I’m sitting in a library … Which feels appropriate, because I want to write my first review in some considerable time … And it involves libraries.
M. R. James’ story Casting the Runes is about the power of the written word and about the mortal dangers of writing a scathing review.Well, it’s a shockingly poor piece of work, Monty; you should be ashamed of yourself!
(Waits for disaster to descend)
Nothing in the trees?Nothing coming?Phew.
Just joshing.
Actually, Casting The Runes is one of the key texts of English horror fiction, featuring the malicious occultist, Karswell who, despite being almost entirely absent from the narrative, strikes me as one of the most malignant antagonists in horror literature.I have just this evening seen a magnificent theatrical rendering of Casting The Runes, which is why I have felt moved (after all this time) to put finger to keyboard (and take my life, therefore, in my hands) by reviewing it.
The story is simple: An ‘alchemist’ called Karswell desires to be taken seriously.To that end, he has written an academic paper, ‘The Truth of Alchemy’, which has been roundly rejected on the grounds that it is ‘nonsense’.The person who made this judgement is one Edward Dunning and he, to his cost, will learn that Karswell is a vengeful man.The story follows Dunning as he becomes gradually aware of then eventually mortally afeared of Karswell.
Imagine the repercussions of telling Hannibal Lecter you didn’t like his foie grasand you get the idea.
He learns that Karswell has cursed him, by passing him a slip of paper with a spell written on it.His only way to save his own life is to conspire to get Karswell to take it back, but he isn’t going to do that willingly.
Now, if this sounds at all familiar, that may well be because you are thinking of the film Night of the Demon (1957), known by some (wrongly) as Curse of the Demon, which is a movie adaptation of the story.
I first saw that film as part of one of those long-gone and much-lamented BBC2 late-night double-bills.It was screened as such in 1980 and, even at the cynical bewhiskered age of 14, I found its opening scene to be every bit as attention grabbing as that of Jaws (1975) …
So, what does this have to do with libraries?Well, in the original story and in the film version and, indeed, in the theatrical rendering I saw this evening, the curse is passed over to Dunning in a library.
All three versions are very different in feel and approach, but all three are equally involving.James’ original has his trademark mannered and loquacious style, as befitting an antiquarian.The film has that polite, faintly embarrassed air that all British genre films of the period carry, but still makes the most of its American (and therefore exotic) lead, and manages to be pacy and chilling.As hokey as that demon may look to 21st century eyes, the way it is lit and shot means it remains disturbing, especially because of the remarkable insectoid sound effect they use to accompany it. I can think of nothing to match in in British 50s cinema.No, not even Quatermass.
So, why am I mentioning all this? Well, I’m glad you asked.
I’m attending a conference on ‘Weird Fiction’ at Loughborough University and the first day culminated in a performance by the theatrical company Boxtale Soup.I’ve never seen them before, never even heard of them but, based on what I witnessed tonight; I can’t wait for my next chance to do so.
Their version of Casting the Runes is very simply staged.There are just the two of them, arriving on stage with suitcases which contain their costumes and are consequently employed as pretty much everything they’ll need.These, I imagine, are the boxes containing the tales.
The mise en scene is deceptively simple, the set and props are made from cardboard, in shades of grey and brown.The costumes are black and white, with highlights of newsprint and the odd splash of crimson.One could even say slash of crimson.
Noel Byrne plays Dunning with an easy confident air that slowly erodes as he realises the seriousness of the trap in which he is caught.Antonia Christophers plays everyone else, swapping convincingly from character to character with a simple change of a skirt or a scarf, accompanied by a different accent and a different demeanour.I won’t tell you how they depict the devilish Karswell, because that delight is especially effective if seen unspoiled.
It's important that Byrne stay in character because, as the focus of unseen malevolent forces, it helps the drama for us to experience his slowly fermenting fear with him. The performances are naturalistic, even intimate (especially if seen in a small performance space) from the moment the actors take the stage and patiently put on their costumes.I particularly like the way Byrne assumes the mantle of Dunning by pulling his tie taught with a resigned sigh.I feel like that when I put a tie on.
However, the tie in question, being decorated with text, is a fine thing.I’d wear that tie.They should sell them as merchandise!
So cocky is Dunning, in a delightfully meta-textual moment, he debunks his own tormentor to his students, exposing some of the stage-craft they have themselves used.He dismisses the use of fishing wire and magnets to create so-called ‘magical’ effects, and then the production makes careful and clever use of these tricks to create its own effects.But this show isn’t about the effects, it’s about the people.
The scene transitions are achieved through musical segues played and sung by the two performers (which typically evoke The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a text about breaking a curse, referenced in the original story) while Christophers makes quick and simple costume changes and Byrne moves the suitcases around to form the next setting.All very simple and effective.
Because the actors never leave the stage, and even make eye contact with the audience from time to time, I found myself becoming more and more emotionally involved with them.Empathy and identification are key tools in creating horror and this works especially well when you feel a connection with the actors as well as the characters.
There is a palpable and building tension here, which is made all the more pleasantly surprising given the relatively short running time of the play (just under an hour) and the lack of theatrical artifice.
I was put in mind of Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s Ghost Stories, which I saw last year.That had all the heft of a full West End production, involving lighting and sound effects, moving sets and a sizeable cast (not to mention the involvement of Derren Brown’s creative collaborator) to produce an undeniably creepy and clever show.But at £50 a seat – it bloody well better be effective!
This production, with the barest of sets and the simplest of effects, is every bit as dread-full (in a good way!)This demonstrates a great understanding not only of the source material but also of the stagecraft needed to bring it to life in a very different medium.
The attention to detail in the production is magnificent, from the confident script they wrote themselves, to the folky music they composed (with possibly a deliberate nod to The Wicker Man), to the cunningly-constructed hand-built props and, of course, to the subtle and careful performances.
I should be head-first in a book right now, preparing for some more weirdness tomorrow, but I’m not, I’m sitting in this library casting my own runes, because I feel that these performers deserve my response.
