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    The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Film Will Stream After 54 Years on Disney+

    Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s unloved — or misinterpreted? — 1970 documentary, the source for Peter Jackson’s “Get Back,” will stream on Disney+.In 2021, the director Peter Jackson’s sprawling and vibrant Beatles docuseries, “The Beatles: Get Back,” streamed on Disney+ to nearly universal acclaim. The three-part epic, which ran nearly eight hours, captured the drama and frenzy as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recorded, over the pressure-filled month of January 1969, what would become the last album that the Beatles released, “Let It Be.”As fans were well aware, Jackson’s series was culled from nearly 60 hours of behind-the-scenes footage originally shot by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg for “Let It Be,” his little-seen, though often dismissed, 1970 documentary about those recording sessions.After its initial theatrical run, Lindsay-Hogg’s film largely disappeared for more than a half-century with the exception of low-quality VHS versions and bootlegs. Fans tend to remember it as an intriguing historical document capturing the late-stage creative flights of a seismic musical force, but also as a divorce proceeding of sorts, with stark moments of internal discord as the band hurtled toward a nasty split.By that view, “Get Back,” with its abundant moments of jokey banter and on-set clowning, was seen by some as an overdue corrective to “Let It Be.”Little surprise but Lindsay-Hogg, 83, has a very different view. The acclaimed director had a hand in inventing the music video, with his promotional films for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s, and went on to win plaudits for the 1980s British mini-series “Brideshead Revisited.” He has fought for a half-century for “Let It Be” to get a second look and, in his mind, a fair shake.On May 8, he will get his wish, when “Let It Be,” meticulously restored by Jackson’s production team, begins streaming on Disney+ in collaboration with Apple Corps, the company that oversees the Beatles creative and business interests. Lindsay-Hogg spoke to The New York Times about the culmination of a long crusade. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A.I. Made These Movies Sharper. Critics Say It Ruined Them.

    Machine-learning technologies are being used in film restoration for new home video releases. But some viewers strongly dislike the results.In 1998, Geoff Burdick, an executive at James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, was hunched in front of a 12-inch monitor at a postproduction house, carefully preparing “Titanic” for release on LaserDisc and VHS. A state-of-the-art computer process had made it possible for Burdick and his team to scour the film frame by frame, removing tiny imperfections embedded in the original negative: little scratches, flakes of dirt, even water stains that smeared the image. The computer could erase these blemishes using a kind of copy-paste tool, concealing the defects with information from another frame.Burdick, now a senior vice president at the company, told me that this process “seemed like freaking magic at the time.” And yet the results were not entirely well-received. “There were a lot of people who said that this was the most beautiful VHS they’d ever seen in their life, because we’d gotten rid of all that gobbledygook,” he recalled. “But there were a lot of folks who said, ‘This is not right! You’ve removed all of this stuff! If the negative is scratched, then we should see that scratch.’ People were really hard-core about it.”In the decades since, home video formats have reached higher and higher resolutions, with VHS and LaserDisc giving way to DVD and Blu-ray, and eventually to ultra high-definition 4K discs, known as Ultra HD Blu-rays. As the picture quality has improved, restoration tools have evolved with them, making it easier than ever for filmmakers to fine-tune their work using computers. Several of Cameron’s films, including “The Abyss,” “True Lies” and “Aliens,” were recently released on Ultra HD Blu-ray in newly restored versions that are clearer and sharper than ever before — the product of painstaking attention from Lightstorm and Cameron himself. “I think they look the best they’ve ever looked,” Burdick said.Bill Paxton with Schwarzenegger in the film’s streaming version, top, and the Blu-ray version. Details in the background and colors in the foreground are clearer in the new take.20th Century FoxBut as with the old “Titanic” home video, these restorations have proved controversial, with many viewers objecting strenuously to their pristine new look. What has caught the particular ire of critics is the fact that these versions have been restored, in part, using artificial intelligence. Park Road Post Production, the New Zealand company owned by the filmmaker Peter Jackson, helped clean up Cameron’s films using some of the same proprietary machine-learning software used on Jackson’s documentaries “The Beatles: Get Back” and “They Shall Not Grow Old.” The images in Cameron’s classic blockbusters were refined in a way that many felt looked strange and unnatural.The level of detail is eye-popping. Water looks crystalline; colors are bright and vivid, while blacks are deep and inky. Some surfaces, however, do look a little glossy, with a buffed sheen that appears almost lacquered. It can be hard to pinpoint what is changed. But there does seem to be a difference, and depending on the viewer, it can feel slightly uncanny.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    James Wan Prefers Peter Jackson’s Gory Horror Comedies

