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Les Miserables and the Hobbit
And now for the two movies I saw in the theatre over the holidays:
1. I liked Les Miserables, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted it to be, I dunno, more.
I suspect that this was thanks to several factors – one, I've heard seemingly umpteen versions of this, and know the score so well I had certain expectations, absolutely none of which were upheld by Russell Crowe; two, the director's decision to film about half the movie in EXTREME CLOSE UP, which after a time had me thinking less, "Wow, Anne Hathaway is making me sob," and more PULL THE CAMERA BACK PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU (someone on Twitter said the effect was claustrophobic, and I really have to agree); three, Russell Crowe, who was generally fine when singing more or less alone, but not at all fine when singing with everyone else, which just heightened the fact that he is just an adequate, not great singer; four, the switching around of a few songs, which meant a change to the careful balance of the musical, with longer periods of slow music and thumping music and less of an intermingling.
Also, an intermission after "One Day More," would have been greatly welcomed.
But the last scene was pretty thrilling, and I sniffled. So, yay.
2. The Hobbit. Already nearly discussed to death by nearly everyone else, but, some comments behind a spoiler tag just in case:
I had fun. But as I watched the film, I found myself strongly agreeing with whoever said, either about this film or about the earlier films, "Very pretty, Mr. Jackson, but you must not call it Tolkien." (And I say this as a person who loves Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad however not at all close it is to the source material. Moving on.)
Part of the problem, as others have noted, is that the film can't decide if it's trying to be The Hobbit or a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, which results in some odd tonal shifts here and there. And in this case, these shifts aren't just a change to the source material, as in the earlier films; in many cases, they weaken the film as a film. A related problem is that I frequently got the sense that we were seeing a lot of things that Jackson in retrospect wished he had put into the earlier films (people singing and eating in Rivendell, the secret entrance to Rivendell, more stuff beneath the Misty Mountains, everything about Radagast). Alas, almost none of this, and in particular the stuff about Radagast, belongs in this film. (Our audience cracked up, and not as Jackson intended them to, during the Radagast bits.)
In a related problem, somebody – I'm assuming Jackson – decided that The Hobbit needed an Aragorn figure. And chose Thorin for that role. This is problematic for so many reasons I hardly know where to begin. For one, as Kate Nepveu noted, Thorin isn't Aragorn; he's Boromir. He isn't a king in hiding; he's a king heading back to reclaim his treasure, stolen by a dragon. And he's considerably more arrogant and proud than either Aragorn or, to be fair, even Boromir. For two, this means that much of the movie is focused on Thorin being very very good looking – and fighting with a sword.
That in turn leads to one severe misreading of The Hobbit. Tolkien, unlike Jackson, was actually in a major war, one he did not enjoy, and one that lost him many of his closest friends. His biographer and son both strongly imply that post traumatic stress from the war or the death of his friends later led to severe episodes of clinical depression (I find that some of the chapters of The Return of the King, and especially the chapters set in Mordor, work as metaphors for severe depression, whether consciously intended that way by Tolkien or not).
The result of this is that much of The Hobbit is dedicated to avoiding fights at all costs. Rather than physically fighting the trolls, Gandalf tricks them into getting caught by the sun. When Thorin and co later get trapped by goblins, their first impulse is to try to talk their way out of it -- a sensible decision, considering that Thorin and co are also deeply outnumbered. Bilbo tries to talk his way past Gollum (and succeeds.) The bit with the talking wolves includes a lot of dialogue, and also a lot of wondering on the part of the dwarves and Gandalf about what to do since fighting is out of the question. This is a trend continued in the book until Bilbo encounters the spiders, which are, well, freakish spiders, and the Battle of the Five Armies. You don't fight unless you have to or you have superior numbers.
Jackson, however, is creating an action movie, and for him, action movie means, "fight." I don't exactly mean to drag Tora! Tora! Tora! into every discussion here, but some of the more tense scenes of that movie were straight dialogue. Admittedly, Tora! Tora! Tora! could get away with that since the audience is aware of where that dialogue will lead – nothing good – but in the The Hobbit we know from the beginning that the group is approaching a dragon. It does not make sense for them to keep getting involved in various fights along the way. And it is completely against Tolkien's vision, which is not about fighting your way to Smaug, but trying to walk there.
And, er, giant orc with prosthetic hand chasing down Thorin? Would not have been needed had you kept this to a single film, Jackson.
Anyway. I found a few other minor bits off – given that Ian Holm's narration in the beginning appears to be a setup for telling the story to Frodo, then why on earth would he say, "In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit...." Oh, yes, I was delighted to hear the narrative line, but it just felt wrong. Another moment later, when Gandalf (I think, or someone else), says "out of the frying pan and into the fire," also made me twitch a bit – it's a reference again to the narration of The Hobbit. Bilbo actually says something along the lines of "Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves," which, the linguist tells us, becomes a proverb much like "out of the frying pan, into the fire." But nobody other than the narrator actually says "out of the frying pan...." so it felt off to hear it in the film. And why all the deference to Galadriel? Since no one knows that Saruman has gone bad at this point, surely he's the ranking person of wisdom in the group? Also, er, in this version, are Gandalf and Galadriel having a Thing? Is that why her husband Celeborn discreetly stayed away? Also, um, why is Thranduil on a moose?
On the other hand, The Hobbit does give us two great moments, both worth the cost of admission: the dwarves singing in Bilbo's hobbit hole, and the confrontation between Gollum and Bilbo, which was brilliantly done and very tense. I'm not exactly inclined to pick this up on DVD, mind you. But I might grab it on sale at some point in the distant future, and just fast forward to those two bits.