This is a clever, cunning, elegantly simple production that doesn’t let the stagecraft get between the audience and the drama.Sitting in the front row, I felt exposed; in harm’s way.What more can one ask of a horror story?
They are a charity and deserving of your time ad consideration.And I want to buy one of those ties, guys! Everything you could ever want to know about the Loughborough Uni Weekend of Weird (which I will henceforth refer to as "WoW", by the way) is available here. If you want to know more about Night of the Demon (and if you think you don’t, you’re wrong) then may I point you in the direction of the book Beating The Devil by the film industry’s second favourite Yorkshireman*: Tony Earnshaw.Learn more about it and him here.
If you'd like to know more about the original story, you can do so at the click of a mouse. There are various audio-book versions of the story available but this is, I feel, a particularly good one. We'll forgive Mr. French for being an American whilst reading something quintessentially English, since he has such and excellent voice.
And now, a bit of fun.If that phrase from the film ‘It’s in the trees, it’s coming’ rings a bell … Here’s why.
*Sean Bean, alright? I’m sorry, but them’s the rules.Hey look – Sean Bean made it to the end of something … Namely, this blog.
Lord of the Rings
is my favourite film (cos I think of it as one loooooong film) of the past 30
years. That, then, is the definition of
a hard act to follow.
With that in mind, I’ve watched the development of The Hobbit over the years with a mix of hope and trepidation. I was distraught when Jackson said
(effectively) that he couldn’t face making another. Then I was mollified when Del Toro took over
because, I thought, he’d keep it dark and extraordinary. When he got tired of the delays and
left I was genuinely concerned … Then, when Jackson said he would do it after
all, I celebrated.
But the delays continued … Studio and rights issues, union
and political problems … A threat to shoot somewhere other than New Zealand
(which we all now know is Middle Earth).
It looked like the film was cursed.
To be fair, all of this is not that unusual in large-scale movie making
but, in this case, it all happened very publicly.
Thankfully, it was all well worth the wait.
"You feel there's something calling you
... You're wanting to return ... To where the misty mountains rise and friendly fires burn ..."
For me, watching The
Hobbit is like returning home after a long time away … It feels comfortably
familiar, yet things have changed noticeably.
I’ve seen it twice now, once in proper 2D and once in 3D gimmick-o-scope. You probably already know my thoughts on 3D
so I won’t revisit them but, suffice it to say, the only reason I inflicted 3D
on myself was to see the 48 frames per second presentation. This had been so controversial, I just had to make my own mind up and, given
the controversy, this might be my last chance as there may never be another
widely distributed film in so-called HFR (higher frame rate).
The 48 frames do make a significant difference to the
viewing experience – akin to that of stepping-up from DVD to Blu-Ray – and it
can be distracting, so I’m glad I watched the film in traditional 2D first,
simply so I could concentrate on the story, the acting and the overall feel.
“I’m not the same Hobbit I once was” opines Ian Holm as old
Bilbo, looking at a drawing of Martin Freeman as young Bilbo. This starts things off with a nice nod and a
wink to the audience. It does cross my mind that I do hope we won’t get a belated ‘Special Edition’ of Fellowship,
with the flashback of Ian Holm's Bilbo finding the ring replaced with Freeman's re-staging of the same scene. I’m confident we won’t though because Jackson, after
all, isn’t George Lucas.
"No wait, here it is in the small print: ' ... Reserves the right to suddenly turn two films into three without warning.' Seems fairly watertight, chaps. No series three of Sherlock just yet, then ..."
As he did with the opening moments of Fellowship of the
Ring, Jackson gives us a flashback to a moment of historical significance which
lays the foundations of the current dilemma.
In LOTR it was the defeat of Sauron and the failure to destroy The One
Ring, here it is the loss of the city of Erebor to the marauding Fire Drake,
Smaug.
Because Jackson is a tease, he gives us the Dragon’s
spectacular attack and capturing of the city, without letting us get a good look
at it, there’s a taloned foot here, the tip of a spiky tail there, the shape of a
wing and, eventually, a close-up of an eyeball.
But the big reveal will, of course, be saved for a dramatically
expedient moment in the next film.
He pulls the same trick, just as effectively, when
Radogast’s tree-house is being besieged by giant spiders. We see legs and shadows and a genuinely
chilling shot of the furry-elbowed arachnids stalking away through the woodland
foliage. The full horror of them will be
revealed next time. Not sure how he’ll
top Shelob from Return of the King,
but we shall see.
Of course, the presence of these spiders, along with
Radogast’s dire warnings about ‘The Necromancer’, are ingredients we should recognise … They are dramatic
fore-shadowings … The seeds from which grow the dangers of LOTR. When Gandalf’s wizard superior, Saruman,
appears he is already equivocating over the danger posed by Mordor and we all
know where that will lead in just sixty short (by Middle Earth standards)
years.
Getting back to the loss of Erebor, it explains why, in Lord of the Rings, Gimli distrusts
Legolas because Thranduil, the Elf King (and, not
incidentally, Legolas’ father), refuses to get involved in the fight between
Dwarf and Dragon and thusly earns the eternal enmity of the Dwarven folk.
And so the framing device ends with old Bilbo sitting
quietly, on the eve of the party that launches The Lord of the Rings, reminiscing and blowing a smoke-ring which,
as this films sub-title ‘An Unexpected
Journey’ appears, is a reminder of another ring still, at that point, very
much on Bilbo’s mind.
"To think I should have lived to be good morninged by Belladonna Took'sson, as if I was
selling buttons at the door!"
And so we are introduced to young Bilbo, sitting on the same bench sixty years earlier, smoking
the same pipe weed, played now by Martin Freeman who immediately proffers his
trademark perplexed look as his view of The Shire is blocked by a rather
shambolic grey wizard. Gandalf is
exactly as I remember him from the Bag End scenes in LOTR which, in itself, is an impressive achievement given the
twelve years that have passed since those scenes were filmed and these.
