The Hobbit--The Battle of the Five Armies

 Photo: Smaug, interviewed by Stephen Colbert, from the movie's Wikipedia page.

There's been some major backlash in my neck of the woods about these Hobbit films.  Not excessive negativity, exactly.  Nobody's saying they hate these films, including this last one.  The consensus is that they're not as good as the Lord of the Rings films.

They're not, of course.  The LOTR films had more relevance, more spirituality (and, strangely, I mean that), more clarity of vision, and more of an iconography going for it than do these films.  I'm on vacation right now, so I watched the three LOTR films and the two previous Hobbit films, and there's certainly no comparison.  The LOTR films are better.

But that doesn't make the Hobbit films bad.  In fact, when I watched the other two, the third one seemed even better to me than it had just on its own.  There is a saga here, a more subtle, less pronounced relevance and spirituality than the LOTR movies.  (And these don't have talking trees, which can't be a bad thing.)  To appreciate this one more, maybe we need to remember the beginning of the first Hobbit movie.

Erebor had been the greatest kingdom ever built.  It was ruled by a king, his son and his grandson.  This grandson, Thorin Oakenshield, is the main character of the Hobbit movies (and maybe of the books, but I have to admit I haven't read them) in much the same way that Aragon was the main character of the LOTR movies.  Both stories were "written" and narrated by hobbits, but they passed themselves off as spectators in their own writings, a la Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.  They were much more than that, of course, and may have been the main characters themselves, but they didn't "write" them that way.  Thematically, much of the relevance is carried by Thorin and Aragon.

This may be one of the major differences, now that I think of it.  Frodo Baggins is the main character of the LOTR movies because he is the Ringbearer.  He's the one on The Quest, as opposed to Aragon and the others, who are on the same such quest as Frodo is, though Aragon is also on his own internal journey: He is the king in the Return of the King, after all.  But his major importance is helping Frodo.  In The Hobbit, it may be the opposite.  Bilbo Baggins is the major character, overall, because he finds the ring, and because he becomes the Ringbearer, though he does not realize it at the time.  If he doesn't steal the ring, Sauron will get when Sauroman gets Gollum; instead, Bilbo the Thief essentially steals it from Gollum and brings it, for awhile, to safety in the Shire.  But for most of the movies, Bilbo is helping Thorin on his quest, not the other way around.  And, as someone mentioned recently, fewer people will care about Thorin.  They wanted to get to the Ring.

But the Hobbit films are really not about the Ring.  They are necessary, however, in the same way that this last film shows: Cause and effect.  The dragon drives Thorin and his people from their home as a symbolic representation of the greed of his people.  If you're going to care that much for the gold, then someone else will, too.  Like a dragon.  So the dragon takes over and the gold--and, more importantly, the mountain and the land--are safe because nobody wants to mess with the dragon.  But when the dragon dies, the gold and the mountain are open for all takers.  Turns out, there are five.

Here's where I think most people lose track of the relevance here, or maybe this is where Tolkien and / or Peter Jackson failed to highlight it enough.  As someone said in this last movie, it's not the gold that's more important, it's the mountain and the land.  The mountain sits in the middle of an important trade route.  Control the mountain, you control the trade.  And the "people" who count on that trade.

For those who know their history--as Tolkien did; he was a respected linguist and expert in old societies and languages long before he was a famous author of high fantasy.  His translation of Beowulf was the standard before Fitzgerald and Heaney came along--this should all sound familiar.  It is the purpose of Thorin's life to recapture his land from its usurpers.  This is the main point.  Bilbo gets it when he tells them why he didn't run away when he had the chances: Because he has a home to go back to.  These people have been kicked out of theirs, and that's not right.  And so he will help them to get it back.

In Tolkien's lifetime, such was exactly the case with the Middle East.  (I'm no historian, so forgive whatever butchery of history may now occur.)  The Middle East is a land mass unlike any other in the world.  Without traveling it, if you want to get to Africa, you'd have to take a ship or plane.  Those who control the Middle East control all trade (today, much or most of the trade) coming and going from all of Africa.  Control that, and you will have riches and power, then and now.  Combine that with the extreme religious significance of those lands (three of the world's major religions spring from it) and combine that with the concentration of oil there, and you've got land that everyone wants.

