LotR1-FotR-Seq02

[Mister Underhill]

I'm a little late to the party on this one -- the internet crack known as Werewolf is time- and mind-consuming -- so this may be a little scattershot:

alatar, that note about Gandalf and the "haven't aged a day" line and the kids -- now that's some close watching. I like to think I'm pretty detail-oriented, but that's one that never occurred to me. I think you might even be able to write it off a bit -- at 111, even a few years ought to make a difference. It's like Gandalf keeps waiting for Bilbo to "hit the wall", but he never does.

Originally Posted by SPM

But it seems to me to be a place that many in today's audiences will find difficult to identify with.

Hunh. I don't understand you on this one, Sauce. Pesky relatives, good friends, eating, drinking, smoking, dancing, a little bit of honest work -- I think Jackson does a fine job of establishing the Shire as an idyllic and relatively easily identifiable place. I think a lot of people have a "quiet country life" fantasy that is more or less perfectly embodied here. I've never bought into the thesis that English readers have a stronger identification with the Shire than any other readers anyway.

I can find little to fault in this sequence, especially as pertains Gandalf and Bilbo. I couldn't disagree more -- with all due respect -- with Mithalwen's comments about McKellan. I bought into his Gandalf instantly, and I love his performance throughout this sequence -- his gentle good humor, his sincere affection for the hobbits and especially for Bilbo, and most of all his growing disquiet about Bilbo's ring, which is all played in reaction shots to various foreboding signs and hints in dialogue. If only such a deft and subtle performance could have been had from Woods later in the trilogy. I've always thought that if the trilogy deserved an acting Oscar, it should have gone to McKellan for his performance in FotR, which has all the best Gandalf scenes for my money. I wonder if Gandalf ever regretted having to come back just because "Fly, you fools!" are such perfect last words. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The scenes between McKellan and Holme are pitch-perfect for the most part. The effects, both practical and computer-generated, are extremely successful, and though you can spot flaws now that you know the secrets of the magic trick, I don't think I ever questioned the visual reality of Bilbo as hobbit-sized and Gandalf as one of the Big People.

There are several points in the sequence that never fail to give me chills ("In fact I mean not to.") or raise a little mist ("All your long years, we've been friends. Trust me now, as you once did."). Holme does a good job swinging back and forth between comical eccentricity and Ring-obsession. Somebody mentioned they didn't like Holme's Polonius in Hamlet, but I thought he was very good because he has a talent for handling those transitions between comedy and drama. I love the scene in Bag End in which Bilbo finally gives up the Ring because it's so close to the book.

Jackson previews the sensibility that will put his personal stamp on the adaptations with several broad slapstick touches -- the much-mentioned ear-wax, and the introduction of Merry and Pippin, among others. What can I say? I like slapstick as much as anybody, but I wish Jackson's instinct for it had been more restrained for the trilogy.

One thing that doesn't grate too strongly here, but that I think I didn't love as the trilogy progressed, is the subtle shift in dynamics achieved by having such a youthful Frodo matched up with an older Sam. I'm not even sure offhand what the age difference is supposed to be in the books, but when I read them I get a much stronger sense of Frodo as the oldest of the four hobbits, whereas here he comes across clearly to me as the youngest -- and throughout the films I think an older brothers/baby brother type dynamic develops between the actors, if not the characters, slightly altering their relationships.

Out of all the characters, Astin's Samwise is the farthest from my own mental picture. I don't recollect the true details of book Sam offhand, but my Sam has very dark hair, maybe receding a bit, is probably the slimmest rather than the fattest of the hobbits, and I think has a mustache -- don't ask me why. I don't like how Astin plays him more simpleton than just simple in these early scenes, though his performance grows on me later.

Bag End is a fantastic piece of art design. All that clutter -- it's just how Bag End should look.

