on earth the movie would depict such a spectacle.
Khraniteli’s strangeness is hardly limited to Gandalf, however. In addition to making the Elves of Lorien seem like a cult, showing Aragorn performing hobbit-CPR, and including a host of other oddities, the production made the baffling decision to film almost everything in soft-focus, and to feature periodic interruptions from a bearded, pipe-smoking narrator who sometimes pops on screen to say nothing at all, looks at you, and then disappears instantly. The combined effect evokes a certain paranoia in the viewer, who must occasionally mutter anxiously into the darkness, Did I just see that?
For all my criticisms, however, I can’t help but admire the film’s frequent creativity, its attempt to transcend its own production limitations, and its instances of surprising faithfulness. Indeed, despite its defects, and despite the language barrier, it remains an intelligible adaptation of the events of The Fellowship of the Ring. Even if I hadn’t used jerry-rigged subtitles, I could have gotten the gist of what was happening. Plus there’s a surprisingly adequate rock-and-synthpop score that couldn’t be more different from Howard Shore’s masterpiece for Jackson’s film. Taken together, they actually do communicate and reinforce what is happening on-screen. There are also some impressive subtleties from the actors, who can in wordless physicality communicate such things as a growing divide between Aragorn and Boromir. And sometimes, the creators truly go for something they surely knew they couldn’t plausibly pull off, such as showing Gandalf’s Eagle-aided escape from the villainous Saruman, or Frodo’s struggle in the wraith-world of the Nazgul. Even with the undeniable cheesiness of such moments, it’s hard not to admire that Khraniteli actually gave them a go.
It’s possible that my familiarity with both Tolkien’s work and Jackson’s adaptation aided my understanding; I have no idea if I would have been able to (mostly) figure out what was happening in Khraniteli without such prior knowledge. But, incredibly, the Russian version does some things better than Jackson’s did. Aragorn, for example, though perhaps a bit too young and a bit too disheveled in Khraniteli, resembles far better the hero Tolkien depicted: the one who, after initially disguising himself, is revealed to the hobbits as the king he knows himself to be from the start — not, as Jackson showed him, a somewhat-lost soul who must grow into his worthiness of the throne of Gondor.
And in some instances, Khraniteli simply wins by default, for covering incidents that Jackson elided. The most prominent of these is the hobbits’ encounter with Tom Bombadil, a famously enigmatic and powerful figure in Tolkien’s work whose role in the story was deemed enough of a stumbling block to Jackson and Co. that they dropped him entirely, even though he bookends one of the earliest trials of Frodo and his four hobbit friends as they begin their journey. These trials, involving encounters with a vengeful tree and evil spirits, are depicted in their entirety, and Tom is shown in his rightful role as a mirthful, singing, powerful protector. (He is also shown, through laughably primitive green-screen technology, as much taller than the hobbits.) He even gets his own theme music when he draws near. And at one point, if my understanding is correct, he stares directly at the camera and apparently breaks the fourth wall by announcing his intentions to the viewer, which seems weirdly apt for such a mysterious, powerful character. Khraniteli deserves credit for even attempting to adapt this admittedly difficult portion of the book.
Khraniteli may not quite be one adaptation to rule them all, but for Lord of the Rings fans, it’s essential viewing. It is not enough to make me wish that the Soviet Union hadn’t collapsed so that we could have seen the cast and crew attempt to adapt the rest of the saga. But Khraniteli deserves to be seen, and to be seen as more than just a one-off oddity of the Soviet Union’s collapse. It is also a testament to the enduring universality of Tolkien’s work that even an adaptation hobbled by such enormous — at times, hilarious — limitations can still reflect some of the greatness of The Lord of the Rings.