King Théoden is dead. The actor Bernard Hill, famous for his gallant deaths in the fields of Pelennor and the icy waters of the North Atlantic, died yesterday at the age of 79 after having taken part in three titles that won the Oscar for best film, Gandhi (1982). , Titanic (1997) and The Return of the King (2003), and having been part of the cast of a television serial that captivated a generation, the BBC adaptation of three novels by Robert Graves titled as the first of them: I , Claudius. Mourning on social networks demonstrated the power of pop culture to consolidate icons, and the extraordinary soliloquies that screenwriters Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh wrote in the adaptation of the Tolkien trilogy became a trend.
Of course, in a habitat as given to testosterone and epic as social networks, among the most repeated quotes yesterday stood out his final harangue to the horsemen of Rohan, before beginning the charge in Minas Tirith, which in the end would end up costing him life: “Advance without fear of darkness, fight, fight, riders of Théoden. Spears will fall, shields will break, the sword will still remain. Red will be the day until the sun rises. Ride, gallop, ride, to desolation and the end of the world. Death, death, death! Go ahead, eorlingas!
But, despite the radio and television effort to draw us in the final hour, we are not there, we are at the funeral of a grim man who, as the maestro Alfred Hitchcock pointed out, had the most important thing for his work, his physiognomy. Bernard Hill had deep marks between his eyebrows, a frown that was always a sign of sadness and ferocity so indisputable that Batman's props always made those deep grooves in his cowl. That severity allowed him to be the king of Rohan, governor of the Westfold over the meadows of The Mark from the citadel of Edoras, at the foot of Ered Nimrais, the White Mountains. When he banished Gríma, Serpenttongue – his Miguel Ángel Rodríguez – from the palace, he discovered the death of his son and cried to him in the necropolis, at the foot of the wall: “Simbelmynë has always grown in the tombs of my ancestors, now it will adorn the grave of my son. I have lived through unfortunate times: the young perish, the old wither away. It's a shame to live to see the last days of my house." But he did not put up a fight, despite Aragorn's insistence. He fled to Helm, where he was cornered by a formidable army which he challenged from the stronghold: “Is this all, Saruman? Only this can you summon?”
He leaves us, however, with regret about the decline of an era, a decline that preceded victory: “What has become of the rider and his horse? What, of the horn and the claim of it? They have passed like rain on the mountains, like wind on the prairie. The days fade away in the West, behind the hills, plunged into shadow. How did we come to this?". But Helm resisted.