    The director of 21st-century horror blockbusters (and “Aquaman”) on the movies, food and trading cards that get him through the Halloween season (and beyond).From “Saw” to “Insidious” and “The Conjuring,” James Wan has been a director, creator and producer on some of the biggest horror franchises of the last two decades. Even when he’s gearing up for films outside his genre (Wan’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” drops next year), he’s never far from the horror conversation. The trailer for the Wan-produced possessed doll film, “M3GAN,” lit up the internet when it was released earlier this month. So, it’s not surprising that Wan takes the Halloween season seriously. To start, there’s the annual pilgrimage to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood.“I get to take a break from work and indulge my horror craving,” he said in a recent video interview. “But I’m not watching it, I’m walking through it and experiencing it in a more tactile way. I like to be scared. But, ultimately, it’s fun. You know the guy chasing you with an ax isn’t actually going to ax you.”And then, of course, there are the films. Wan rotates through some of his favorite horror films in October, like “Chopping Mall” and “Night of the Creeps” — or “The Frighteners,” which he says is full of the director Peter Jackson’s unique sense of humor.“Sadly, most people today know him from his ‘Lord of the Rings’ films, but for hardcore fans we all grew up with ‘Dead Alive,’ ‘Bad Taste,’ and ‘Meet The Feebles,’” he says. “In his gory horror comedies, his horror set pieces are so over the top — blood spraying everywhere — it’s just hilarious. And that’s what I see in ‘The Frighteners,’ a little bit of that cheekiness peppered throughout.”Here, Wan talks about the places, movies and food that he enjoys throughout the year. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “The Last of Us Part II” During the pandemic, I played “The Last of Us Part II,” like, five times. It feels like I’m actually playing a movie. These games are so in-depth, you spend hours and days and even weeks with the characters and the story, and you get caught up with them emotionally. And that’s what “The Last of Us Part II” did so well: It was exciting, it was scary, but it was ultimately driven by emotion.2. “Mars Attacks” Trading Cards I grew up collecting toys, comic books and trading cards. During the pandemic, I got back into collectibles. I went on eBay and tried to collect all of the “Mars Attacks” cards. Unfortunately, the originals are almost impossible to find, so I had to buy some reissues. I collected a lot of sports cards in my high school days, so now it’s kind of fun to collect non-sports ones, like “Mars Attacks.”3. Home Theater When I was renovating the home that I’m in now, one of the things I really wanted was a really good home theater. I’ve got nice recliners, a big screen, high-end projectors, a great sound system and the room is fully soundproofed. The first full movie I watched in there was “Tenant.” It’s my pride and joy of the house.4. 1978 Rolex “Pepsi” Another thing I like collecting are vintage watches. They don’t have to be big and fancy. I enjoy the idea of so much artistry and engineering going into something that’s so small. The older the watch is, the cooler it is to me. One of my favorites is my red and blue 1978 Rolex GMT-Master 1675 “Pepsi.” I thought it was fun to get a watch that was, basically, as old as me.5. Netherworld Haunted House One of my favorite haunted houses that I’ve been to is called Netherworld, near Atlanta. A group of us went when we were shooting “Furious 7” around Halloween. There are a lot of cinematic ideas that they put into it. It’s really cool to see them pull off a lot of the gags with cool animatronics, great lighting, fog, and other old-school film tricks, which is the stuff I like about old-school horror films.6. My Mother’s Laksa I grew up on a spicy Malaysian noodle dish called Laksa. It’s not an easy dish to get in America and usually when they do make it, it’s not quite like the one I grew up with. Where I was born in East Malaysia, they make Laksa with spicy shrimp paste, while the rest of the world seems to make it with curry paste. And it just has a different flavor. It takes a lot of work and patience to make — which I don’t really have the time for — so, I just wait until my mother visits me from Australia. She brings all the ingredients and she cooks it for me.7. My Courtyard Garden When you see Rob Zombie and then you see his crib, you kind of go, Oh yeah, that makes sense. When people come to my place, they notice that it’s very different from the kind of movies I make. I need a space that’s calm, light filled, and peaceful. I love my courtyard. It’s a peaceful place for me to go out in the middle of the night, pace back and forth and just think.8. “The Cuphead Show!” Late at night, just before bed, my wife and I have been watching “The Cuphead Show!” on Netflix. It’s a cartoon based on a video game, Cuphead. It’s about a pair of cups who are brothers. I love the old-timey cartoon aesthetic. It’s a nice palate cleanser.9. Antique Music Boxes I have a handful of antique music boxes. I love the way they cram such smart engineering into tiny little boxes. I have one on my coffee table that’s about the size of a child’s coffin. I also have an old gramophone that I like to play every now and then. It freaks my wife out because it sounds like something that’s straight out of one of my horror films — you know, that crackly record player that’s playing some old-timey music.10. The Uffizi Gallery I’m a big fan of Italian art and culture, from artists during the Renaissance to Italian horror directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. When we went to Florence a few years ago, I said we had to visit Uffizi Gallery. The place is filled with the most incredible artwork from artists like Rembrandt and Caravaggio. It was amazing. To see the works of artists I grew up admiring was one of my favorite life experiences. More

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    Know How the Beatles Ended? Peter Jackson May Change Your Mind.

