The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I think everyone who has seen this movie has questioned the wisdom of splitting a book up into three movies, and has really questioned the wisdom of making the first of those movies three hours long.

After having sat through The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey I think I've worked out what Peter Jackson is up to.

I think he's trying to film the book.

Not all of it.  I'm not quite sure of the order of events in The Hobbit, because it's been at least ten years since I read it, but I'm pretty sure there will be things left out and other things added in.  

But nevertheless.  I think he's trying to get as much of the book onto the screen as he can.

This is an unexpected undertaking.  Audiences are used to adaptations; we're used to the idea that you can't have the entire book up there on screen.  I don't think it's something we will see too often either.  Imagine the number of films involved in the Harry Potter series if the screenplay had tried to place the book on the screen!  Still...with The Hobbit it might be possible.  And it's one heck of an opportunity.

The thing about adaptations is that, inevitably, it's a translation and in the manner of all translations it betrays some part of the author's intent.  I don't imagine we're seeing Tolkien's version of his book, but one reader's interpretation of it.  Given the amount of time that we spend looking at the landscape, assuming Peter Jackson's intent wasn't to create the longest advert for New Zealand tourism possible, we're actually seeing him try to put the journey up there for us to see.  We can also experience it.  Yes, three hours is a long film...but I grew up on Hamlet and three hours is honestly nothing.  It flies by, too.

I don't want to do a review, because everyone and their dog is doing a review.  Instead, it occurs to me that this is one of those rare times when a movie that makes a lot of money will actually do something artistic.

Text being what it is, one of the first things a reader does with any text is form a relationship with it.  There's the intentional one that the author wants you to experience, an experience the author has spent however long crafting.  Then there's the reader's version of that experience, which is where we sit with a text and react to it, or decide how the characters look, or what they sound like.  For the imaginative reader, this is the payoff and also the hook.  This is the bit where you decide that there's more to Bilbo than a chummy fuzzy footed foodie, that the Virgin New Adventures Doctor really is more than just a Time Lord, where you start flipping back page after page to experience Tyrion snarking at his friends and foes alike.  There's also the bit where you decide whether you want more (as in a re-read) or whether you want to see the next novel from this artist right now!

I think it's clear that Peter Jackson wants you to understand how much sheer scale the novel has.  I think what's going up on the screen is as clear a view of his relationship with the material as he can manage.  Stephen King once said that writing was the closest thing a human can get to telepathy...I think Peter Jackson wants to take that a step further.

It's a position only a director can really be in.  If they can get the studio to keep their hands off the print, if they can negotiate the various slings and arrows, they get to show us what they were imagining.  

Peter Jackson's version of The Hobbit is likely never going to be as good as the version going on in the heads of the people who read it before seeing his film(s).  No matter how enthralling and personal his vision, it's not MY version.  Even if his Gollum is better than the one I imagined.  But it will stamp his vision over the imaginations of all the people who see the films and then never read the book.  This isn't as bad as it sounds.  If I'm right about his intentions it places him in an oddly vulnerable position, but it also shows us the sort of honesty that we don't often see in movies of this type.

Three hours is a long movie.  But perhaps more movies should show us what the director enjoyed so much about the books they were based on, and maybe more movies should try to somehow put the whole book on the screen.