Review of ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’

I confess that, after watching the first film in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, I felt a momentary compulsion to pick up the book by Tolkien and drink in the story of a questing hobbit straight from the well. Once my senses returned, however, I came to realize this: I much prefer my Tolkien filtered through the lens of Peter Jackson’s films than consumed from the books.

A second confession: Although I read The Hobbit long enough ago to have forgotten it, I only managed to get through the Lord of the Rings trilogy until the last hundred pages or so, at which point I gave up. That dubious feat is all that I remember of those books, which goes to show that the literary relationship between Tolkien and me is on ground even less solid than the decision to stretch the slim Hobbit novel into three films.

Time has passed since Jackson first materialized Middle Earth in a trilogy of films that made pure fantasy fashionable again, although I’ll stick with the Harry Potter films as the superior accomplishment. My opinion of Tolkien’s work hasn’t changed – imagination and exhaustive attention to detail put to the service of a dull and shallow narrative – yet I’ve come to appreciate that imagination and detail through Jackson’s breathtaking rendition of Tolkien’s universe. Rousing performances and a lush production liven dry and dusty words, creating a world with a palpable sense of history and culture. It is in this spectacle, enabled by cinema’s ability to show without telling (as distinct from books, which must show through telling) that, to me, meaningfully exposes and mines the vein of gold in Tolkien’s dense work. And more so in this first film of the Hobbit trilogy, in which the narrative isn’t driven by the distancing cliché of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil but, rather, focused on a more personal struggle that develops Middle Earth’s characters through a sustained look at dwarven and other cultures. Hence, our hobbit hero Bilbo Baggins, recruited by the wizard Gandalf the Grey to join a band of dwarves in reclaiming the last of their kingdoms from a malicious, gold-hungry dragon named Smaug. Delivered through Jackson’s masterful directing and Howard Shore’s majestic score, all the elements combine to create a compelling cinematic experience that overcomes the material’s narrative limitations.

Above all, however much the film is populated by welcome Lord of the Rings veterans and newcomers to Middle Earth, this is Martin Freeman’s film – for the same reason he is the most compelling reason to watch the BBC’s interesting but pointless contemporary reinvention of Sherlock Holmes. The bewilderment, bravery, comedy, pathos and paradoxical coexistence of naïveté and wisdom of his Bilbo Baggins highlights Freeman’s ability to imbue everyman characters with personality – and this in distinction to that other everyman, John Watson. Can we imagine ourselves as Bilbo? Certainly we can, more so than we can envision ourselves as Elijah Wood’s Frodo Baggins, whose saintliness and martyrdom suffocate as much as inspire.

In a bit of unintentional irony, the film’s attention to elements that prologue and foreshadow the Lord of Rings narrative enrich this later trilogy that, on its own, felt oddly constrained by its own grandeur. There was too much room for epic emotions and not enough restraint to distill those emotions into a tangible connection with views. If nothing else, the historical continuity offered by this first Hobbit film provides a valuable peace-time portrait of Middle Earth that grounds the abstracted stakes of the Lord of the Rings into something more viscerally grasped. The film’s measured pacing, beginning with an unhurried launch of the quest featuring an amusing bout of dwarf bacchanalia, is a boon that allows to savor the details and bask in the inevitably short-lived calm before the storm. Perhaps the desire to stretch The Hobbit into a trilogy, as motivated by finances as it may be, isn’t so crazy after all. If anything, the film’s most notable shortcoming involves a certain amount of repetition in the various vignettes comprising, essentially, a long road movie. The pattern: The questing band charges into trouble and Gandalf effects a dramatic last-minute rescue. Fortunately, the strength of both character-driven and action-packed scenes make up for the occasional indulgence of formula. As with Lord of the Rings, there are cinematic moments approaching the sublime which, in and of themselves, go far in smoothing over objections. All that remains is to see where Jackson takes the story and, for perhaps the first time in the franchise, I’m actually eager to see what comes next.

Assistant Editor Frédérik Sisa is the Page's resident art and culture critic, as well editor of the Page's fashion blog, The Fashionoclast. He can be reached at fsisa@thefrontpageonline.com.