    The director’s three-part documentary “Get Back” explores the most contested period in the band’s history and reveals there’s still plenty to debate.It is a cold January morning in 1969, and three of the four Beatles are assembled in a cavernous film studio in London, with cameras rolling and microphones everywhere. “Lennon’s late again,” Paul McCartney says matter of factly, as he plugs in his bass guitar.With Ringo Starr and George Harrison sitting groggily before him, a tray of toast and jam by their side, McCartney starts to strum and sing, searching for inspiration. Within minutes, a mid-tempo groove takes shape and a familiar vocal melody emerges. “Get back,” he sings in a faint howl. “Get back to where you once belonged.” Almost like magic, a Beatles classic begins to form out of nothing.Later that same day, after John Lennon arrives, the four rock deities gather in a circle and bicker. They have loose plans for a concert TV special featuring brand-new songs, but most of the men appear to be dreading it — and may be dreading each other, too. Lennon, who seems to space out for much of the meeting, declares vaguely that “communication” with an audience is his only aim, while an impatient McCartney challenges his bandmates to show some enthusiasm for the project or abandon it.Harrison blurts out what they may all be thinking: “Maybe we should have a divorce?”Those back-to-back scenes in Peter Jackson’s documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back,” a seven-hour-plus project that will be shown in three parts on Disney Plus from Nov. 25 to 27, encapsulate the twin sides of the most contested period in Beatles history — the glory of artistic creation by the world’s most beloved and influential rock band, and the grueling conflicts that led to its breakup, announced a year later.For Beatles fans, or any student of 20th-century pop culture, these are astonishing glimpses into the band’s working life and the tensions that surrounded them.“It’s sort of that one impossible fan dream,” Jackson said in a video interview from Wellington, New Zealand, where he has spent much of the last four years in a darkened editing suite surrounded by Beatles memorabilia. “‘I wish I could go in a time machine and sit in the corner of the stage while they were working,’” he said, describing a lifelong dream like a child praying for the ultimate Christmas present. “‘Just for one day, just watch them, and I’ll be really quiet and sit there.’”“Well, guess what?” he continued. “The time machine’s here now.”Peter Jackson pored over nearly 60 hours of footage for his documentary “Get Back.”Nicola Dove/DisneyJackson’s film is also a volley in one of the longest-running debates in Beatles scholarship. The band’s journey in January 1969 began with intense pressure to put on a high-concept live show and ended with something wonderfully low-concept: an impromptu lunchtime performance on a London rooftop that reminded the world of the band’s majesty, spontaneity and wit. “I hope we passed the audition,” Lennon quips at the show’s end.That period was already the subject of “Let It Be,” a 1970 vérité film by Michael Lindsay-Hogg; its soundtrack was the Beatles’ final studio LP. In time, that film took on a reputation as a joyless document of the band’s collapse, and later testimony from members of the Beatles seemed to buttress that view. Lennon described the sessions as “hell,” and Harrison called them the group’s “winter of discontent.”Yet that narrative has long been challenged by some Beatles aficionados. Lindsay-Hogg’s film, they argue, was selectively edited for maximum dreariness, perhaps to retroactively explain the breakup — “Abbey Road,” the Beatles’ true swan song, was made after “Let It Be” but released first — while evidence from bootlegged tapes suggests a mixture of pleasure and frustration familiar to any musician struggling through Take 24 on a deadline.The mere existence of “Get Back” is a sign that, more than half a century after the Beatles disbanded, their history is still unsettled, and remains endlessly ripe for deep-dive research and partisan counternarratives.Jackson’s film, arriving with the authority of a lightning bolt hurled from a mountaintop in Middle-earth, may become the final word in the argument over this period, though the story it tells is far from simple. Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy — and an avowed Beatles nut — was given access to nearly 60 hours of previously unseen footage by Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, with no brief, Jackson said, but to restore the film and tell the full story.From left: Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the studio.Apple CorpsThe Beatles, or at least their corporate surrogates, have embraced Jackson’s retelling, and a preview of the film highlighted moments of brotherly silliness, like the band dancing and clowning in the studio. At a music industry event last year, Jeff Jones, Apple Corps’ chief executive, promised that the new film would “bust the myth” that these sessions were “the final nail in the Beatles’ coffin.” Yet Jackson said the band has had no influence over his work.