"The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"

And that possibility is reflected in the movie's major new character, Gollum. No movie creature has been as mesmerizing since the initial appearance of Yoda in "The Empire Strikes Back." The role is credited to the actor Andy Serkis, and apparently Serkis (who also supplies the voice of the character) was present acting in the scenes and his image was then computer animated. However the filmmakers did it, Gollum is a stunning creation. He made a brief appearance in the first film, the creature in the dark pond hissing about his "preciousssss," the ring that Frodo's uncle Bilbo discovered and took away from him. He reenters here, tracking Frodo and Sam, determined to retrieve his precious, and winds up as their guide to the land of Mordor. But what kind of guide?

Gollum, whose real name is Sméagol, was once a creature quite like the hobbits. He was driven mad by his lust for the Ring and the movie implies that his fate is the one for which Frodo is headed. Gollum is inhabited by both his former self, who surfaces as a painful memory of lost contentment, and the mad, grasping passion to which the Ring has felled him. If Gollum is to work at all, we must find him pitiable in his wretchedness and, I'm assuming thanks to the combination of the CGI and Serkis' performance, we do.

He appears both wizened, his body shrunken like that of a frail old man, and with the unlined skin of a newborn. There is something fetuslike about Gollum, both figuratively and literally, especially in his wet, baby-wide eyes. He is unformed, a creature who can go either way. The strangled, hissing voice that Serkis employs conveys the sense of a creature in pain beyond his comprehension. We are both repelled by Gollum and moved to compassion. There wasn't a second he was on-screen when I felt I could take my eyes off him. He is the most amazing of this installment's wonders.

That scanty plot summation may give you an idea of how disparate the story is in terms of location alone. It also hints at the niggling dissatisfaction of "The Two Towers." Because it is the middle of the story, the film doesn't offer the anticipations of a story's beginning or the resolutions of its end.

Here I have to make a confession. Though I believe it's generally the critic's duty to know the sources of literary adaptations, I have never read Tolkien. I fully intended to after seeing "The Fellowship of the Ring" but -- perhaps I may be forgiven for this! -- because I was so thrilled by the film, I simply didn't want to know what would happen next. The changes that Jackson has made here, which have been outlined to me by a trusted friend who knows the books backward and forward, may outrage some Tolkien purists. But if the opinion of someone who hasn't read the books is worth anything, it seems to me that there is one way that Jackson has honored what I have long heard Tolkien admirers speak of: the author's creation of a new language.

Despite the fact that the first two installments of "The Lord of the Rings" (and, I imagine, the final one) are overwhelmingly visual, they also seem to belong to a great tradition of oral storytelling. Think of how the first movie begins, with the screen shrouded in darkness for what seems like minutes while a narrator introduces us to the story and images slowly emerge. To someone who hasn't read the books, the words here have an almost incantatory strangeness. During both movies I found myself wondering, "How do you spell those names?" and trying to imagine how any combination of letters could do justice to the richness and weight of the words and names that set your imagination racing.

What we are watching here is just part of one long film. That's the peril of judging it in isolation, which is what seeing it spread out over three Christmas movie seasons compels us to do. "The Two Towers" isn't a botch or a falling off. Jackson doesn't violate the cardinal movie rule of telling us instead of showing us -- he doesn't wallow in exposition. But we sometimes feel whisked away from one plot strand when we want to stay with it for a while, and that division of our attention hinders the movie's dramatic momentum. Given the nature of the story, I'm not sure there was a better solution.

This problem is particularly noticeable in the sections where Merry and Pippin are taken up (literally) by Treebeard, the head Ent, a guardian of the forest who looks like a giant walking tree. The movie periodically cuts back to Treebeard leading them to his forest home and it seems as if they are walking and walking for days. Those scenes feel as if Jackson had suddenly remembered Merry and Pippin and dashed back to check on them.

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