Return of the King countdown: seven days

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean and hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee—but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.

Gollum withdrew himself, and a green glint flickered under his heavy lids. Almost spider-like he looked now, crouched back on his bent limbs, with his protruding eyes. The fleeting moment had passed, beyond recall.

—The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”

This passage is actually from The Two Towers; but of course, the film version of TTT ended with the hobbits still in Ithilien, not yet having reached the Cross-roads and the Morgul Vale. So we may see Gollum's near-repentance in the next installment.

Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic. It is therefore hardly surprising that the theme of redemption often recurs in his work: Boromir's end is perhaps the most obvious example, though there are many others. The defeated Saruman is offered mercy by Gandalf, provided that he surrender the emblems of his office; the ban on Galadriel's return to the West is lifted; the youthful blunders of a certain “fool of a Took” are turned to greater good. But there are hard lessons as well. Saruman refuses to humble himself, and in the end appears to be truly lost (though what exactly that means for a maia—essentially an angelic spirit—is not clear). Gollum almost repents: but almost won't save him, even if the final hardening of his heart is prompted by Sam's misplaced suspicion.

Andy Serkis' portrayal of Gollum in TTT was nothing if not brilliant, leading some to claim that the best actor in the movie was rendered in CGI. But Serkis couldn't have pulled it off without a quality script. Peter Jackson and his co-writers did an impressive job in showcasing the Sméagol/Gollum duality, even if it smacked a bit much of freshman-level psychology; yet if this is any indication, the best may be still to come.

Fran [Walsh, PJ's companion and co-writer] had this idea that instead of repeating what he had established in The Two Towers - Gollum being the vicious dark side, the survivor, full of hatred and revenge, with the re-emerging Sméagol as the chink of light in his soul, the abused child, the victim who really trusts Frodo, and the side we felt pity for - that we turn it all on its head so that Sméagol was really the cold calculating passive-aggressive psychopath who play acted being the victim to get his own way. In comparison, Gollum would be less dangerous because his passion, lust and aggression were true hot-blooded emotions, flooded with feeling. The idea sent me reeling but I knew instinctively that this would be the way to go, that the character would deepen and take the audience on a very complex journey.

My only worries were, I suppose, that it questioned my world-view. I had played Gollum as someone who, at the end of the day, no matter what he'd done, was a very sick addict and was redeemable because he was the victim of a powerful force that he couldn't handle. Now we were looking at a character who is pure evil, past all redemption. My brain was frazzled by the implications.

I suspect that this new interpretation will ring more true, because it is simply closer to the truth: each of us may indeed be sick—each addicted in our own ways—but we are also fallen. Redemption only makes sense in light of the latter.

UPDATE: It appears that Serkis really misses Tolkien's point: ” Asked what he would do if he had the all-powerful but corrupting ring that is the focus of the trilogy, Serkis said 'I would banish all religions first of all.'” (Link via CT's Film Forum.)