“Everyone sort of thinks it’s a whitewash” because the Beatles have authorized the film, Jackson said with a laugh. “But actually it’s almost the exact opposite. It shows everything that Michael Lindsay-Hogg could not show in 1970. It’s a very unflinching look at what goes on.”For fans who remember Lindsay-Hogg’s film, or have read dismal anecdotes in any of dozens of Beatles books, Jackson’s scenes of lighthearted antics and creative breakthroughs jump off the screen. We see the Beatles cracking each other up at the mic, mimicking posh accents and performing absurdist slapstick as if in a “Monty Python” skit.“You see these four great friends, great musicians, who just lock in and develop these songs, and you see it all onscreen,” Jackson said.Day after day, new material takes shape. Polishing the lyrics to the song “Get Back,” McCartney and Lennon test out names for a character who departs his Arizona home: Jojo Jackson, Jojo Carter, Jojo Daphne. Shaving off the last name gives McCartney enough syllables for some more specificity in the story: “Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona …”Lennon, chewing gum, glances up to ask: “Is Tucson in Arizona?”The original “Let It Be” was shot on 16 millimeter film and blown up to grainy 35 millimeter. Generations of fans, if they’ve seen it at all, have had access to the movie only in crummy bootlegs transferred from videotape. It has never been officially released on DVD or in online formats.I told Jackson that when I finally saw “Let It Be,” 20-odd years ago, my local video rental shop required a $100 cash deposit. Jackson grabbed a vintage VHS copy and said he had long regretted not buying it when visiting the United States in the early 1980s, but the format was unplayable on his machine in New Zealand. While making “Get Back,” he tracked down an original on eBay for $200.“I don’t have a VHS machine,” he said, “so I still can’t play it.”Jackson’s restored images in “Get Back” are strikingly clear, and help flesh out a story of creative anxiety and creature comforts inside Fortress Beatle. Attendants pour glasses of wine as the musicians rehearse; Yoko Ono paints Japanese calligraphy while Lennon and McCartney, a few feet away, yuk their way through “Two of Us” in goofy accents.But the misery is never far away, and as the arguments grind on, it starts to seem miraculous that the Beatles can still come together at all. At one point, Harrison briefly quits the band, apparently fed up with his second-fiddle status. In the studio cafeteria, Lennon tells McCartney that the band’s rift with their lead guitarist has been “a festering wound.”After Harrison walks out, the remaining Beatles jam loudly and angrily. Starr tears through the drums. Ono, dressed all in black, stands at a microphone and wails to a wild climax — perhaps the most violent sound the Beatles ever created.A recurring theme is the band’s discomfort over the role of Ono, who sits by Lennon’s side constantly during the sessions and will come to be vilified by fans for her supposed role in the Beatles’ breakup. A companion book to the film, with further transcripts from the tapes, quotes Lennon telling McCartney: “I would sacrifice you all for her.”Jackson’s restored images in “Get Back” help flesh out a story of creative anxiety and creature comforts inside the Beatles’ cloistered world.Apple CorpsYet it is never clear whether the Beatles’ conflicts are caused by the events of the day or by the accumulated stress of years in the spotlight. Peter Brown, who was a top executive at Apple during this time, said in an interview that the troubles began with the success of “Sgt. Pepper” in 1967.“They were doing things that they’d never done before, and they were very, very worried that it was going to take off,” Brown said. “And of course it took off like crazy. Then how do you follow that?”Some of the drama, of course, may be typical band stuff. Neil Finn, of the New Zealand group Crowded House, said that Jackson showed his band about four hours of footage earlier this year. “We all wept,” he wrote in an email.“So much of it struck a chord with me from my own rehearsals and recording experiences,” Finn added. “Paul asking John if he had any new songs, and John kind of blustering with his answer: Uh, maybe, not really. You can see the others staring in disbelief. I’ve seen that look before.”But the stakes were incredibly high for the Beatles, and the prospect of the band’s dissolution hangs like a cloud over almost the entire film. Early on, McCartney floats an idea for the still-undefined TV special. Their performance, he proposes, would be interspersed with news reports about earthquakes and other “red hot” events around the world. “And at the end,” McCartney says, “the final bulletin is: ‘The Beatles have broken up.’”To some extent, “Get Back” and the original “Let It Be” are exhibits in a study of truth. Does the footage actually show the endgame of the Beatles, or has history gotten it wrong all these years? Does the weight of the evidence point to the band being joyful and creatively fecund, or fed up with each other’s company? The answer may be: all of the above.In one of many moments of levity, Starr hoists a mug behind the drum kit.Apple CorpsIn a note included with a new reissue of the album “Let It Be,” McCartney writes that the original film “was pretty sad as it dealt with the breakup of our band, but the new film shows the camaraderie and love the four of us had between us.”Lindsay-Hogg believes that not only fans, but likely also members of the Beatles themselves, have been misreading “Let It Be” for years.