Soon after this, our new cast-members begin to arrive,
initially in ones and twos, then in one heaving mass, we meet the thirteen
Dwarves of the new fellowship. I know
that having thirteen Dwarves plus one Hobbit and one Wizard was a major
headache for Jackson and co. because they simply didn’t know how to present so
many new faces in a way that we, the poor beleaguered viewer could remember
them all. Well, frankly, I’ve seen the
film twice and I still don’t know all their names nor have a grasp on all their
personalities but that’s okay; this is, after all, the first part of the
story. We have many hours to get to know
them before we’re done!
A (baker's) dozen Dwarves
The Dwarves are played by a cadre of (predominantly) Celtic
thesps, led by Yorkshireman (and therefore, you might say, thinking woman’s Sean
Bean) Richard Armitage. He is Thorin
Oakenshield, who was there at the fall of Erebor and, again, at the battle of
Moria when it was overwhelmed by the Orcs who still lurk in its stygian depths
when Gandalf returns there sixty years later. Thorin and his kinsman, Balin (played by
sagely Ken Stott) are the old guard, this film’s links to their culture’s noble
past now fallen on hard times and, as such, they exemplify the dignity and
restrained aggression that Aragorn brought to LOTR.
We see Thorin battle the Pale Orc, Azog, who will be our antagoniste du jour. A feud burns between these two which will
fuel the latter scenes of this film and will continue to burn, no doubt, in the
next one. Thorin’s grabbing of an
uprooted tree-stump to use it as a shield (and thusly earning his moniker) is
one of those mythic moments which makes my skin tingle with its
authenticity. This is exactly the kind
of moment one finds in real myths. We
are also told that his father, King Thrain, who had hoarded all the gold in
Erebor, had been driven mad by its loss and simply disappeared. One imagines that he’ll be back subsequently,
possibly in the final part of what will now be a three-part treatment of this
story.
"Have I ever said: I love that eye-liner on you, it really makes your eyes sparkle?"
This, once again, gives us a thread to connect with LOTR as
that story was entirely driven by the failure of kings and other leaders. From Isildur’s initial
failure to destroy the ring, to King Theoden’s torpor, Saruman’s greed and Steward
Denethor’s mad jealousy, every leader in Middle Earth failed their people. This, I feel, was a significant part of
Tolkien’s message, reflecting on his own youth as a victim of the political
incompetence which resulted in World War One.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was, himself, no stranger to a bowl of Old Toby ...
Part Two of Two:
Tolkien himself, of course, vigorously denied any
allegorical content in LOTR, in the
Foreword to the revised edition, he states: “As for any inner meaning or
'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither
allegorical nor topical … The crucial chapter, "The Shadow of the Past',
is one of the oldest parts of the tale. It was written long before the
foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster …” Well, far be it from me to argue with the
great man but the very nature of subtext is such that an author may not be
personally aware of it, may not intend it and, certainly, may deny it. Please note that he does take the trouble to
include that all-important ‘in the intention of the author’ clause, so it seems
he was conceding that it may be there, but not by his deliberate design.
After all, he was writing during the period when the country
was sinking towards, then engaged in, then recovering from the second Great War
of the generation. During this time,
from the rarefied halls of academe, he will have seen many of his students
drawn to the flag and that surely must have stirred up memories of his own
youth when he had fought in the first war.
As he continues in the Foreword: “One has indeed personally to come
under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression … to be caught in youth by
1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following
years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead”.
In a time of war, he wrote about war … How can his circumstance not have
influenced his mood, his creative decision-making and his conclusions?
Any similarities between Tolkien and Gandalf are not in the intention of the film-makers.
But The Hobbit, a
children’s fable, is most decidedly not
about war, neither in its text nor its subtext.
It is about introducing us to a fabulous world, from the point of view
of an innocent, child-like in bearing and experience, but surprisingly bold in
demeanour. Bilbo has only the vaguest notion
of the depth of history, politics and the vagaries of civilisation that have
formed the world into which he steps.
Are any of us any different when we first venture forth?
And so the merry band set off on their heroes' journey and
Jackson gets to unleash the gratuitous use of spectacular New Zealand landscape
that gave LOTR such a particular look
and, co-incidentally, did wonders for the New Zealand tourist trade. These new Middle Earth vistas are every bit
as beautiful as those with which I am now familiar. Oh, good!
The world is lighter and more magical than we know it, with
no Mordor to darken the horizon.
Radogast The Brown is deeply disturbed by the rot and mould he finds
infesting his forest, the vanguard of Sauron’s regime. The giant spiders he encounters are familiar
to us, but completely unprecedented to him: “Where on this good Earth” he asks
plaintively “did those foul creatures come from?”
Radogast is only the third wizard we have met (although, to
be fair we’re only likely to meet three as Tolkien only invented five and
didn’t trouble himself much with the other two ‘Blue’ wizards, the names of
whom Gandalf can, pointedly, not remember).
He is played wonderfully by Sylvester McCoy who, essentially, plays
himself. Stuntman, mine-artist and
all-round eccentric, McCoy has always been a natural entertainer. In person he comes across as something of an overly-enthusiastic
uncle, delightful for kids, embarrassing for adults and Radogast, with birds in
his hair and his mugging, eye-rolling performance, is exactly like that.
The Seventh Doctor thinks being a Wizard is for the birds. (Sorry).
As we are introduced to him, he is fighting an epic battle
to save the life of a hedgehog. But why
not? Having your protagonist be a member
of the physically smallest, least adventurous race on earth clearly shows a willingness
to acknowledge the value of every life – however seemingly insignificant. Whilst Saruman disdains Radogast as a fool,
Gandalf is himself not so foolish as to think bearing the demeanour of a fool
necessarily makes one such. As he later
confides to Galadriel: “I have found it is the small things … The deeds of
everyday folk that keeps evil at bay.” That, right there, is the overarching
message of this whole series of films in a sentence. God – if Middle Earth had any such thing –
would be in the details!
It is an interesting point, I think, that McKellen and McCoy
have worked together on stage as, respectively, Lear and Fool. Their relationship is well established and
deep and that comes across immediately here.
