So I've decided to shock and agree with you on something
This business, right here: "The real theme for me is ... Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in a race 'doomed' to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race 'doomed' not to leave it, until its evil-aroused story is complete." (Tolkien, letter #186)
That's the heart of it, and Tolkien's acknowledging it. These are Christopher's "metaphysical depths" he felt the movies lacked. It's the unconscious implied premise, which is also a question: "Why do we die?"
Rather than give some drafty philosophical treatise on the subject, with conscious intentions: he writes a faerie story without intentions, yet it brings forth that theme to bear more clearly than much philosophy.
So when I say things like, "the full purpose," I don't mean "as Tolkien consciously intended." He didn't. Yet, as a narrative structure, the full purpose of the Elves demonstrates precisely why we humans are not immortal. Combine that with the fate of Númenor and what happens to the Ringwraiths, along with Frodo's ultimate fate: it's sublime.
Yes, there is pride, arrogance, etc., in the human desire for immortality. But, there's something also profoundly unnatural about it, anti-human. The beauty, in Tolkien's writing, lies in acceptance rather than rebellion. It's Gandalf's "not all tears are an evil." Tolkien's writing never once neuters the sorrow of death; sorrow is the point: it neither surrenders hope nor despairs, yet its situated right between them. It is a sorrowful hope. It necessitates loss.
The High Elves are interesting in that, to the Hobbits when they meet Gildor, they all appear so naturally happy with their songs, their dancing, etc. But they also embody the grief of the passage and waning of years, the long journey toward fading unless they take their ship to the West. They simultaneously bear the weight of the world. I'm going to, *gasps,* disagree with the Tolkien Professor on this one.
He likes to critique the "Alas Elves," the idea of Elves as miserable. But we have to understand that we're getting our glimpses of them from Hobbits' limited perspectives. To the Hobbits, they are content, because Hobbits value food and song and cheer. They do not comprehend the Doom of Mandos, the deep bitterness of the passage of Time, the High Elves' weariness of the world (*save for Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam eventually). The Eldar have these moments of bliss that maybe help keep them going, just as we humans do as we age. But I do not find Elves completely divorced from humans in their nature. They are better, certainly: they have a more innate sense of right and wrong, so much so that the Three Kinslayings are beyond horrible to them.
Yet the Elves, their weariness of the world? That's what would happen to us if we were immortal. That's what the lore is saying to us, per Tolkien's theme. We'd be absolutely miserable, in the end, living only half-lives, drifting and lost in memories of the past and longing for something else.
And so the Elves must diminish: and that is sorrowful. Their beauty must pass and fade away from the world. It is very sad. Tolkien's not neutering that sadness, not by any stretch. But it is necessary.
This is what places Tolkien right up there with Shakespeare in my mind. He's not writing a grandiose soliloquy about it. But, in his own unique way, his approach is just as sublime and poignant.
There's a reason why the last great narrative is not in Sam's main account of LOTR. No. It's "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" that truly ends the story. It ends with Arwen's death in the withered woods that were once the Golden Wood, there, at the last, on Cerin Amroth. That's where it truly ends, the final vision of things.
Here's where I admire Tolkien the most. He restrains himself. He doesn't depict "Middle-earth Heaven beyond the Circles" with Aragorn and Arwen reunited. He doesn't "canonize" the Dagor Dagorath. He doesn't even write of a glorious reception of the Ringbearers by the Valar in the West or the bliss they felt there.
He leaves us with Sam, on the grey shores, "hearing the sigh and the murmur of the waves" in the original ending- and so forth, "Well, I'm back," slapping readers as hard as the return of a World War I veteran who can never truly go home again. He leaves us with Arwen's grave, where the green grass grows surrounded by the withered grey woods.
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I recently wrote in defense of the LOTR films, and we disagreed. But I'll meet you halfway. I'll say that they do a great job for what they are. I'd suggest that a movie can't really reflect this type of metaphysics. I think it's unique to the art of a story, particularly a written story. Anything that's dramaticized doesn't really leave much room for an audience, whether at the movies or watching a theatrical drama, to contemplate these things.
And the "metaphysical depths"? They are felt most keenly in their contemplation. You need a book as a book to do that job. You need to be able to not only read- but to read closely. So I wouldn't say that it's possible for "this level" to translate into a play or a film. It's why Tolkien felt that Shakespeare's "Macbeth" would have been a great faerie story but disliked it as a stage play. There are just some things that only literature is great at doing- as literature, as works of writing, that can't be translated into another genre or medium. That's what gives great books their power.
Cheers!
