Things Looking Up for The Hobbit

Not so long ago it seemed like we were heading toward a huge collapse of the Tolkien film legacy when New Line Cinema announced that they would never work with Peter Jackson again. The film version of The Hobbit appeared doomed. When Jackson announced he reached an agreement to produce the film, but wouldn’t return to the direct, I calmed down a bit.

While I would prefer the original The Lord of the Rings team to return in its entirety with Jackson directing, there have been further encouraging developments. Jackson chose director Guillermo del Toro to helm the two-part film. Del Toro, writer/director of the amazing Pan’s Labyrinth has shown he can handle the imaginative demands that adapting Tolkien takes. Now, we get news that Ian McKellen will likely reprise his role as Gandalf. I’m growing excited.

The Western: Landscape and Chaos

Lately, the Western genre has captivated me. It probably started in October with seeing the recent remake of 3:10 to Yuma. Since then I saw No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, which has taken much of my attention. For my movie club selections, I chose The Searchers and High Noon, two classics in the genre that I had not previously viewed. I returned to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I bought a copy of Unforgiven and am currently reading Cormac McCarthy’s novel, All the Pretty Horses.

What attracts me to Westerns right now is not what traditionally comes to mind when one considers the genre. The clear-cut white hat versus black hat morality doesn’t interest me much. Nor do the actual history of western expansion by the United States and the important discussions of justice and genocide that history brings forth. Instead, I am drawn to what McCarthy emphasizes of the West: the frontier is a hard land capable of destroying people and communities. Because it exists beyond the reach of the law, the contents of peoples’ hearts show more clearly. One has to make a choice to be a moral person rather than depend upon the borders society creates to make moral decisions for them.

The Westerns set in the 19th century embrace the hope of settlers to make a fresh start in the untamed land as well as see it as a dangerously hard place to survive. Farmers cannot make their crops grow. Wild animals, harsh weather, and other humans threaten to take whatever gains one has made. People faced with the challenge of survival must choose whether they will behave in ways that promote community and justice, or will they shuck all morality and choose a self-interested existence? As in the cases of Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) in High Noon or Dan Evans (Christian Bale) in 3:10 to Yuma, on what resources do they rely when their communities would rather retreat and seek immediate safety rather than challenge evil? Or in the case of Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood) in Unforgiven, what should have kept him from resorting to his old violent ways; how did the system of justice become so perverted that vigilantism was the only means of recourse? How does the prospect of riches in There Will Be Blood and The Treasure of Sierra Madre change human relationships and how could the men in those stories have made choices that sought the benefit of others rather than their defeat? Where does their greed eventually lead them? While people may say that Westerns are too simple in their morality, these are questions we need to answer today.

In McCarthy’s contemporary Westerns, society has not tamed the land. If anything, it is more terrifying than before, as evinced in the harrowing character Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem in the film version of No Country for Old Men) with his odd sense of fate and morality. The open landscape may begin as a symbol of freedom and opportunity, but it ends in chaos void of rules, as in the case of John Grady Cole’s journey in All the Pretty Horses. I find myself drawn to this bleak world full of more terrifying questions than reassuring answers. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) understands the risk in living in such a world. He explains in the opening narration of No Country for Old Men, “But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, ‘O.K., I’ll be part of this world.’”

In My Own Boat

I previously wrote a post about movies that evoked love in a lot of people, but didn’t garner the same response from me. This post would be its companion piece. Here are movies I liked or loved, but many people around me didn’t like the films or hated them.

1. The Star Wars prequels. Episodes 1, 2, and 3 [d. Lucas, 1999, 2002, 2005]
2. Eyes Wide Shut [d. Kubrick, 1999]
3. Signs [d. Shyamalan, 2002]
4. Deep Impact [d. Leder, 1998]
5. Crash [d. Haggis, 2005]
6. Artificial Intelligence: AI [d. Spielberg, 2001]
7. The Talented Mr. Ripley [d. Minghella, 1999]

Hmm… Strangely enough, there is a lot of science-fiction on this list.