Finally, before Radogast disappears completely from the film (hopefully
to return in the next one) he breaks out his quite wonderful sleigh, pulled by
his team of Rhosgobel Rabbits. Now that beats shanks’ pony as a way to
traverse Middle Earth!
Bilbo is soon advised by Gandalf that true courage “ … is
not about knowing when to take a life but when to spare one” which is, of
course, why he spares Gollum. Of course,
one could argue that Frodo and, indeed, Gollum himself, might be better off
with him put out of his misery … but he isn’t genuinely dangerous and I
seriously doubt that Frodo and Sam would make it to Mordor without him. So leaving him alive is investing in the
future of Middle Earth and the ultimate defeat of Sauron by human (or, rather, Hobbitual) decency! No? Suit yourself.
I love the decency of the characters as demonstrated in the
details: Thorin waits for all of his men
to escape down the chute to Rivendell that Gandalf has discovered, before
heading down himself. He, needless to
add, is not a ruler who fails his subjects.
Later, when the dwarves are surrounded by full size horses with
weapons-wielding Elves riding them, they form a defensive circle and
instinctively pull the helpless Bilbo into the centre of it. They may be intimidated and hopelessly
out-classed, but they don’t let that imperil there instinctive sense of
comradeship and decency. He may only be
a ‘Hobbit Burglar’, but he’s one of them and, as such, an equal.
Even Gandalf is not without his human foibles. As the iridescent Galadriel bids him farewell and disappears
… Gandalf is left alone and, just for a moment, distraught … So deeply smitten with
her is he.
McKellen gives a very human performance as the ... Well, we don't know what he is but he's not human ... Gandalf, when he meets the film's one and only female performer - Shoe-horned in there simply because ...
Apparently some people have complained about the pace of
this film, beginning, as it does, with well over half an hour of characters
arriving, eating and doing not much before taking a leisurely stroll to,
initially, Rivendell. But, mayhap, the
complainers have forgotten that that is precisely how Fellowship began, with
time for the viewer to adjust to this new world and this panoply of bizarre new
characters. It’s possibly also worth
mentioning that the film was originally intended to be the first half of the
story, and has been re-worked so that it is now just the first third … That
must have had some effect on the pacing of the movie. Must have.
But when the trilogy is complete I am confident that the pace will seem
perfectly appropriate.
Getting us to revisit familiar (and welcome) places like
Rivendell, to show us fondly remembered characters like Elrond and Galadriel
and the less-well-thought-of Saruman, is a short-hand way of helping us to
identify with the familiar elements from the films we know, so to help us cope
with the elements we don’t. This isn’t
simply an exercise in nostalgia, mind, as Jackson and Co. have achieved
something quite different here, not least in the technical innovations of
shooting so many special effects in 3D and at 48 frames per second.
Part Three of Two:
Particularly noticeable in these early scenes, but present
throughout, is one of the key differences between this film and LOTR … The
glow. Many of the characters’ faces and,
sometimes, the environments in which they walk, have a hazy shine about them as
though they are glowing with inner magic.
I know that this is a product of post-production digital colour-grading
and, initially, I found it quite distracting but then I settled into it
because, after all, this film is set in an early, more innocent, less
doom-laden world that LOTR. In that world only The Shire is untouched by
Sauron’s blight but, sixty years earlier, the whole world is going about its
magical kingdom business, being a place of wonder and fantasy … So why wouldn’t
things have an innocent, magical glow?
Hang on, have my eyes gone funny? It's this bloody eye-liner, isn't it!
Whilst, as you probably know, I can’t see in 3D, I’m told the
experience here is a very comfortable one, with none of the eye-strain that
some people experience in normal 3D. Of
course, that means nothing to me because I’m just watching a flat film,
no-matter how many dimensions they’ve
made it in. I mostly watched this film
oblivious to the dimension I was missing – save for the very few cheapo 3D
gimmicks they’ve thrown in – such as having Gollum almost walk into the camera
to emphasise just how much he hates Bagginses.
Thankfully, these distracting shots are few and far between and the
film, by and large, moves the camera and the viewer’s eye around the screen
very much as it would were it 2D.
As to the HFR … I could see a difference almost
immediately. In the panning shots over
the city of Dale there was no strobing, as there often is with sideways
movement. The image was clear as a bell
and camera movement was correspondingly smooth.
The additional detail was genuinely starting. It is like the screen isn’t there and you’re
looking through a hole in the wall to another world. In the feasting scenes, I genuinely felt like
I was sitting amongst the dwarves.
Surely, that’s the effect the film-makers have been striving for since …
Forever.
But definition of this incredible height reveals the reality
in a way that, maybe, Jackson and Co. had not banked upon. Some of the sets now look like sets …
Particularly Bag End, the pony stockade and Troll camp and a lot of the
stone-work looks like the painted plaster it really is. This same clarity also reveals the
limitations in some of the special effects, which betray the reality of an actor
standing in-front of a green screen reacting to something that will be added
months later.
The approach to Rivendell not only looks like painted styrofoam in HFR but, thanks to some bizarre auditory illusion, it also sounds fake underfoot!
There is a lot of light and a considerable depth of field,
meaning that a lot of what you see is in focus.
I suspect this is at the behest of the 3D, as it would be difficult to
separate the image into layers and separate them, if they aren’t initially in
focus. This effect takes away from the
cinematic feel of the viewing experience and makes the film look more like TV
from the 1980s, when the video cameras needed a lot of light and a wide-open
aperture to record the image with fidelity.
But, oddly, that effect was okay; it reminded me of fantasy TV shows
like Doctor Who and Sapphire and Steel and the BBC’s version
of Narnia, shows for which I have
considerable affection. So, in an
unexpected way, the nostalgia I felt in revisiting Middle Earth was heightened
by a nostalgia I felt for the TV shows of bygone decades.