“I think part of the rap that ‘Let It Be’ has had is no one has seen it for a very long time,” he said in an interview. “And it got very confused with the time it came out, which was just after they’d broken up.”Of course, the Beatles did not disband in January 1969. They went on to record “Abbey Road” later that year, with great care; most of the songs on that album, including “Octopus’s Garden,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Carry That Weight” and “Something,” are heard in early stages during “Get Back.”But Jackson’s film makes clear that the end was nigh. If there is a true culprit in the breakup, it was the business conflicts that ensued during 1969, when the group tussled over its management, and Lennon and McCartney tried but failed to take control of the company that held their songwriting rights.Those problems are foreshadowed in “Get Back” with the utterance of a single name: Allen Klein, the American business manager who arrives a few days before the rooftop show to pitch his services for the band. Shortly after the events shown in “Get Back,” Lennon, Harrison and Starr all signed on with Klein; McCartney declined, and the schism was never repaired. Klein died in 2009.“Our movie doesn’t show the breaking up of the Beatles,” Jackson said, “but it shows the one singular moment in history that you could possibly say was the beginning of the end.”If Beatles’ scholarship and fandom has proved anything, it is that even a contradictory summation of the band and its influence can still hold true. The Beatles were a pop boy band that ended up pushing the creative boundaries of rock music further than anyone else; nearly every day of their existence together has been documented exhaustively, though a full accounting of their motivations is impossible.“Get Back” seems to contain all those multitudes — the delight, the tension, the fighting and the wonder of the Beatles simply playing music on the roof.“There’s no goodies in it, there’s no baddies,” Jackson said. “There’s no villains, there’s no heroes. It’s just a human story.”Jackson’s scenes of lighthearted antics and creative breakthroughs jump off the screen. Apple Corps More

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    A Soviet ‘Lord of the Rings’ Is Unearthed, Epic in Its Own Way

    Tolkien fans received an unexpected gift with the rediscovery of an all-but-forgotten 1991 production. They were also left with questions, like “why is Gollum wearing a lettuce on his head?”The hobbits and elves are familiar, if the Soviet folk-rock is not. One man is clearly a wizard, though the special effects are, at their best, not very good. And the growl of an actor painted green does sound — sort of — like he might be saying “gollum.”What’s unmistakable over two hours of video is the golden ring that can make people disappear: This messy, low-budget odyssey is both a time capsule of Soviet TV and, until recently, a little-known version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy “The Lord of the Rings.”For the first time in decades, audiences can now watch this adaptation of the first volume in the trilogy, “The Fellowship of the Ring,” which aired for the first and last time on Russian television in 1991, the year the Soviet Union dissolved and the performance vanished into the archives of state TV.The Russian broadcaster Channel Five, after recently finding and digitizing the footage in what it called a “long and painstaking process,” posted the two-part recording online in late March.“Everyone believed that the recording of the performance was lost,” Channel Five said in a statement. But after Tolkien fan clubs urged the broadcaster to scour the archives of its Soviet predecessor, Leningrad Television, workers for Channel Five managed to find the footage last year.“At the numerous requests of fans of Tolkien’s work,” the channel said, it decided to post the “film adaptation of a theatrical production” online. Its title is “Khraniteli,” which translates to “The Guardians.” Online, the production has found an audience, despite, or perhaps because of, its hapless special effects, confusing editing, operatic acting and seemingly nonexistent budget. On YouTube, Parts 1 and 2 have been watched almost two million times. After reporting the film’s rediscovery this week, The Guardian also appraised it (“the sort of LSD freak-out you saw on after-school public information films in the 1980s”). The BBC, Vulture and Entertainment Weekly followed suit.