J'Accuse Jackson and LOTR.

So, just to keep the blog ticking over until I see how things work out…

I’m going to step well out of line here and say that I wasn’t terribly impressed with the Lord of the Rings trilogy which I’ve spent the past three nights watching. I don’t deny that the films are enjoyable; they are. They’re enjoyable because the story itself is epic and imaginative, the battle scenes in wide shot are strongly rendered, the romantic elements are mostly movingly handled, and the special effects are up to the standard you’d expect of modern technology. Nevertheless, it is, in my opinion, a highly flawed piece of work in the following areas:

a) Even in fantasy films, mechanical laws still need to apply. Gravity is still gravity, and if a human being – or even a hobbit – falls five hundred feet down a precipitous mountainside, bouncing off jagged rocks as they fall, they don’t roll over and say ‘ouch.’ They mostly die, or at least suffer multiple injuries so severe that they’ll probably never be completely normal again even after months of advanced treatment and rehabilitation.

b) Mechanical laws aside, the plot is full of implausible elements. It was never explained, for example, how Frodo and Sam, when making the final climb to destroy the ring, are wearing borrowed Orc outfits. Orcs are about 7ft tall and built like gorillas. Hobbits are – what – a third that height when standing to attention? Where did they find the miniature Orc outfits? I didn’t see any Orc children anywhere.

c) The relationship between the men of the Fellowship – the male bonding stuff – is so bad that it had me gagging at times. It’s naïve and unrealistic; it’s little short of pantomime; it’s cheesy in the extreme. I’ve never in my whole life seen even ordinary men behave like that, much less hardened warriors. I have encountered a few hardened warriors in my time, believe it or not, and they simply don’t act that way. I don’t believe they ever did. It was sheer am-dram. They overdid the laddish humour, too. Much of it was out of context and fell flat on its face.

d) And then there was the attempt to convey emotion in the death/glory/triumph scenes. On the whole, they didn’t convey emotion at all; what they did was provoke cringing embarrassment. The death of Boromir was bad; Aragorn’s coronation scene was worse; the leave-taking of Frodo at the end was almost as bad. There was little genuine emotion conveyed. It was mostly a level of sentimentality so mawkishly expressed that I found myself turning away with closed eyes at times. It was the worst form of third rate Shakespearean parody.

I could have gone on and on if I’d made notes as I went along. I didn't, of course.

Do you know what I think? I think Peter Jackson was so carried away with making a gigantic epic that he forgot important details like mechanics and human nature. And it showed in the fact that some of the acting was uncertain, even by the biggest names in the business. I’ve never seen Cate Blanchett act badly before. I have now.

The film is certainly an epic, and I admit that it’s enjoyable, but only if you switch off all critical faculties. Does that make it a great movie? I think not.

Addendum:

I just remembered this. The scene in the coronation sequence in which royalty, nobility, warriors and a magician bow the knee in unison to four little hobbits is mind blowing. If there's one scene which demonstrates that Jackson apparently has no clue as to the level of reality needed to make fantasy work, that has to be it. I swear he must have been high on something the Maoris slipped into his coffee that morning.