National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

New Line Cinema released Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring in December 2001, launching one of the most ambitious fantasy trilogies in Hollywood history. The film earned widespread critical acclaim and introduced Tolkien's Middle-earth to a new generation of audiences, becoming a cultural landmark of early twenty-first century cinema.

This cell, titled Gimli, Frodo, Merry and Pippin, captures three frames from the Fellowship's crossing of the mountain pass at Caradhras. Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins, Dominic Monaghan as Merry Brandybuck, Billy Boyd as Pippin Took, and John Rhys-Davies as Gimli press through the snow and rock of that treacherous high passage, the frames nearly identical and quietly cinematic in their repetition.