And they'll all fight for it.  As they all have been, for the last three+ thousand years.  With no end in sight.  If I remember my Old Testament right, the Jews had control of that land--though even in those pages, there were many wars and many different nationalities ruling that land.  Finally, by the time of the writings in the New Testament, the Jews were driven out by the Romans in...60 to 70 BCE (this is all off the top of my head here) and for almost two thousand years had not been officially recognized as the leaders of that area, especially Israel.  But in 1948, the Jewish State (more of a political term than a geographical one, I think) was firmly established and recognized.  And there's been war there ever since, of course.

Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937, but the war over the Middle East and the Jewish insistence on inhabiting that land reached a pitch throughout the thirties, and, as a historian, he was very much aware of it.  Tolkien insisted that the Lord of the Rings books had nothing to do with the Nazis, Jews and World War II, and I'll bet he said that the Hobbit books had nothing to do with what I've just been writing about.  But Robert Frost also said that his poem "The Road Not Taken" was a pastiche of overly-sentimental poetry with Deep Meaning, popular at the time.  But sometimes the artist is the worst judge of his own art, or of the creation of it.  If Tolkien's writing had nothing to do with any of this, I'll eat my next paycheck.  (Instead of the banks and utility companies, who eat them now.)

In fact, it is said in the Hobbit movies that the battle fought for the mountain would be the battles to end all battles.  The final battle would be fought there.  This sounds like the Middle East and the Apocalypse again.  In fact, isn't that the reason for this ultimate battle, in the movie and of the proposed future Armageddon?  Not for the people or of the riches or of the religious significance of the area--but for the fight against those trying to claim them.  It'd be the mother of all battles, involving many armies (The Hobbit has five), because they were not fighting for something, but against it.

At any rate, it's all tied together.  Everything's connected, these books and movies say (though probably more the books than the movies; Tolkien would write more about the history and Jackson would make a movie more about the dragon and gold, as a moviemaker should), and indeed it is.  No Hobbit, no Lord of the Rings.  (I wonder if Tolkien paused while writing--minutely--about the Ring in the Hobbit, which was really more of a children's book.  Did he know he was going to springboard from that when he wrote it, or afterward?)  No Thorin, no Aragon.  Both try not to just reclaim their kingdoms and kingships, but their honor and place in history, as well.  In the fight against the world's worst evils, who wouldn't want to be remembered?

This is more of what the Hobbit movies are about.  It's not as explicit as in the LOTR movies, but it's there.  And that's sort of the point.  History is rarely obvious.  It's a slow and gradual buildup of cause and effect, of things both great and small.  It's knowing there was a Cole before there was a 9/11.

Or, it's just a good CGI / special effects movie with more intelligence and relevance than usual for the genre.  Sometimes I think too much.       

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug--short movie review

Photo: Movie poster, from its Wikipedia page.

Very good "hallway" movie that connects the first to the yet-to-be-released third film, and apparently only meant as such.  I say that because when the one moment comes that you've been waiting for, the movie ends.  The fact that that's disappointing speaks well for how good and gripping the movie is.

Mostly it's a special effects action flick, which isn't bad, but I got the feeling that the three LOTR movies were about something a little bit more.  The first Hobbit movie was, as well.  A great deal about friendship, honesty, greed, and stamina are mentioned in those films, and for good reason.  The Ring is destroyed, after all, more because of friendship than because of any lava at Mt. Doom.  The first Hobbit movie takes a good twenty minutes right up front in the movie to show everyone's camaraderie (which seems unnecessary at the time, but isn't) and friendship, and that theme played itself out as the movie went on.

Here, there's no time for that.  We get nonstop action from the first moment until the last, with the occasional moments for budding romance thrown in.  We see swordfights galore, and lots and lots of running, and many instances of hiding, and...well, you get the idea, and I make it seem much worse than it is.  It's actually a lot of eye-popping fun (even with a very verbose dragon, and some very silly barrel / riverbanks scenes, where the Dwarfs and Hobbits run and jump like Olympians, and dozens of Orcs are nice enough to stand in a straight line so they can get knocked over by the same one barrel) and you won't realize that the two hours and forty minutes have passed until the abrupt ending.  It's a movie well worth the money.  In fact, as with all special effects flicks, if you plan to watch it at all, you have to see it on the big screen.

