Khraniteli

• 1. Introduction

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  Khraniteli aired once in 1991, then disappeared for thirty years. Leningrad Television broadcast this Soviet television play during the final days of the Soviet Union. When Channel 5, the station's successor, republished it on YouTube in 2021, the first episode drew over half a million views within days. What those viewers found was a videotape adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Fellowship of the Ring," shot on a low budget and missing from history for decades. Its production conditions, its surviving scenes, and the scale of its rediscovery all raise the same question: what does a culture leave behind when it makes something for itself, with no expectation of a wider audience?

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• 2. Keepers of the Ring

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  J. R. R. Tolkien published "The Lord of the Rings" in three volumes between 1954 and 1955. He was skeptical that the work could ever be properly dramatized. He and his publishers, Allen and Unwin, were open to film proposals, but on strict terms. Either they would keep a veto on creative decisions, or they would accept a suitably large sum of money to relinquish it.

  By the time Leningrad Television began its adaptation, a Russian translation of the novel had been available since 1982. That translation, by Vladimir Muravyov and Andrey Kistyakovsky, became the production's working script. The title Khraniteli translates as "Keepers" or "Guardians" of the Ring.

  The production was made on videotape, under the direction of Natalya Serebryakova. The score was written by Andrei "Dyusha" Romanov of the Russian rock band Akvarium. He also served as the film's narrator on screen. Sergey Shelgunov, cast as Merry Brandybuck, later said the production ran for about nine hours in total and wrapped in less than a week. The script preserved characters and scenes that later, more expensive productions would choose to omit entirely.

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• 3. The Bombadil Detour

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  Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of "The Fellowship of the Ring" also covered material from "The Two Towers." It did not include Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, or the Barrow-wight. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy cut the same sequence, judging that the Old Forest detour did not advance the main plot. Khraniteli kept it in full. In the film, the hobbit companions enter the Old Forest, where the malevolent tree Old Man Willow traps one of them. Tom Bombadil appears and frees the prisoner, then brings all four hobbits to his home. There, his wife Goldberry hosts them at her table.

  Setting out again, the hobbits are captured by the Barrow-wight, who lays them out in his burial mound as if for a funeral. Frodo alone wakes and calls out to Bombadil, who arrives and frees them a second time. Entertainment Weekly, writing when the film was rediscovered, described the Bombadil scenes as evoking "a sense of fairy-tale surrealism." These scenes, absent from both Bakshi's animation and Jackson's trilogy, were central to what audiences noticed when Khraniteli resurfaced in 2021.

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• 4. Found on YouTube

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  NME quoted a Russian viewer's response to the rediscovered film: "It is as absurd and monstrous as it is divine and magnificent. The opening song is especially lovely. Thanks to the one who found this rarity." Newsweek quoted another viewer, who wrote: "While listening to the opening mournful song, I almost died from laughter and pleasure."

  The Chicago Tribune remarked that narrator Andrei "Dyusha" Romanov appeared on screen as "a bearded man wearing oversized eyeglasses that scream 1991." The Tribune also noted that the film's soft-focus effect appeared to result from smearing hair gel on the camera lens. The Metro wrote that the simple effects gave the teleplay a feeling more like "a theatre production than a movie, which adds to the charm." The New York Post cited a wistful American viewer hoping for a Russian "hero" to produce English subtitles. Russian broadcaster REN TV noted that Legolas was played by Olga Serebryakova, the daughter of director Natalya Serebryakova.

  The BBC called the film a "weirdly psychedelic Soviet reimagining," very unlike the major epic adaptations of Tolkien's novel. It noted that the costumes appeared as if borrowed from theatre productions of William Shakespeare or Lope de Vega. Gandalf was dressed in the manner of a knight errant. Elrond appeared in the manner of Othello.

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