Of course, all is not exactly as we (who have not read the
book) expect. The hint’s in the film’s sub-title,
after all. The scene where two Stone
Giants clash (essentially two mountains throwing smaller mountains at
each-other) seems just a scene too far – betraying the child-like ambitions of
the source novel rather than the rational maturity of its sequel. Never-the-less, Jackson and Co. strive to
make this complete fantasy as credible as possible, lighting it in (probably
more than fifty) shades of grey and creating real suspense. What could have been ridiculously
over-the-top is possibly the most spectacular sequence in a thoroughly
spectacular film. It’s a moment of pure
Harryhausen and I mean that as the highest compliment!
Other subtle differences are to be found in The Orcs, they
are stranger than their ancestors will be sixty years hence, they do not speak
English and they are almost all CGI creations now rather than the more
obviously humanoid mime-artists in suits.
This is testament to how far CGI animation has come in the ten years
since our last visit. Then, Gollum was a
remarkable achievement whose only real antecedent was the risible Jar-Jar
Binks. Now, he is just one of a
multitude of completely convincing animated characters, each with their own
personality. Thanks in no small part to
the pioneering work done for LOTR by Andy
Serkis (who, of course, returns as Gollum for a cameo, then spent the rest of
the shoot behind the camera, directing the second-unit action scenes) motion
capture (or 'performance capture' as they prefer to describe it these days) has now become the way to
create believable performances and breathe life into the wildest of CGI
creations.
Click to enlarge and take in the incredible detail of this entirely CGI image. "More real than real" would seem to be Weta's motto.
Given how used we have become to life-like animations, I was
pretty concerned that Gollum would have to be pretty special to impress now,
yet they couldn’t really change anything because that would be to betray my
memories of him from LOTR. I needn’t
have feared … Serkis’ performance is masterful, a complex mix of pathos and humour
and bestial rage, while the computers have whipped-up an extraordinary visual
creation entirely suited to this sharper, clearer, brighter world, yet still unambiguously
the same tortured soul we know so well!
Serkis shows the duality of the character, he bickers with
himself and changes mood in mid-sentence.
He is by turns vulnerable and dangerous, loathsome and laughable and,
ultimately, sympathetically sad. Given
his bi-polar nature that is perfectly proper but it’s an extraordinary feat for
them to have given so much personality to a cloud of pixels.
Both the Troll and Goblin sequences rely heavily on the perf-cap technology. They also are great examples of Jackson's habit of keeping people busy during his notoriously long and complicated shoots.
The Trolls are played by William Kircher, Peter Hambleton and Mark Hadlow who are, out of those fetching skin-tight costumes, also the Dwarves Bifur, Gloin and Dori respectively.
He also offered a laurel-branch to Australia by employing Dame Edna herself - Barry Humphries - as the voice and face of the Goblin King.
Even the loathsome Les Patterson couldn't have played this without make-up.
This sequence – largely played out in long shot as the gang
fight their way through the tide or Orcs (or are they ‘Goblins’ … They don’t
seem entirely sure) – stays just the right side of the Super Mario
platform-game effect that the similar scenes in the Mines of Moria had last
time … again because of the huge improvement I computer processing power and
the sophistication of the software. I
confess, even as someone who is rarely impressed by sheer scale in a move, I
thought these scenes were extraordinary in HFR.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen imagery so clear, so immersive. Well presented, a 48 fps image genuinely is
the theatrical equivalent to the step-up from DVD to Blu-Ray.
The ridiculous fall down the crevasse, surfing the bridge as
it breaks apart, a sequence even more preposterous than the hanging dinosaur
fight in King Kong, even less
feasible than the rocking-stone-archway in LOTR
… Somehow seems completely convincing in HFR.
Indeed, the scenes immediately afterwards, on the hillside, when the CGI
avatars are replaced by human actors once more, actually feel like something of
a letdown after the razor-sharp hyper-real clarity of the Goblin Chase.
It’s fair to say that Gandalf has a habit of saving the day at the last minute. He conveniently turns up at the Cave Troll camp just in time to stop them spit-roasting Bilbo and the boys, then arrives once again in the veritable nick, to save them all from the hoards of the Goblin King. I hope they don’t keep playing this card, because it has already become predictable and will soon make the transition to corny.
Thorin butches up for his showdown with Azog ... Little does he know who'll save the day.
When Azog and Thorin make eye contact we’re into a world of
slo-mo as they face off. I’m a sucker
for melodramatic slo-mo, me. This
battle, in the burning woods, is just as dramatic as Sean Bean’s face off
against the Uruk-Hai at the same point in Fellowship. Any other film series and I’d be criticising
it for following its own template too closely, but I can’t do it here … By this
point I couldn’t see anything but good.
The last Hobbit standing. Howard Shore’s epic choral work. The Giant Eagles. Yes, yes and yes. I even accepted that Gandalf saved the day again. That’s why he’s there, after all!
Some might protest: Why don’t the Eagles take the Dwarves all the way to that mountain, instead of dropping them on the randomly-chosen peak of another. Well, where would be the fun in that?
When two hours and forty minutes suddenly came unexpectedly to an end, I was distraught … I didn’t want the journey to end. I can’t wait for it to resume.
I confess that I still don’t know the names of all the
dwarves off by heart, but it’s (relatively) early days yet.
And, to help you along, we have this helpful family portrait:
Don't strain your eyes - Click to enlarge ...
Sure, I have some concerns about the decision (apparently taken as late as last Easter, when a year of principal photography was all-but over) to expand the films from two to three. As I've mentioned, I haven't read the book, but I understand the concerns of those who have, regarding him having enough material with which to fill three films. But there is also a library of books published by Tolkien's son, filling-out the entire history of Middle Earth. There is no shortage of stories to tell, absolutely no lack of material from which to cut the movie's cloth. I understand that the cast are re-assembling for three more months of shooting. They may refer to them as 're-shoots', but three months ... That's longer than most movies take to make.
My only real concern is over the pacing of the narrative. A two-part structure is very different from a three-part one. The so-called 'three-act structure' is the backbone of all Hollywood movies. It has a tripod structure which is quite strong and well-balanced. To be honest, I am more comfortable with this structure than with the two-parter, however, it does mean some elements that we were told to expect are now not going to be on our screens until next December. Have a look at the banner below. Click it to enlarge and take a gander at the last three panels ... All of which are scenes which were intended to be in An Unexpected Journey but are now, unexpectedly, not.
