1,000th post: LOTR and the Macbeth Retort

Tonight the third and last Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, was on the teeve. I didn't mean to watch it but I just happened to switch on the telly as I was passing and there was David Wenham as the noble Lord Faramir, skewering Orcs left and right, and I was gone for all money. (I recently saw Australia and am now planning a David Wenham Tribute Post.)

If you count this blog as a continuation of Pavlov's Cat, which is all it is really, then this is my 1,000th post: 871 at Pavlov's Cat and 129 here at Still Life With Cat. And I dedicate it to Shakespeare, Tolkien and Peter Jackson.

Because my favourite moment in this movie is the one where the warrior maiden Eowyn, in full battle gear and therefore not recognisable as a woman, faces down the Lord of the Nazgul on the plain before the gates of Minas Tirith. After she's cut off the head of his disgusting pterosaur airborne battle steed thingy and they're face to face on the field of battle, with her in full armour but still lithely dodging his nasty giant mace, he warns her: 'No man can kill me.'

Whereupon Eowyn lifts her visor to reveal the angelic face of Miranda Otto, shakes her blonde locks free, replies fiercely and triumphantly 'I am no man!' and stabs him straight through the face, upon which he crumples up, collapses like a piece of mouldy fruit, and dissolves into air. It's not quite what happens in the book, but the man/woman exchange is pretty much the same.

For those who may not remember the end of Macbeth the Scottish play, the Weird Sisters have shown Macbeth an apparition saying '... none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.' By the end, desperate and drunk and silly on hubris because of the witches' prophecies, Macbeth faces Macduff, who's mad with grief and rage over the slaughter of his wife and children and hell-bent on revenge, and says 'I bear a charméd life, which must not yield / To one of woman born.' Whereupon Macduff replies, in one of the most chilling lines in all of Shakespeare and that is saying a great deal, 'Despair thy charm: / And let the angel whom thou still hast served [he means Lucifer, I think] / Tell thee Macduff was from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd.' And swordfights him off the stage, returning shortly with his severed head.

The scene in the movie (and, I'm sure, the book), warning the would-be invincible to beware of language and not to take prophecies literally, is a nice bit of homage. And I was very happy to see it again.