I'm just going to trust that the third film wraps up the themes of friendship and of reclaiming your home (I've sort of done that in real life, as you know if you follow this blog) and that the last film won't just be amazing visuals and riveting action like this one was.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  

Zero Dark Thirty

photo: from the film's Wikipedia page

I'm posting this entry quite a bit after I'd seen the film because I wanted to post the entry for Silver Linings Playbook before Sunday's Academy Awards--as at least Jennifer Lawrence should win something from that very good film--and because I wanted to post an entry about the Awards show itself, leaving a few days in between each entry, to give my readers time to breathe between my entries.  And to not overdo it.  So, anyway, this post is probably happening about a week after I'd seen this film.

This film is not to be missed, and, as with The Hobbit, I'd heard some things about it that made me question whether I'd want to see a two-and-a-half hour film that ended up being disappointing.  But once again, I needn't have worried.  This was a great film and quite an experience in of itself.

That says a lot, because we all knew how this one would end up.  What we didn't know, though, is how it would get there, and for that, the experience of watching this is worth it.  The movie is essentially a director's showcase, although all of the actors deliver solid performances, especially Jessica Chastain--who is very suddenly everywhere, and in every type of movie imaginable--and Jennifer Uhle, whose character plays with your expectations for awhile until suddenly hers, and Chastain's, are good friends.

Jessica Chastain's character changes rather dramatically during the movie; the turning point is when she loses a friend quite close to her.  (This is a situation an astute viewer should see coming, though when it does, the scene still packs a solid punch.)  She's the quiet observer during the interrogation scenes (more on those later), but when she's spoken to by the prisoner, she delivers a solid, professional answer--though her character clearly feels for his plight.  (Viewers should keep in mind, as she did, that he is a professional killer and liar--and would do both again.)  This keeps her humane, yet growing in her job, and shows that she won't back down when others might.

She becomes more haggard, emotionally and psychologically, rather than physically; I didn't see it when another character comments about how she's looking like she's falling to pieces.  Frankly, Jessica Chastain never looks like she's falling to pieces.  If she lost an arm in a battle scene, she'd look beautiful doing it.   

(An aside here.  A friend disagreed with me about this, but it seemed unrealistic to me that not one single male commented to her character about how beautiful she is.  Now, I know that they were all professionals, and I know this is a no-nonsense movie directed by a very talented [and Oscar-winning] no-nonsense female director [Kathryn Bigelow], but it is not conceivable to me that not one single guy, in a male-dominated, stressful, testosterone-laden profession, would comment, lewdly or not, about how incredibly striking she is--especially given that Jessica Chastain is one of the most classically beautiful actresses to come along in quite some time, and also given that a large percentage of the shots of her in this movie are close-ups.  In short, her character did not hide her beauty [except to put on wigs to hide her red hair], and the camera constantly zoomed in to show it.  There, I said it.)

Anyway, though she gets emotionally and psychologically haggard, that seems more to do with the bureaucratic nightmare that is her job, rather than what she has to go through at her job.  This, despite the fact that she almost gets blown up in a restaurant (a very effectively shocking scene) and shot up in her car.  (Surprising that the shooters didn't wait just a few seconds longer for her there.)  But she does change, and not to the dismay, too much, of her (male) superiors.  They constantly comment on her intelligence, by the way (and she is very smart), but never once about...well, never mind.  Anyway, it gets to a point where she's writing in large red figures the number of days that have passed since she, in her opinion, positively proved where Usama bin Laden was (referred to as UBL frequently in the movie--not OBL, for those who called him Osama; keep that in mind when you hear the next Obama / Osama diatribe).  But finally she gets the deployment she's been asking for.

And what a sequence of montages that is, all of them sans Chastain's character, as the elite troops go in there, ostensibly to see what there is to see, as most of the people involved are not 100% sold on the fact that UBL was even there.  (The leader of this troop says he's still willing to go in only because of Chastain's character's bullheaded certainty.)  The scenes of how they (maybe?) did this are intense and gripping--again, despite the fact that you know how it's going to turn out.  This part of the movie alone is worth the price of admission, though it shouldn't be the only reason to see this film.