Overall, I think the sequence does a good job of establishing the Shire and the feeling of hobbit society and has many nice touches for Tolkien fans. But I can see why more casual moviegoers might get a little restless -- this scene is mostly just more exposition, and after the prologue the audience already knows how deadly dangerous the Ring is and has to wait for the characters to catch up.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

Hunh. I don't understand you on this one, Sauce. Pesky relatives, good friends, eating, drinking, smoking, dancing, a little bit of honest work -- I think Jackson does a fine job of establishing the Shire as an idyllic and relatively easily identifiable place.

Idyllic, yes. Identifiable to most audiences? I would say not. Indeed, I would say "aspirational", rather than "identifiable". As you say, it may appeal to people's "quiet country life" fantasy, but it is not a place which I think that modern audiences will find easy to identify with as a "grounding" point, even those living in rural areas.

You see, I believe that Tolkien intended his readers to identify with his Hobbit characters most closely out of all his characters, and so he portrayed their land and culture in a way which would be recognisable to readers at the time that he was writing. But times have moved on and I would have thought that only a tiny minority of people today would recognise this idyllic Shire as being anything like their own home environment. I was therefore wondering whether audiences are able to identify as much with the Hobbit characters in the film in the same way as Tolkien intended in the book, or indeed whether Jackson intended them to. His human characters are much less idealised than Tolkien's in most case, so perhaps they (Aragorn, Faramir, Eowyn etc) were intended by Jackson to provide the reference point for his viewers.

Originally Posted by Mister U

I've never bought into the thesis that English readers have a stronger identification with the Shire than any other readers anyway.

I wasn't suggesting that they necessarily will have. My point is that Tolkien's description of the Shire is based on his experience of rural England in the first half of the 20th century and was intended to be a place familiar to English readers of that period (his anticipated readership). While such rural areas at that time were by no means as idyllic as the Shire, my sense is that the Shire, as depicted in both book and film, is much more akin to them than it is to rural areas of today, wherever located.

[Boromir88]

Somebody mentioned they didn't like Holme's Polonius in Hamlet, but I thought he was very good because he has a talent for handling those transitions between comedy and drama. I love the scene in Bag End in which Bilbo finally gives up the Ring because it's so close to the book.~Mr. Underhill

It wasn't so much Holm's acting in Hamlet, because I think Holm is a terriffic actor and I love him as Bilbo. But, when watching that movie, I think he rushed through the lines and I had trouble understanding half of them.

One other thing I noticed is a reoccuring theme with "fate and the ring." What I mean is, there's this reoccuring theme that everyone is tied to the Ring (not just the obvious ones like Sauron, Gollum, Frodo, and Arwen-for some reason?), but everyone. Everyone involved is tied to the Ring, and at the end of this sequence, when Bilbo leaves I think we see it again.

After he lets go of the Ring (and I agree with Underhill this scene between Gandalf and Bilbo was flawless), he says "I thought of an ending for my book. And he shall live happily ever after until the end of his days." I think it's no coincidence that when he lets go of the ring, he's able to think of an ending for his book. His part to play in the Ring's tale is over, and his book, his life is over. He can now go and relax in Rivendell and rest their peacefully.

[Mister Underhill]

Hmm, interesting theories, Sauce, though I disagree on most of your points.

Unless I'm badly mistaken, Tolkien's Shire wasn't much like the average world of the average Englander in the 1930's-50's, at least setting-wise. Anyway, I don't think audiences are really intended to identify with setting as such, but with characters -- their emotions, wants, desires, problems. For instance, in the sequence, Bilbo contemplates leaving his home, friends, and family behind. That's easy to identify with. In Star Wars, Luke lives on an alien desert planet and deals with robots and Jawas and such -- but I don't think we have any trouble identifying with him or his desire to bust out of his limited life and have some adventure.

I do agree, however, about Jackson's take on Men and his elevation of what he saw as a theme there -- so much so that I think a weird shift starts to happen somewhere in TTT and Aragorn becomes foregrounded as a character who is at least as important as Frodo through the rest of the trilogy. Maybe later on down the line we will get into whether or not this was a good and/or justified choice.