1. I liked Les Miserables, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted it to be, I dunno, more.
I suspect that this was thanks to several factors – one, I've heard seemingly umpteen versions of this, and know the score so well I had certain expectations, absolutely none of which were upheld by Russell Crowe; two, the director's decision to film about half the movie in EXTREME CLOSE UP, which after a time had me thinking less, "Wow, Anne Hathaway is making me sob," and more PULL THE CAMERA BACK PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU (someone on Twitter said the effect was claustrophobic, and I really have to agree); three, Russell Crowe, who was generally fine when singing more or less alone, but not at all fine when singing with everyone else, which just heightened the fact that he is just an adequate, not great singer; four, the switching around of a few songs, which meant a change to the careful balance of the musical, with longer periods of slow music and thumping music and less of an intermingling.
Also, an intermission after "One Day More," would have been greatly welcomed.
But the last scene was pretty thrilling, and I sniffled. So, yay.
2. The Hobbit. Already nearly discussed to death by nearly everyone else, but, some comments behind a spoiler tag just in case:
I had fun. But as I watched the film, I found myself strongly agreeing with whoever said, either about this film or about the earlier films, "Very pretty, Mr. Jackson, but you must not call it Tolkien." (And I say this as a person who loves Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad however not at all close it is to the source material. Moving on.)
Part of the problem, as others have noted, is that the film can't decide if it's trying to be The Hobbit or a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, which results in some odd tonal shifts here and there. And in this case, these shifts aren't just a change to the source material, as in the earlier films; in many cases, they weaken the film as a film. A related problem is that I frequently got the sense that we were seeing a lot of things that Jackson in retrospect wished he had put into the earlier films (people singing and eating in Rivendell, the secret entrance to Rivendell, more stuff beneath the Misty Mountains, everything about Radagast). Alas, almost none of this, and in particular the stuff about Radagast, belongs in this film. (Our audience cracked up, and not as Jackson intended them to, during the Radagast bits.)
In a related problem, somebody – I'm assuming Jackson – decided that The Hobbit needed an Aragorn figure. And chose Thorin for that role. This is problematic for so many reasons I hardly know where to begin. For one, as Kate Nepveu noted, Thorin isn't Aragorn; he's Boromir. He isn't a king in hiding; he's a king heading back to reclaim his treasure, stolen by a dragon. And he's considerably more arrogant and proud than either Aragorn or, to be fair, even Boromir. For two, this means that much of the movie is focused on Thorin being very very good looking – and fighting with a sword.
That in turn leads to one severe misreading of The Hobbit. Tolkien, unlike Jackson, was actually in a major war, one he did not enjoy, and one that lost him many of his closest friends. His biographer and son both strongly imply that post traumatic stress from the war or the death of his friends later led to severe episodes of clinical depression (I find that some of the chapters of The Return of the King, and especially the chapters set in Mordor, work as metaphors for severe depression, whether consciously intended that way by Tolkien or not).
The result of this is that much of The Hobbit is dedicated to avoiding fights at all costs. Rather than physically fighting the trolls, Gandalf tricks them into getting caught by the sun. When Thorin and co later get trapped by goblins, their first impulse is to try to talk their way out of it -- a sensible decision, considering that Thorin and co are also deeply outnumbered. Bilbo tries to talk his way past Gollum (and succeeds.) The bit with the talking wolves includes a lot of dialogue, and also a lot of wondering on the part of the dwarves and Gandalf about what to do since fighting is out of the question. This is a trend continued in the book until Bilbo encounters the spiders, which are, well, freakish spiders, and the Battle of the Five Armies. You don't fight unless you have to or you have superior numbers.
Jackson, however, is creating an action movie, and for him, action movie means, "fight." I don't exactly mean to drag Tora! Tora! Tora! into every discussion here, but some of the more tense scenes of that movie were straight dialogue. Admittedly, Tora! Tora! Tora! could get away with that since the audience is aware of where that dialogue will lead – nothing good – but in the The Hobbit we know from the beginning that the group is approaching a dragon. It does not make sense for them to keep getting involved in various fights along the way. And it is completely against Tolkien's vision, which is not about fighting your way to Smaug, but trying to walk there.
And, er, giant orc with prosthetic hand chasing down Thorin? Would not have been needed had you kept this to a single film, Jackson.
Anyway. I found a few other minor bits off – given that Ian Holm's narration in the beginning appears to be a setup for telling the story to Frodo, then why on earth would he say, "In the hole in the ground there lived a hobbit...." Oh, yes, I was delighted to hear the narrative line, but it just felt wrong. Another moment later, when Gandalf (I think, or someone else), says "out of the frying pan and into the fire," also made me twitch a bit – it's a reference again to the narration of The Hobbit. Bilbo actually says something along the lines of "Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves," which, the linguist tells us, becomes a proverb much like "out of the frying pan, into the fire." But nobody other than the narrator actually says "out of the frying pan...." so it felt off to hear it in the film. And why all the deference to Galadriel? Since no one knows that Saruman has gone bad at this point, surely he's the ranking person of wisdom in the group? Also, er, in this version, are Gandalf and Galadriel having a Thing? Is that why her husband Celeborn discreetly stayed away? Also, um, why is Thranduil on a moose?
On the other hand, The Hobbit does give us two great moments, both worth the cost of admission: the dwarves singing in Bilbo's hobbit hole, and the confrontation between Gollum and Bilbo, which was brilliantly done and very tense. I'm not exactly inclined to pick this up on DVD, mind you. But I might grab it on sale at some point in the distant future, and just fast forward to those two bits.