Click and scroll ... It's the last three panels you should be paying particular attention to ...
Whatever concerns I (or you) may have, I think it is undeniable that Jackson and Co. know their material as well as anyone and they have demonstrated - over four impossible movies - that they can be trusted with this material.
The
Hobbit is an extraordinary achievement, an entirely worthy companion to Lord of the Rings as well as an
expansion upon and development of its spectacle and creative ambition.
I’ve got two more films owed me and I want to enjoy every frame of
them. And at 48fps that’s a lot of
frames!
As he did with King Kong in 2005, Jackson has allowed very detailed 'Production Diaries' to be produced showing the behind-the-scenes efforts that went into making this film. With Kong they came out weekly, sometimes several a week, and constitute an incredible vision of a big movie being made from the perspective of practically every participant however apparently insignificant their contribution. Many of these videos were released on a now hard-to-find DVD, which I encourage you to buy if you can.
If anything, Jackson shared too much about the film before it was released and took away the magic before it had chance to cast its spell on us. He has been a bit more restrained with The Hobbit, releasing just eight diaries in a little under two years. They are easy to find on Jackson's blog and on The YouTube and look splendid in high definition (something which was not available for Kong's diaries in 2005, in the early days of YouTube and broadband). However, someone has gone to the trouble of editing them all together as one long video so, simply for the ease of it ... Let's watch them all in one:
So, having made it through the welcome denial fantasy of Christmas and New Year followed, very promptly, by the bleak depression of the realisation January is back and we have to go through it all again ... I decided to use some of the free time I have, now my paid work has shrunk back to pre-Chrimbo levels, to do a little Cellulording.
Firstly, let us have a little look forward to the upcoming movies of 2013. I'm not going to get into all that interweb speculation that so many other sites fill your screen with as they stumble over themselves to break the latest piece of unsubstantiated trivia a nano-second before their competitors ... Instead, I'm going to mull over the posters for this year's movies.
Most Hollywood movies tell the same story. They tend to feature the same few actors and their special effects are done by the same few FX houses. This gives them a uniformity which makes the accountants who run the Studios feel secure. This we know.
But the uniformity and lack of imagination has spread throughout the process. The trailers are all the same now, often using the same pieces of music and cut to the same tempo. They follow the same narrative arc even if the film they are advertising doesn't (defence offers the now famous case of the woman who sued over the trailer for Drive). This phenomena has also afflicted the posters. Thanks to Photoshop, the days of the painted poster are pretty-much gone but then so are the days of the dodgy photo-montage. The skill Photoshop wrangler can take photos and turn them into hyper-real painterly elements. There is nothing that can't be put on a poster now, nothing.
That being so, why do they choose to put the same things on them time and time again? Is it purely to create that sense of familiarity that supposedly draws the unthinking masses into multiplexes? It's been going on for a long time but, this year, with the swarm of teaser posters for upcoming blockbusters ... It's become patently ridiculous.
What kicked me off was the release of this image:
It's an interesting, bleak post-Apocalyptic kind of image. The reason it particularly stood out to me is that it hit the internets just a week after the teaser for Star Trek Into Darkness:
You'll immediately see what I saw. Same composition, same Apocalyptic tone, same palette ... Same pose for the solitary figure, back to us, looking moody.
If this were a coincidence, all well and good ... But it isn't ... It's an attack of the clones ... Another one of next year's tent-pole films is Iron Man 3:
Notice anything? Blues and greys? Hero with his back to us ... Yeah?
Now, don't get me wrong, I few graphic designers are really pushing the boundaries of what you can do with a teaser poster cos there's ...
The graphic two-colour version. There's the full colour variation:
And there's the group shot too ... With added silhouettes:
So, I dunno what you're expecting from any of these films but me, I'm expecting to see the cast walking away. A lot.
Of course, it's not like it's a new phenomenon. I mean, last year we had some pioneering work done in promoting the Feminist agenda by the marketeers of:
and ...
as well as ...
... Because all of those figures are female. I think. Slightly less oestrogen-soaked we had this:
And, I suppose all of these posters are a variation on the theme struck by Scrotum of Boris (or Quantum of Solace as everyone except Adam Buxton knows it) ...
Which, of course, owes more than a tip of the hat to The Phantom Menace which famously teased the world ten years before with this:
So, it seems that, as with all bad things, for the paucity of imagination in movie poster design ... We can blame George.
First thoughts. That’s
what this piece will be. Half-formed, poorly-considered thoughts.
Having maintained my usual exhausting self-imposed media
blackout on this film … I went to see it today as cold as anyone could. I haven’t opened a copy of ‘Empire’ in
months, have avoided some of my favourite websites and found myself sitting in
the cinema with my fingers in my ears going “La-la-la” while the trailer
played. (If you think I’m joking … You
don’t know me that well).
So, I’m not intending to spoil the film, but by merely
talking about it, I’m going to … So, if you have any ambition to watch this
film … Don’t read on.
Give yourself the chance to see the film …
Okay? So, I’ll assume
you have seen it if you’re still here.
So when is a trilogy not really a trilogy?
I was reasonably indifferent to Batman Begins (2005). I
enjoyed it but, y’know, it wasn’t the ‘Batman: Year One’ I’d been hoping
for. And it had Liam Neeson, which, in
his post-Phantom Menace, (1999) pre-Taken (2009) ‘wilderness years’ was
rarely a great thing. Then there were
the unconvincing sets (The Narrows) and dodgy special effects (all that mono-rail
stuff … please). But it did have the
relationship between Wayne and Alfred and Lucius Fox. It had the development of the armour and the
Tumbler. It had some pretty bloody
spectacular location photography (fighting on a frozen lake, etc). It at least attempted to be a grown-up
superhero film. A first for a DC-owned
property, in my humble opinion!
