Lady Eowyn, the warrior maiden who stole our hearts

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is a formidable epic. A little more than 9 hours of supreme quality cinema, practically without waste. Formidable battles, great performances, brilliant speeches: the ultimate battle between Good and Evil.
 

However, The Lord of the Rings has a problem... and that is that there are not many female characters that are developed in depth or occupy a preponderant central space. Galadriel, the elven witch, only serves to scare and give ominous warnings. She resigns herself to a role of witness to the fate of the peoples of Middle-earth. Okay, Cate Blanchett's deeply gravelly voice is like velvet to the viewer's ears, but sometimes one wonders if someone with such power should not have had a more active role in the epic of our heroes.

Lady Arwen, on the other hand, is just a beautiful decoration. She gives a human side to Aragorn - the renegade heir of Gondor who must come out of the shadows to save Middle-earth, even if he may die in the attempt -, and generates a nice romance, full of emotional images (the immortal married to a human; a beautiful couple that can only be happy for a fragment of eternity, a drop of water in the ocean of the elf princess' existence)... but she doesn't have a substantial participation either.
 

But if there is anyone who represents the emotional heart of The Lord of the Rings, it is Eowyn, the niece of Theoden, king of Rohan. She just appears in the second part - The Two Towers - and immediately steals our hearts.
 

And that merit is twofold: the impeccable script by Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Stephen Sinclair & Frances Walsh - extremely economical when it comes to delineate deeply the characters with just a handful of sentences -, and the formidable performance of Miranda Otto.

Otto's face lights up the screen every time she appears on the scene. First, as the maiden in peril, coveted by the despicable Grima Wormtongue and watching her beloved uncle fall under the sway of the evil counselor's spells. The arrival of the four strangers - Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Aragorn - brings a small glimmer of hope to Rohan. Here are four witnesses who can attest to Grima's manipulation and, perhaps, help them. Gandalf, by deceiving the guards, not only frees Theoden from the spell but succeeds in driving the wretched Grima from the lands of the horse-charmers.
 

And it is then that Eowyn begins to shine. Not only because her relationship with Theoden is highly emotional - it's more of a father-daughter bond than uncle and niece -. Theoden is a brave, wise, reckless figure who can lower his defenses in the tearful gaze of a woman who loves him too much and has suffered for him for years. With the family rebuilt - with the sad news that Theoden's son has fallen in the struggles of the resistance against the forces of darkness - they must now resort to an extreme and desperate remedy: exile.

But even at the end of the world there is room for love, and Eowyn's eyes can't tear themselves away from Aragorn's picture. He is handsome, honest, dashing. It's like an adolescent flirtation that Aragorn ends up pausing, by giving her to understand that he has a love waiting for him at the other end of Middle-earth. Impossible to know if Arwen is alive - or if Aragorn and his allies can survive the siege in Helm's Deep, the place Theoden has chosen to resist the brutal assault of the forces of darkness - but those looks of complicity and admiration at least give joy and hope to the princess who now believes that destiny can be changed.
 

The die is cast in Helm's Deep. Eowyn is dying to fight alongside her compatriots. The moment she picks up a sword and contemplates it with a smile, we know that the blood of a warrior runs through her veins. She rehearses several moves and, before hurting anyone, she clashes swords with Aragorn, whose gaze melts her.

“The women in this kingdom have long since learned to use swords. With them I fear neither death nor pain.”
 

“And then what do you fear, my lady?”
 

“A cage. To be behind bars until use and old age accept them and all possibility of value is gone beyond memory or desire.”
 

Impressed by Eowyn's determination, Aragorn concludes:
 

“You are a daughter of kings, a shield maiden of Rohan. I do not believe that is your destiny.”

One might say that there is a certain sexist tone to Tolkien's text - only men, even teenagers and boys, can fight but not women - and that, even, Eowyn is just a Chekhov's gun - the only purpose of having a heroine in The Lord of the Rings is someone who can slay the Witch-king of Angmar and who is not a male -; but Jackson's script tries to correct that truism, giving much more heroic weight to Eowyn and extending her scenes.
 

She is an extremely determined woman, but also a passionate woman, and one who has a deep fear of the unknown. And that is what will come to light, scenes later, in the gigantic battle on the fields of Pelennor.

Because the great heroines of cinema are not those relentless badasses who know it all and defeat their enemies with astonishing ease, but those who are drenched in sweat because of a deep fear that invades them; they suffer, cry, rebuild themselves and go into battle trembling with anguish, but determined to do whatever it takes to accomplish their mission or die with honor in the attempt. The ultimate example of this is Ripley in Aliens, when she decides to go rescue the girl from the alien queen's nest. The whole sequence in the elevator - where she readies her weapons, sweats profusely, clenches her fists and uses the adrenaline produced by fear to turn it into courage - is a brilliant sequence. James Cameron knows all too well how to create strong, charismatic female characters, and to do so, he must first exhibit their weakness.
 

And that's what happens in the fields of Pelennor, where Eowyn infiltrates her uncle Theoden's multitudinous army, and takes Pippin with her into battle. Both are terrified and cling desperately to each other, but they are determined to fight for their friends and their country. Breathless, teary-eyed, hands trembling... they will press on even though they know this may only be a one-way trip.

The charge is brutal and the adrenaline flows. Miranda Otto's face is a kaleidoscope of emotions. She screams, she fears, she fights mercilessly... and when the Nazgul of the Witch-king of Angmar rips King Theoden's horse to shreds and leaves her uncle at the mercy of the beast's jaws... when all is lost...
 

... she appears and steps in. Defiant, trembling, desperate. Brave.
 

How many times have I seen this scene? Hundreds of times?. And, no matter how many replays, it moves me to tears every time. This is great cinema. This is epic. The Lord of the Rings is riddled with emotional sequences, but my favorite is this one. Theoden's speeches are memorable, the jokes between Legolas and Gimli are delightful, Gandalf's reflections with the hobbits are tips of wisdom etched in my memory ("End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... “... ohh, that speech has such a Shakespearean inspiration and cadence!)... but when Otto cries out with his voice cracking from exhaustion and fear

“I will kill you if you touch him!”

... I still feel the theater falling apart, as I did when I saw the film at its time of release in 2003. All odds are against her; this is an unequal, unwinnable fight. A demon versus a woman dominated by fear and adrenaline. Each onslaught of the Witch-king is brutal, to the point of leaving her seriously injured.
 

And in those delightful twists of fate, the smallest and most cowardly hobbit comes out of nowhere, and earns the title of hero, bending the Witch-king by hurting him in the leg with his tiny sword. Enough time to open a window for Eowyn to annihilate the demon, fulfilling the prophecy that no man could kill him...

Unless she was an unheard-of and reckless warrior.
 

But the feeling of justice is fleeting. Theoden's body is crushed. His fatherly gaze rests on Eowyn's tearful face... but his time is running out.
 

“I know your face... Eowyn. My eyes darken.”
 

“No! No!. I'm going to save you.”
 

“You already did... Eowyn. My body is broken. You have to let me go... I go to my fathers, in whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed... Eowyn... “.
 

And he dies, while Eowyn's cry of agony echoes throughout the battlefield.

Because hobbits, wizards, dwarves, elves and knights may be brave or desperate heroes, men of faith who leap into the void offering their lives in sacrifice in order to stop a greater evil. But there is only one Eowyn: a maiden with an innocent and angelic gaze who refused to let other heroes defend her, and decided to step forward to face the purest and most implacable evil face to face. A role that could have failed in the hands of any other actress than Miranda Otto, who turned her warrior princess into an immortal and compulsively admirable character.