End Credits

An impending cold spell has again prompted a return to this space. Helped by the foot of snow that has descended, slowing even the bravest as they slide their oversized vehicles to and from the offices they are forced to employ.

But my mind is at ease. Despite another busy day of commuting and typing, eyes jumping from monitor to monitor, a restless approach to a weekend waiting.

This is in part due to a soothing playlist. One that has disappeared the tinnitus and reminded me of a less hurried time. Where I would still consider going to a theater to watch a premiere, an exercise now so uninviting and diminished that I cannot foresee patronizing the silver screen anytime soon.

I was speaking with someone earlier this week about film endings. At first, we touched on how a significant fraction of modern audiences enthralled by blockbusters remain in their seats hoping to catch after-credits scenes. To glimpse an easter egg or snatch a preview of a sequel or spinoff. This trend no longer the arena of only superhero movies, but any studio-backed venture seeking to establish a franchise. A capitalist evolution of the type of quick, trivial, and non-consequential jokes that elevated the stature of comedies like Airplane! and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The conversation soon moved to closing scores. Those that capped narratives with emotional weight, beautifully transitioning the captive witness back to reality. A final Pavlovian filament to the audiovisual yarn weaved, allowing viewers to exit dreams via a veil of scrolling text and imagery. If threaded well, forever tying fond memories to a moment when names of import flash across a frame.

And that is what I share with you today: a few favorites of mine. All related by one of the greatest trilogies every committed to film. After all, it is the overall quality of the picture that also determines how fondly one revisits those scores. I am partial to many excellent efforts somewhat hampered by their association with flawed products.

As a set, however, one would be hard-pressed to find anything in parallel with Howard Shore’s ending compositions for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Independently towering and together a triumph.

Think back to those incredible instances.

Two young hobbits – robbed of friends, energy, and innocence, yet clinging to hope – climbing through a desolate landscape as the camera pans up to reveal foreboding mountains encased in ash and gloom. The slow fading to Shore and Enya’s touching epilogue, “May It Be”:

May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh, how far you are from home

Not the ending of a story but a pause in an epic tale.

(It is worth mentioning “In Dreams”, sections of which accompany the above song during the end credits of The Fellowship of the Ring.)

And what of that second haunting lament that anchors the trilogy around two contrasting nodes? From hope to despair, as The Two Towers concludes with a promise of betrayal. A creature painted wretched by time and dark influences leads our two protagonists towards certain peril. The final shot of the film, in this instance, adding to the horrors above the horizon: lava, lightning, and an ominous eye atop a grand stronghold, flanked by Nazgul gliding on hell-hawks.

No path for shire-folk following a scheming guide.

So in the end
I will be what I will be
No loyal friend
Was ever there for me

Finally, the tearful goodbye. Our heroes outlast their foes and harness a few miracles on their way to peace. But they cannot go back to a normal taken away by an unexpected journey. Shore and Annie Lennox’s “Into the West” plays over parchment portraits of those loved and lost along the way to The Return of the King. A perfect encapsulation of difficult farewells:

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
All Souls pass

Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time

Don’t say
We have come now to the end
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again

I will say it again: independently towering and together a triumph. Melodies and movies that will stay with me for quite a while.

For your solace and reminiscence on a frigid Friday.