Now, back to the interrogation scenes.  One of the reasons I was hesitant to see this film is because I'd heard and read that it supposedly okayed the use of the torture that it depicts.  I don't necessarily agree with this.  Firstly, the characters clearly don't like what they're doing (the guy who's "good" at it is so disgusted by it that he leaves the area) and they know that Congressional leaders are talking about them doing it--and they know that they can't be the one caught with one of the instruments in hand.  This shows me that the movie-makers are showing that it was done, that the people didn't necessarily find joy in it (which would've been even more disturbing), and that...well, they got exactly the information they needed because of it.  If not seeing a character make a speech and take a moral stance against it means to you that the film-makers were condoning it, then you would think they were doing just that.  But, really, what they were doing is showing that it was done, and showing that nobody liked it, and showing that they knew they couldn't be caught doing it, and showing that it gave them the information that ultimately led them to bin Laden--all the while showing the reality of that whole situation.  If the movie-makers had taken a moral stance about it in this movie, that would've been completely out-of-line and unrealistic, considering what they were trying to do.  They were trying to show how one woman, and her colleagues, got the information that ultimately led them to bin Laden.  Period.  To see a film about the morality of that type of interrogation, you'll have to go elsewhere.  That particular criticism against this film is unfair and untrue.  They didn't sanitize and condone that type of interrogation.  They depicted it, and that's all.

The second reason I was hesitant to see this film is that James Gandolfini apologized for his portrayal of his character.  As I watched the film, I tried to figure out why, and by the end, I still hadn't figured it out.  I am still confused about this.  He's not in the film long enough to create a standing and unfading characterization, and his character doesn't say or do anything that would come close to needing an apology for.  He's not a weenie; he's not a blowhard; he's not too tough; he's not anything at all that would need an apology.  He questions whether Chastain's team ever agrees about anything, which is reasonable to do, because they don't agree about anything.  He questions whether anyone can concretely prove what they're asserting, which is appropriate, because they can't concretely prove what they're asserting--and they are not all, in fact, asserting the same thing, to the same degree.  He's a political businessman looking at the engineers of this thing, wondering if they're doing the right thing, wondering if he'll be doing the right thing--whether he agrees, as the CIA Director, to sell the plan to the President or not.  And he's clearly appreciating everybody while sort of shaking his head at them all at the same time--which, again, is completely appropriate for his character to do.  I don't know what Gandolfini was apologizing for, unless it was the hairjob, which was indeed terrible.  Other than that, I just don't know.

So that's it.  Sorry for the long review, but there was a lot to say because there was a lot to see.  And there's a whole lot to like, so go see this one.

P.S.--The Academy's snub of Bigelow for Best Director is much harder for me to digest than its snub of Ben Affleck, who also did a great directing job, but with immensely easier material to direct, for a movie that was much more of an actor's showcase, rather than a director's showcase, as Bigelow's film is.  This is one of the best-directed films I've seen in years (and I agree with a critic's announcement that it blows Argo out of the water, and I liked Argo), and is surely one of the best (if not the best) directed films of this year--in a year of many very well-directed films.  (I admittedly haven't seen Life of Pi yet, which is high on my list of things to do--but that film, from what I've read, is heavily CGI.)  This film was a better film, and a better-directed film, than Bigelow's own award-winning Hurt Locker, which I also liked a lot.  She has already won directing awards for this film from the New York's Film Critics Circle, as well as from similar circles from other cities.  (Affleck won the Director's Award.)  I'd have to say that she deserves the Oscar more than anyone nominated, which says a lot, since I love Spielberg's work, and he was brilliant enough to cast me in one of his films.  But this movie was better-directed, and much harder to direct, than Lincoln was.  I can only assume that her snub was due to the unwarranted political firestorm attached to this film.

The Hobbit (Movie)

Photo: Movie poster, from its Wikipedia page

I'd heard (and read) a lot of negative reviews about this movie, so I approached it with great trepidation.  After all, who wants to pay $11.50 per ticket and sit through an almost-three-hour film if it's terrible?

