The Hobbit: An
Unexpected Journey is a curious film. It’s an unhurried adventure film that
will arrive at many thrilling cliffhangers eventually and whenever it feels
like it. It’s a film possessed with its own rhythms and pacing, a sometimes-welcome
casual disregard for the conventions of blockbuster filmmaking. Oh, it is still
stuffed to the gills with action, incident, quips, and effects, but such
standard spectacle requirements are served up with unusual timing. Returning J.R.R.
Tolkien’s fantasy realm of Middle Earth to movie screens for the first time
since The Lord of the Rings trilogy
wrapped up in 2003, writer-director Peter Jackson is clearly enjoying time
spent in this world. He shows it to us in detail, unapologetically luxuriating
in every bit of his film’s backstories, tangents, and rumination of conflict to
come. As someone who saw and enjoyed the three earlier films when they rolled
through theaters a decade ago, but hasn’t seen any of them all the way through
in the time since, I was struck by how much I was glad to be back in the world
of travelers walking through sweeping second unit landscapes to the tune of a
great Howard Shore score.
But though the world is the same, it’s a much different kind
of story this time around. From what I recall, Rings had narrative drive, a quick pace, world-ending stakes, and
deep wells of emotion. But of course, each of those films adapted one novel
each. An Unexpected Journey has been
adapted by Jackson (along with Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo Del
Toro) from just a hundred or so pages from Tolkien’s comparatively slender
prequel novel. Instead of a sweeping quest to save Middle Earth from certain
doom, we’re following a scrappy band of dwarves on a mission to regain their
homeland (and treasure) from a dragon. It’s a simpler quest, one played lighter
and more boisterously entertaining on the page and so, you’d think, lends
itself less to the kind of bombast and self importance in which Jackson is
fully prepared to indulge. Though the first Hobbit
film is ultimately slighter in some ways than the epic weight of the
previous trilogy, it’s a worthy film all its own that works differently as it
strikes off to tell a story all its own.
We start, after lengthy introductory expository scenes that
takes us hither and yon through time and space, with a young Bilbo Baggins
(Martin Freeman), sixty years before he’ll leave his precious cursed ring to
Frodo (Elijah Wood) and begin the events we’ve previously seen dramatized.
Bilbo is visited by the great wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) who insufficiently
prepares him for a visit by the aforementioned band of dwarves, a raucous,
hungry bunch who laugh and sing, but turn gravely seriously when discussing the
logistics of their plans. Led by their king-in-exile Thorin (Richard Armitage),
twelve dwarves prepare for the long trek to the Lonely Mountain where they hope
to capture what’s rightfully theirs from the fearsome Smaug, a creature here
only glimpsed through shadow and fire in flashback.
After some expected hemming and hawing, Bilbo decides to
head off with the group for the sake of adventure. The journey will take them
into contact with aloof regal elves, vengeful slimy orcs, an eccentric
woodlands wizard, hungry, dimwitted trolls, and, in the film’s best scene, the pathetic
Gollum (Andy Serkis) ready for riddles. From the peaks of sentient mountains to
the dewy caverns of pimply goblins, these adventurers trudge, trying
desperately to keep the group together and survive along the way to their
destination. Their task is a personal one of revenge and honor. Unlike the clear,
heavy burden of the stakes in the trilogy, this film is an epic episodic
adventure of inner drive and private motivations. There are hints at powerful
emotions undergirding it all, themes of unintended consequences and the ways
choices made in the heat of the moment reverberate through time and can lead to
outcomes both good and bad. It’ll be interesting to see if and how these
thematic through-lines are teased out in films to come.
As it is, An
Unexpected Journey is a fine, fun fantasy film, involving and even a little
bit moving around the edges. The design is seamless and impeccable. The effects
work is impressive. The protagonists are largely loveable, funny and
sympathetic. The villains are vague yet despicable all the same. The action, when
it arrives, is generally well done, tense, exceedingly well choreographed, and
even with some wit on occasion. This is the kind of film with the room and will
to explore just about anything it would like to do. Veer off to spend some time
with a sick hedgehog? Why not? Pause for a meeting between Gandalf and some
characters from the Rings trilogy
while Bilbo and the dwarfs get a head start? Sure! It gives the whole thing a
feeling of existing in a rich, lived-in fantasy world that inevitably lost me
from time to time, but I joined back up with it soon enough. Jackson makes
Middle Earth the kind of place that seems to go on forever in every direction
out of frame. If you fall under its spell, it’s the kind of nearly-three-hour
movie that feels three hours in a good way. It won me over and nearly pushed me
away and then won me back again a few times over, and by the time the credits
started I was still ready for more.
Since this particular
film is available in so many different – and contentious – viewing options,
it’s worth noting for the record that I saw it in 24fps 2D.
No comments:
Post a Comment