Then The Dark Knight
(2008) arrived. It was a
phenomenon. Everything that I felt was
wrong about Begins was right about
this film. Everything that I had thought
right about Begins was even more
right. Gone were the dodgy sets and
effects … This time it was shot on location and the effects were practical …
where practical.
You won't hear any mentions of either The Joker or Arkham in this film. No joke.
My straw-poll survey made The Dark Knight the second favourite film of the decade and it was
my second favourite too. It remains my absolute
favourite superhero film … And I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Marvelite.
TDK (as its
friends call it) was such a profound leap forward from BB (as, I suspect, no one calls it) it vastly surpassed my
expectation. As such, The Dark Knight Rises was almost bound
to be a disappointment … Simply because it couldn’t possibly exceed the now
stratospheric expectation.
I knew this going in.
As he did with TDK,
he begins by catching us off guard.
Whereas that film’s prologue was a bank heist, this film has a full on
Bond-movie pre-title sequence, complete with jaw-dropping aerial stunts. I don’t suppose Nolan is pitching to direct
the next Bond but, if he were, this audition would doubtless secure him the
job.
Then we go into a lengthy, but necessary process of
catch-up. It’s been eight years since
Bats took the fall for the now-sainted Harvey Dent … Eight years when he has
not once donned the cape and cowl. So
far so very ‘The Dark Knight Returns’.
If you felt Bats coming out of retirement rang a few bells ...
If you’ve never read Frank Miller and Klaus Janson’s definitive vision of The
Batman (the one that effectively made every subsequent story unnecessary) then
treat yourself. The build-up to Bats’
inevitable return is mythical and his arrival is seismic. Sadly, by comparison, Batman’s return in this
film is something of a damp squib.
Anyway, as before, Nolan has lifted elements from a variety
of Batman comic-books, 1993's 'Knightfall' by Doug Moench and Jim Aparo, of
course, Miller’s 'Dark Knight Returns', touches of Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke's revamped version of Catwoman and, as usual, the atmosphere of the Loeb/Sale stories. He also refers back, often in cunningly
subtle ways, to his own previous films (the burning bat symbol, the frozen
river, the circular pit) all of which is mixed together with an awareness of the
world-wide audience’s rage at the elite rich having destroyed our economy in
the years since the last film came out.
There was clearly no plan at the beginning to make a trilogy
– hence the clear visual and tonal difference between the first two films, but,
never-the-less, Nolan (and his fellow script-writer, his brother, Jonathan
Nolan) have woven enough of the thematic fabric of the first film into this third
to create a satisfying conclusion. Very
much in the way the Die Hard With a
Vengeance (1995) ties up the threads of Die
Hard (1988).
Problems there are, certainly. Small problems, such as … Why is Wayne
limping for the film’s first half hour and where does the limp go? How come a punch in the back cures a
shattered spine? Who is in charge of The
Pit and why is it there? And Matthew
Modine … Ehm … Why?
Then there are larger problems … Such as my failure to
connect with Bane. Maybe it is because muscle
is inherently less interesting than cunning.
Where The Joker was an evil genius, expressively performed by Heath
Ledger who was inspired by the opportunities the role afforded him … Tom Hardy
is literally muzzled as Bane.
Hardy, no stranger to out-methoding Bale put on two stone of muscle for this. Bale grew a tache.
His scenes with Batman are perfunctory and largely consist
of them whacking each-other in a, frankly, not very cinematic way. Nolan has never really made a big deal out of
the fight scenes with these films. I’m
not complaining, particularly, since fight scenes hardly constitute the
intellectual high-point of a movie.
Maybe some of the limitation is brought about by Bale’s insistence on
doing most of that sort of stuff himself, maybe some of comes about because the
IMAX screen of which Nolan has become fond, doesn’t lend itself to rapid
editing and whip-pans. Whatever the
reasons, the fights have never been the point of these films … So, to reduce
Batman and Bane’s conflict to a street-brawl seems anti-climactic, as though it
is beneath the dignity of both characters.
And there is some dignity to Hardy’s performance of Bane, even if it is
stifled by that (never fully explained) mask. It is also worth mentioning that the slightly fuzzy vocal effect they have put on Hardy's voice makes some of his dialogue difficult to follow. So, if you have no idea what he's saying, don't worry, you're not alone.
Okay so, unlike, say, Darth Vader, he can at least use his
eyes … Which he does, to great effect. There is some humour here, not least in his Yoda-like dialogue delivery … But times several I found myself
wondering if the dialogue was being added afterwards and Hardy was mere miming. He seemed like the passion and aggression
that his physicality demanded was lacking.
Sadly, Hardy is perfectly cast in this role, but is simply not allowed
to play to his considerable strengths.
Watch Bronson to see him being
uncontrollably physical and truly, disturbingly terrifying. Here, only in his final scene with Batman does he become
a fully rounded character but it is too little too late.
So I was disappointed with Tom Hardy … Not disappointed by him so much as for him.
Notice how the eyes seem to follow you round the room ...
Maybe if this film hadn’t been shackled to its 12A
certificate and, therefore, it’s need to not upset anyone above the age of five,
maybe then we could have seen Bane let off the leash. Maybe characters we are supposed to be
invested in could be allowed to die on screen.
Maybe the realistic vision could be permitted some realistic
blood-letting. But none of that is
directly Nolan’s fault, that is down to the MPAA and the BBFC who censor the
wrong things for the wrong reasons.
But what about the story?
Does it have the multi-layered complexity of TDK? In spades! Lesser film-makers would have made massive
set-pieces, if not entire movies out of sequences which Nolan references in
passing – such as the blowing-up of the bridges, or the trapping of the entire police-force underground. Indeed, the number of plot-threads is
actually too mind-boggling to follow in a single viewing. This is not helped by the way that the film’s
structure seems to fly apart in the third act.
Our hero is lying on his back on the other side of the planet while, in
the space of a montage, three months passes and Commissioner Gordon is leading
a resistance movement in the unruly streets of chaos-riven Gotham and them … It’s
three weeks after that and a few hours till a nuclear bomb is going to turn
Manhattan Island (sorry, Gotham Island) into Hiroshima 2.0.