I needn't have worried.  This one is, in some ways, superior to the first three LOTR films, though those did have a better flow and vibe.  The opening scenes with The Hobbit, and the scenes involving the riddles with Gollum, are very long, and noticeably so while you're watching them.  Yet, they are also very necessary, as the first sets up the characterization and spirit, while the latter shows how Gollum lost the Ring, which is hinted at in the LOTR films, but never fleshed out.  It is here.  I'm guessing Peter Jackson--who does know great editing and pace, so you have to assume his long scenes had a purpose in his own mind--let these riddle scenes go on a little because they explain Bilbo's entire purpose (in a very Star Wars-like, Zen kind of way) on this trip: He needs to come so that he can find the Ring and keep it away from Sauron, so that, of course, Frodo can drop it into Mount Doom later, thereby keeping evil out of the hands of Evil.  This is the whole point behind all six of the LOTR and Hobbit films, and so is therefore deservedly fleshed out, even if it is a tad overlong.  But that's an epic, right?  You appreciate it because it is so important, so...well, epic.  Epics are told on a grand scale, and some scenes are epic in of themselves if they're important enough.

But I digress.  Do not be swayed by the many bad reviews.  It is a story on a grand scale, complete in of itself, and not just a set-up for the other two films.  Does it set them up?  Of course.  But it's a set-up movie the way that Star Wars: A New Hope was a set-up movie.  Both are complete.

I told a few people that I liked The Hobbit more than the LOTR films.  I cannot completely substantiate this, but the feeling I get of trust, of kinship, of fighting evil, is much stronger here than in the LOTR films.  This is for a few reasons.  In the first three films, there were an expert sword-fighter/killer, an expert bowsman, an expert axe-man, an expert wizard--you get the idea.  These guys were Middle-Earth renowned for their already-superior abilities.  The whole point of the LOTR movies, which wasn't shown enough, is that it's the everyday little people--the Hobbits--who are the real fighters of true evil.  (Roger Ebert gave the LOTR films 3 1/2 stars, rather than 4, because of this point, that they got carried away with the epic battle scenes and lost track of this theme.)  The Hobbit exemplifies that point much more.  The film busies itself with Bilbo proving his worth to these otherwise taller fighters; by doing so, he exemplifies this ideal.

The Hobbit also has characters that are all less-established than the LOTR fellowship.  No actual kings here (though one should have been).  No famous fighters.  These guys are all losers in the sense that they got kicked out of their homeland--literally, they lost their home.  And not just in the sense of a country, or a house, but an actual feeling of belonging, of home, of being where you were meant to be.  We're told by good hosts to be "at home" in the sense that the word "home" is a descriptive, not just a place.  We're supposed to feel, after all, that "there's no place like home."

Lastly, there is more of an emphasis (though the viewer is never assaulted with it) on The Way, on Zen--on The Force, if you want to think of it that way.  Gandalf is constantly asked why he picked a hobbit to join this group.  Later, he says that he's frightened and that Bilbo (and, one assumes, Hobbits in general) give him courage.  But his first response was perhaps a much more honest "I don't know."  He's simply drawn to pick him; it's nothing more than being guided, than trusting your gut.  What creates gut decisions?  I mentioned before that it is necessary, in a Fate kind of way, that Bilbo be in the group because he needs to steal the Ring.  It shouldn't go unnoticed that Gandalf calls Bilbo "the burglar" throughout the film, much to everyone's wonder, including Gandalf's own.  Having Bilbo in the group really makes no sense; if Fate hadn't chosen him, nobody else would have.  But the battle of Good vs. Evil had already begun, unbeknownst to everyone but Gandalf: Sauron has already started to fool everyone (though the Elven Queen is catching on, I think); he's already looking for the Ring, already conquering lands and dispersing and killing the natives and the trees.  (There's an obvious comparison with Star Wars's Emperor Palpatine here, a plot device that Lucas must have stolen from Tolkein.)

These forces of Good and Evil are constantly at war, as if they were their own separate entities.  It's a common theme and belief--dating back to Zen's and The Way's origins, and certainly believed by the Ancient Greeks and by the Elizabethans, never mind Tolkein and Lucas--that we are often just pawns used and manipulated by these forces.  Who knows how this will show itself?  Here, it's when a dragon, who probably knows nothing of Zen, or Good and Evil, decides to attack a city for its gold.  If this doesn't happen, the native people don't get driven out, and they don't have to go on a quest to win it back, and Bilbo doesn't burglarize Gollum, and Frodo doesn't defeat Evil by dropping the Ring into Mt. Doom.

And so on.

The Hobbit brings this out more than the other three LOTR films.  And the visuals are better, too.

Go see it.  Go appreciate it's grand nature, it's epic storytelling of Good vs. Evil.