Thursday, December 12, 2013

Movie Review: "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (Peter Jackson, 2012)

A NEVER-ENDING STORY: THE FIRST “HOBBIT” IS A LONG
AND DETAILED JOURNEY by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

 
 
Left: Martin Freeman's Bilbo receives the call to adventure
 
 
In Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” we meet a heroic company of Dwarves on a quest to reclaim their homeland—the mountain known as Erebor.  Via a long-winded opening montage, we’re told that Dwarves ruled Erebor until the ferocious dragon Smaug snatched it from them, leaving them homeless.  Now, the noble Dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) has assembled a group of followers to defeat Smaug and restore Erebor to Dwarf control once more.

            Perusing this premise, you might expect the film to lead into a grandiose battle in which the Dwarves finally fulfill their destiny by confronting Smaug.  Alas, I must disappoint you.  For “An Unexpected Journey” is not an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s esteemed novel “The Hobbit”—it is an adaptation of one-third of the novel, the first of a new cinematic trilogy.  And while Mr. Jackson might have imagined that playing the tale over a series of several films would allow him to adapt the book more faithfully, it has mainly bloated the tale to an already excessive length.  In “An Unexpected Journey” alone, a great many things happen, from duels with trolls to subdued interviews with elves.  And yet the film is all action and no emotion—almost nothing of consequence happens in over the course of its two hour and forty-nine minute length.

            That’s not to say the film is without charms.  Early on, we’re introduced to Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit (AKA a diminutive humanoid with pointy ears) who would love nothing better than to spend his existence lounging and feasting in his comfortable home—a dream which is abruptly upended by the arrival of Thorin and his followers.  They need Bilbo’s help to defeat Smaug, but the nobility of their cause holds no interest for our sheltered hero; for him, going off on an adventure mostly means missing his favorite armchair.  Certainly, that’s a rather fussy position to take.  And yet this attitude makes Bilbo considerably more relatable than most action heroes—after all, we’re the ones watching him have an adventure while we sit safely in our seats. 

            Of course, persuasion prevails upon Bilbo and he does agree to join Thorin and friends and together, they trek towards Erebor through the dangerous and picturesque land known as Middle Earth.  As a director, Mr. Jackson has in fact visited Middle Earth’s rough mountains and shadowy forests before, quite famously in his Oscar-winning “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (which was also based on Mr. Tolkein’s works).  Those films were notable for their dreamlike, almost Terrence Malick-esque visions, like a scene in which a godlike being wondered whether or not to intervene in a mythical battle of good versus evil.  That, for me, was a defining moment in the trilogy, the reason that even though I can’t pretend to be a fan of Middle Earth or Mr. Jackson’s directing, I do think that he transformed “The Lord of the Rings” into a bold and impressively strange piece of work.

            It’s a shame that he couldn’t do the same for “The Hobbit.”  “An Unexpected Journey” is rife with cinematic miscalculations, although part of its failing lies in the premise itself.  For Thorin and the Dwarves, the quest to reclaim Erebor is one of grave importance.  Yet Mr. Jackson never gives us a reason to invest in it—in fact, he even includes a scene where one Dwarf states that they’ve already found a fine new home in the “Blue Mountains.”  And quite frankly, it’s hard to even root for Thorin.  Mr. Armitage’s talent can hardly be doubted (he played a satisfyingly Mr. Darcy-esque brooder in the BBC series “North and South”) but for all the fuss made about Thorin, the character never registers as anything more than an obnoxious grump whose main narrative function is to whiningly doubt Bilbo so the inexperienced young Hobbit can prove him wrong.

            Luckily, Bilbo himself is better company.  The fact that he’s played by the nervously affable Martin Freeman makes you predisposed to root for him and therein lies the majority of the film’s charm—it’s an unexpected journey about unexpected heroes, people who have more compassion and courage than they let on.  I think that theme (which is neatly encapsulated in one line about “small acts of kindness” having more value than power) could have made “An Unexpected Journey” a fine adventure, but it gets squandered in a series of meaningless battles.  For all Mr. Jackson’s experience as a filmmaker, his staging of the fight scenes is stunningly infantile—working with cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, he shoots the action in quick-moving wide shots that make the characters (even the non-computer-generated ones) look like toys.  Even the great Ian McKellen (who anchors the film as the crafty wizard Gandalf) looks like an action figure as he charges across a crumbling catwalk, pursued by a goblin army.

Of course, great action does not a great blockbuster make; even “Iron Man” is more memorable for its witty wordplay than its robotics-induced explosions.  “An Unexpected Journey” does have its own share of jokes, but what it really needs is some human drama to make all the violence and fantastical images mean something.  Mr. Jackson may have built a cinematic empire with his company, Weta Digital, but even he can’t adapt one-third of a book without padding it.  And while he could have padded “The Hobbit” by delving deeper into the souls of Bilbo, Thorin, and Galdalf, he instead bolsters the movie by inundating us with endless battles with endless armies of Orcs and Goblins.  Which is why the film feels too long for all the wrong reasons and, like Bilbo, desperately in need of seasoning. 

No comments:

Post a Comment