But, hang on, didn’t The Joker mine the bridges last
time? Well, he said he did … But we didn’t
see any blowing up. Here we do.
Sorry … Did you mention a nuclear bomb? Yep.
Another touch of the old Bond movie!
Mixed-in (had they but known) with a touch of The Avengers. That, I confess,
was a bit of a stretch. For a series
that had striven to be real, to pitch realistic characters with realistic
motivations against each-other in realistic ways … The nuclear stand-off and
its resolution was pushing things a bit.
Okay, so I had problems with the film … Problems which may
evaporate with a second viewing. But
there were also pleasures.
What's new, pussy-cat?
Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle is a pitch-perfect delight. She isn’t there as cheese-cake. I didn’t notice a single lingering shot of
her arse in her tight costume. She doesn’t
need Bruce to come along and rescue her … indeed she does the rescuing … And no
one, at any point, even contemplates calling her ‘Cat Woman’. Oh. Thank.
God.
Joseph Gordon Levitt is spot-on as John Blake a character
who takes up the campaigning reigns of a younger Jim Gordon, who is now
polluted by the lie he has been telling about Harvey Dent all these years. Indeed, as the film proceeds, he evolves from
being a proto-Gordon, to a proto-Bruce Wayne … And there will be much interweb
speculation about where that particular story thread will lead.
Rather like Bale before him ... The uncomfortable teenager has all grown -up and is an action movie star in the making.
Michael Caine succeeds (once again) in bringing a lump to
the throat as Wayne’s Better Angel, constantly telling him the unvarnished
truth … Even if one or two of his exchanges did echo with the recent memory of
Martin Freeman’s astonishing turn as John Watson in the TV version of Sherlock.
I loved the way that this film (inadvertently) turns over
the coin to its scarred side and shows us what a big city is really like. In The Amazing
Spider-Man (as well as in Raimi’s more fantastical versions of the story)
we got New Yorkers pulling together to protect their own. But Gotham, as seen by Nolan (and, before
him, Frank Miller) is a very different kind of New York. Here, when the ‘ordinary Gothamites’ are cut
loose … They just ransack the place, freeing prisoners, setting up kangaroo
courts and hanging ‘the guilty’ from bridges.
This is a city where freedom from the shackles of law-and-order simply
means anarchic self-destruction.
I loved the hectic, dizzying pace of the third act, with its
echoes of Robocop (1987) and Escape From New York (1981). I loved the sheer scale of the visuals … From the size of the sets (the huge,
Goya-esque court-room … The multi-story sewer … The run-off where the police
are trapped … The Pit) as much as the audacious way the locations are shot (as
often as not from the air).
Half upside-down insect / half helicopter hybrid ... If I can't have Deckard's Spinner - I want that!
I love The Bat. I
love the fact that they don’t call it a Bat-Wing and I want one!
I love the ambition of taking a superhero movie and making
it about class-war, terrorism, social group-dynamics, personal-morality and
war!
I love the fact that the last act rambles over five months,
has none of the unities script-writers are trained to observe, and yet still
hangs together as an energetic and epic story.
I love the fact that the film has about four false endings
and I only guessed two of them.
I haven't mentioned The Bat Pod ... But Selina Kyle just looks too cool on it to ignore.
Ultimately, this is not
as satisfying an experience as The Dark
Knight. It strives for so much scale the human element gets
lost. It strives for so many narrative threads that the
coherence gets lost. It lacks the
charismatic heart The Joker gave to the last film and it lacks his
clearly-defined motivation. We never do
really know why Bane is doing what he’s doing.
But it is an experience, a truly
epic experience full of ideas … And
there are precious few of those in most $250 million movies.
If Nolan has failed it is only partially and it is only because
he was too ambitious. And God bless him
for it. That ambition worked in The Dark Knight and gave us the first
IMAX block-buster. It worked in Inception and gave us the most
intelligent block-buster probably ever … And it works here more than it doesn’t.
None of that 3D nonsense for our Christopher.
More than anything else … I love the fact that this is in 2D. And always will be.
I also love the fact that, in a few days, I will be seeing
it again on an IMAX screen! So I might
be back with more …
When you have seen the film you, if you're anything like me, probably like to peek behind the curtain to see how it was done. Well, rather conveniently, this 13-minute-long making-of has been on-line for a while. Just the job.
… Meanwhile, as you may know, there has been a typically
American tragedy at a midnight screening of this film. In a town apparently just fifteen miles from
Columbine, another psychopath starved of publicity has decided to make himself
famous in the wrongest way possible.
The news media, which is whacking itself dry with excitement
over this, is sparing is no lascivious detail of what they are already calling ‘The
Batman Killings’. Indeed, as I type
this, they are telling us that the perpetrator was made up to look like The
Joker. This will, inevitably, re-ignite
the Media effects Debate that rages on year-after-year and which I will, in all
likelihood, be evoking to my Media students at some point in the future.
Over at Zap 2 It, they have noticed that Miller's 'Dark Knight Returns' chillingly dealt with this issue (including the notion of the media's culpability) in its Arnold Crimp tableau:
The message here is that a deranged mind - and let us not forget that no-one chooses to be mentally ill - will take inspiration from any source, will confuse and misinterpret that inspiration and will fit it into a skewed reality. Wiser voices than mine have noted, many times, that you cannot legislate for the infinite variety of human personality. But one thing we can do, is not obsess over the details.
Earlier today, a friend and ex-student reminded me of this …
It’s short, it’s pointed and it’s the single most coherent comment I’ve ever
heard on this type of atrocity …
For now, if you were intending to go and see The Dark Knight Rises … or any other
movie … Go. Don’t let the weakness of
one mad individual, or the cumulative weakness of one mad society, dictate your
actions.
If you want to know more about violent crime in American – watch Bowling For Columbineand if you want to
understand the irresistible power of the media over our minds … I urge you to
look up the name Adam Curtis.