(Note: I’m a huge fan of everything Wes Anderson has done, though I don’t include his work in this list since people generally fall into one of two categories: they either love his work or despise it. If someone likes one of his films, chances are he or she likes all of Anderson’s films. Conversely, if someone doesn’t like one of Anderson’s films, there is a great liklihood that she or he won’t like any of his movies.)

A Portrait from a Cage: Lolita Review

Not that I’m all too excited about the internet traffic this post will generate, given the subject matter of the work discussed, but I wanted to review Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel, Lolita. Digesting this strange masterpiece was truly one of the most unique experiences I’ve had as a reader. Because of the grotesque setting of the novel — a pedophile’s first-hand account of his desires and ultimate crimes against a twelve-year-old — I found myself fighting through the first one hundred fifty pages or so. What kept me going was the fact that Lolita is considered such an important work and I imagined its lasting influence had to be more than its taboo subject matter.

Lolita comes to the reader as an extended narrative from Humbert Humbert, an anomalous European intellectual expatriate with a questionable past who moves to America. Humbert remains stunted from the death of his childhood love, Annabel Leigh. From that point on, he finds himself only sexually attracted to nymphets, a term he employs to describe girls aged 9 to 14 whom he believes possess a certain type of precociousness. Humbert has fought his desires in the past by spending time in and out of mental institutions, enduring one failed marriage, and satiating himself in bordellos. The interesting thing about Humbert is that he is an immoral character — that is, he knows full well that his desires are illegal and that there are good reasons for that illegality, though he does try to defend his proclivities at various points. Once in America, Humbert rents a room from Charlotte Haze and immediately sees in her twelve year-old-daughter, Dolores, the embodiment of all his lifelong desires. Humbert agrees to marry Charlotte so that he can remain close to Dolores. When Charlotte dies in an accident, Humbert seizes on his chance to indulge all his vile desires and kidnaps Dolores, taking her on an extended road trip, buying her off with lavish gifts, but all the while raping her on a regular basis. Because Humbert is our narrator, we are told that it is actually Dolores who initiates the sexual encounter. On the road, we see his jealousy emerge and that jealousy eventually leads the reader to wonder if Humbert has mental problems beyond his perversion. Humbert’s decline rivals that of Raskolnikov’s in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, though it occurs in the opposite direction. Whereas Raskolnikov’s conscience returns with vengeance and ultimately leads him back into society, Humbert’s conscience loses its mooring and he descends beyond the point of keeping any law, human or traffic.

I Missed that Boat

I love that people find movies seminal in their lives and they consider them good friends. Stories have a way of changing the way we see the world or of saying something we believe in a new way that resonates inside of us so profoundly that we can never think about a subject without thinking about that story. I can honestly say that To Kill a Mockingbird and The Lord of the Rings (both the novels and movies) have affected my ethics so that I think of Atticus Finch or Frodo when facing a tough decision.

Every so often a movie comes out that seems to garner near universal praise and adulation from people I know, and yet it doesn’t work for me. Sometimes I can’t stand the film. Usually, I like the movie just ok, but for various reasons, I don’t like it as much as other people. This is a touchy subject because we take those stories that transform us very personally. Thus, a disclaimer: I may say I missed the boat on your movie, but I’m not saying I think you’re a bad person or less than me for liking it as much as you do.

1. The Matrix [d. Wachowski brothers, 1999]
2. Gladiator [d. Scott, 2000]
3. Life is Beautiful [d. Benigni, 1998]
4. Whale Rider [d. Caro, 2002]
5. Chicago [d. Marshall, 2002]
6. Training Day [d. Fuqua, 2001]
7. Napoleon Dynamite [d. Hess, 2004]

I can elaborate further if you’d like, or if you’d prefer just to call me a heartless idiot, feel free.