The Soviet version of The Lord of the Rings has… | Little White Lies

Incoming

The Sovi­et ver­sion of The Lord of the Rings has been unearthed at last

05 Apr 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Two people in formal attire, a man in a yellow shirt and a woman in a long, flowing brown dress, standing together in an interior setting with blurred background.
Two people in formal attire, a man in a yellow shirt and a woman in a long, flowing brown dress, standing together in an interior setting with blurred background.
Russ­ian-lan­guage remake Khran­iteli is right there on YouTube, for curi­ous hob­bits’ viewing.

Lord of the Rings fans pride them­selves on the depth and breadth of their knowl­edge, from the many food­stuffs con­sumed over the many meals of the Shire’s aver­age day to the elab­o­rate lin­eage of dwarves, elves, and men. But even the most com­mit­ted Tolkien diehards were sur­prised this past week at the exca­va­tion of one of the more obscure cran­nies of Mid­dle-Earth ephemera.

The Guardian reports that Khran­iteli, the lit­tle-seen tele­vised Sovi­et ver­sion of the immor­tal fan­ta­sy epic, has at long last been made avail­able to the view­ing pub­lic fol­low­ing decades in offline obscu­ri­ty. The 1991 adap­ta­tion, uploaded now to YouTube in two un-sub­ti­tled parts, offers a curi­ous alter­nate vision for a text that Peter Jack­son and Ralph Bak­shi have defined so defin­i­tive­ly for some audiences.

Russ­ian speak­ers and Tolkien fans uncon­cerned about dia­logue will be delight­ed by the low-bud­get pro­duc­tion design (no inscrip­tion on this ring, as far as we can see) and elec­tro score cour­tesy of rock­er Andrei Romanov, two pieces of an over­all ram­shackle qual­i­ty far removed from the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar pol­ish of the Hol­ly­wood pic­tures that would come a decade lat­er. The scant spe­cial effects have the pro­fes­sion­al­ism one would instead expect from a poor­ly-fund­ed stu­dent film.

The film ran on the Sovi­et chan­nel Leningrad Tele­vi­sion, into whose archives the only extant copy then dis­ap­peared, until the station’s suc­ces­sor 5TV pulled it from obliv­ion with­out warn­ing. As the Guardian item notes, the video accrued over 400,000 views over the first week on the Inter­net, entranc­ing fans who thought they’d absorbed every last iota of Tolkien content.

It’s edi­fy­ing to see the Google Trans­late gar­ble-effect applied to an entire mode of film­mak­ing instead of mere text, as some inter­pre­ta­tions remain intact while oth­ers are revised entire­ly. The Bat­tle of Helm’s Deep may not have the epic sweep of Jackson’s take, but even at a small­er scale, it’s still a tes­ta­ment to the endur­ing poten­cy of Tolkien’s writing.

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