Boro, thanks for clearing that up. I haven't seen the movie in a while, so I can't speak to it directly, except to say that a lot of lesser Shakespearean actors get into this mannered Shakespearean delivery, which to me always has a sort of subtext that they're uncomfortable with the language. I liked Holme because his delivery was very natural, and also I think that the character of Polonius is a long-winded motormouth -- for example, his praise of brevity in his humorously long-winded speech in II.2 -- and so a sort of chatty delivery is a justifiable interpretation. Like I said I haven't seen it in a while, but he made me laugh at the time and I thought it was a memorable performance.

[The Saucepan Man]

Maybe it's just me, then.

But I do find myself identifying with the Hobbits in the book much more than I was able to in the film. Perhaps that's down to the perspective. The book story is told largely from the PoV of the Hobbits, as if they are relating it to us, whereas we are more like detached onlookers in the film. Yes, I can identify with what happens to the characters (just as I can identify with what happens to Luke in Star Wars). But I don't feel that it's like something that a friend is telling me, and which could happen to me, as I do with the book.

As for the Shire, well it is not really how I imagined it in the book. In my mind, the Shire is a lot more like the English countryside and less like Tellytubby-land (as Mithalwen put it ). The Shire of the book is much more a "real" place to me than the Shire in the film. That's not to say that I don't like its film depiction. It works well on film. It's just not the "real" Shire to me.

[Mister Underhill]

An interesting point about perspective. It occurs to me that the real point-of-view character for this sequence is... Gandalf! He's in every scene, and we identify with the "off" things he hears and reacts to about Bilbo and his Ring, because he knows, or at least suspects, what we know -- that Bilbo's ring is the Ring.

It's interesting how slippery Jackson's grip on POV is this early in the film: Galadriel narrates the prologue, Bilbo tells us about the Shire, Gandalf's POV dominates most of the rest of the scenes up to this point, though we also have a few Frodo-POV scenes to warn us that he will be an important character.

And I get your point about the look of the Shire. My own Shire isn't quite so bustling with activity, nor so sun-drenched.

[The Saucepan Man]

It's interesting how slippery Jackson's grip on POV is this early in the film ...

But isn't it the case that most films don't really have a PoV? Yes, there are those which have narration from the main character and are filmed almost entirely from his or her perspective. But they are in the minority. Most films, particularly action films, simply treat the viewers as onlookers. Jackson could have chosen to tell the tale from the perspective of one or a few characters. But that would have been a different film and not necessarily a better one. I don't think that the lack of PoV per se harms the film in any serious way. Although it may give rise to other issues which would be interesting to explore as the discussion continues.

[Mister Underhill]

I don't know -- I think even a successful ensemble film has to pay close attention to POV within its various storylines. And your typical action movie doesn't have nearly so many important characters to handle. But leave that alone for now. I think it's interesting simply on the basis that the book is deliberately written from a very limited, hobbit point-of-view. I'm not arguing yet that Jackson's more omniscient point-of-view is necessarily good or bad -- just making an observation that we're a bit all over the map POV-wise so far, and wondering how this affects movie watchers who are fans of the books. Is this the reason, or one of the reasons, why you don't identify so closely with the hobbit characters?

EDIT: That's sort of a rhetorical question that you need not answer.

EDIT 2: Guess I hit "reply" before I'd really thought this one through. I'd also like to point out that I'm not saying that a limited point-of-view is better or worse than an omniscient point-of-view, just pointing out that it's an important choice, and different choices produce different effects in the audience. Hence, a skilled filmmaker will deliberately employ a POV, or shift POVs, to produce desired effects on the audience, whereas a sloppy shifting of POV may produce unintended effects. I can't say whether I'd argue one way or another in Jackson's case yet, just, again, making an observation. How does Jackson's use of POV here affect the storyline?

Erm, rhetorical question again...