“It’s so bad it’s good,” said Dimitra Fimi, a lecturer in fantasy and children’s literature at the University of Glasgow. “It’s a weird concoction of stuff — some of it is really close to the narrative and other bits are curtailed somehow.”Dr. Fimi said that, like other scholars she had spoken with, she enjoyed the production even as it left her wrestling with mysteries like “why is Gollum wearing a lettuce on his head?”So far, Tolkien fans in Russia and the West seem to appreciate the production for what it is and what it is not. Everyone knows it is not the director Peter Jackson’s blockbuster “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy of the 2000s.“Тhere is no sense in comparing these films,” said Nikolai Matchenya, a 31-year-old fan from Pskov, Russia. “It’s like comparing a new car with new computer systems inside with old, mechanical automobiles.”The effects? “Too old-fashioned,” he said. The acting? “Poor.” The costumes? Those were “not bad.”Few would argue about the effects, at least. When the wizard Gandalf sets off magic fireworks, the actor lifts his cape and drawings of fireworks appear. A bug-eyed bird puppet stands in for a giant eagle, and the villainous Sauron appears as an eye superimposed over a cup of pink ooze. Magic is often depicted with a watery effect and some spooky music.A screenshot from YouTube showing special effects in the Russian television adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings.”YouTubeThe cast of “Lord of the Rings.”YouTube“I unironically love it,” said Maria Alberto, a fan studies scholar at the University of Utah. People who say, “Oh, it’s really bad, it’s really cringe,” she said, had grown used to decades’ worth of “polished adaptations.”She said the production reminded her of fan-made adaptations of other Tolkien works, in which an audience can watch the process of adaptation unfold in chaotic detail. “What I’m kind of seeing with this film is they’re still figuring it out,” she said.Arseny Bulakov, the chairman of the St. Petersburg Tolkien Society, called the production “a very revealing artifact” of its era: “filmed in destitute times, without stage settings, with costumes gathered from acquaintances — and at the same time with great respect for Tolkien and love for his world.”Mr. Bulakov said it reminded him “of the early years of Tolkienists” in Russia. “Not getting paid for half a year, dressed in old sweaters, they nevertheless got together to talk about hobbits and elves, to rewrite elvish poems by hand, to try to invent what was impossible to truly know about the world.”Tolkien’s books were hard to find for decades in the Soviet Union, with no official translation of “The Hobbit” until 1976 — “with a few ideological adaptations,” according to Mark Hooker, the author of “Tolkien Through Russian Eyes.” But the “Rings” trilogy was “essentially banned” for decades, he said, perhaps because of its religious themes or the depiction of disparate Western allies uniting against a sinister power from the East.In 1982, an authorized and abridged translation of “Fellowship” became a best seller, Mr. Hooker said. Translators started making unofficial, samizdat versions in the years that followed — translating and typing out the entire text on their own.“Khraniteli” was broadcast at a moment of “great systemic turmoil” as the Soviet Union was dismantled, and part of “the flood of ideas that rushed in to fill the vacuum,” Mr. Hooker said. “For the average Russian, the world had turned upside-down.”Irina Nazarova, an artist who saw the original broadcast in 1991, told the BBC that in retrospect, the “absurd costumes, a film devoid of direction or editing, woeful makeup and acting — it all screams of a country in collapse.”Mr. Hooker compared the production itself to a samizdat translation, “with all the rough edges.” Among them are wobbling cameras, as though the hobbits were filming their journey with a camcorder, and sudden cuts to a narrator who, smoking a pipe or smiling silently, sometimes seems content to leave his audience in the dark.The production includes some scenes from the books that are not found in the Jackson films, including one with the character Tom Bombadil and the creatures called barrow-wights. It also deviates in some ways, with the character Legolas played by a woman and no appearance of the monstrous Balrog.All these decisions are “fascinating” to Dr. Fimi and her fellow scholars, she said, especially for “what that particular cultural moment is doing with that text.”And though the Jackson trilogy is well-regarded, the community is excited to have a new adaptation to mull over before a coming Amazon series based on Tolkien’s work, she said. “The more plurality we have of different versions and different visions of Tolkien’s work, the better.”Channel Five intends to make the production even more accessible. “In the near future,” it said, the video would get subtitles in English.Andrew Kramer contributed reporting. More