Hobbitish Peregrinations

Last afternoon six of us went to see The Desolation of Smaug, without the high frame rate or anything, but still satisfying. The theatre was not too full, so the audience was sprinkled over the room and the first three rows were empty.

*Full of spoilers*

First came the trailers and commercials, of course, from a household electricity provider, through anecdotes of the powers of the internet that were intended to humanize a certain search engine company, to all sorts of cars. As for the films advertised, they were Pompeii, Noah's Ark, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty amongst others.

(— Noah's Ark, where I hadn't quite realized that the point of the story was that people were killed as-well-they-should-be. But its graphics were so strikingly Lord of the Rings that they introduced the Hobbit decently well.)

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Everything was delivered in superlative decibels, which were an assault on the ears, but I thought that maybe the fact that I rarely go to see films has oversensitized me to this.

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Then, at last, the film itself unfurled. We were privy to a meeting between the wizard Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield, king of Tolkien's dwarves, at the Prancing Pony on a drizzling night, under the mistrustful eyes of two emissaries sent to remove Oakenshield from the seat of power by assassination. Gandalf, less of a pacifist than one should think he would be from the book, urges Thorin to march on Erebor in order to seize his power and take over as king, which he had not previously known that he was, and to defeat a foe which I imagine is the Orcs. Or something of that ilk.

But by some transition which I fail to understand, the action then leapt to a forest where the dwarves and Bilbo Baggins are fleeing the pursuit of steroidal animated wolves bearing Orcs upon their backs, taking refuge in the hall of Beorn.

They enter Mirkwood on the next morning. Gandalf has been aware of the stirrings of a Necromancer, which are distantly also the stirrings of the Orcs — so at the forest's very entrance, he must part ways with the forlorn dwarves, setting off himself to meet the wizard Radagast.

Mirkwood is a consistent tangle of cyclopean tree trunks twined by clawed creepers, leafed in reddish splendour by crowns of oak, and pervaded by an atmosphere of confusion that leads the dwarves and the hobbit into a Dalian species of absurdity. It is when they are met by the inhabitants of the forest, just as Bilbo had managed to espy the Lonely Mountain and the Lake from the pinnacle of one of the oaks, and engage in a combat, that their muddled miasma in mind is cut finally.

Wood Elves reluctantly rescue the dwarves. Then, at their arrow tips, the elves escort their tinier visitors forcibly to the halls of the Wood-Elves. The king of these elves — himself an arrogant and selfish patrician — argy-bargies with Thorin Oakenshield, who having climbed onto his high horse repudiates compromise. In the meantime the lowlier dwarves hobnob with Legolas and Tauriel, the friendlier elves, through their prison bars.

The dwarves flee their prison, however, as Bilbo Baggins releases them. They are set upon by Orcs at once, and elves die in the slaughter, too, but at last they spiral and bob and rush along the river toward the Lake.

After interrogating one of the Orcs, the elves figure out that the dwarf Kili has been poisoned by an arrow and so Tauriel trots away after him and Legolas duly after her. As a prince and as a captain of the guard, it seems strange that they are eager to relinquish their posts and duties at the turning of a pin, but never mind.

These dwarves arrive at the Lake and persuade the Bard, a man who despite his Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-like goatee is reminiscent of Heath Ledger, to row them through the ice floes in his drab barge. The barge is not coloured brightly, that is, but crude and impractical-looking. Ensconced in fishes they ignominiously arrive at the gates of Laketown, where they are nearly impounded by the confidant of the Mayor. (Threatened with social upheaval if the half-starving denizens of Laketown are deprived of the food, the official agrees to let them pass.)

The roofs of the tall grey buildings in Laketown are covered in slates or tiles, the tower's prows are borrowed faithfully from the stave churches, walkways and floating wooden docks edge the stilt houses, fisherboats throng in the canals between the boardwalks, and en masse in their old-timey garb the people of Laketown had a Bruegelish air about them.

But in the overhanging upper storey of one of the Nordic slat houses, the Mayor (who has been metaphorically "wallowing in his crapulence") and noted British actor Stephen Fry hears about this incident, and from their conversation it becomes clear that they fear that the Bard is a conspiring leader of the townsmen. The mayor's confidant likely invents or heightens the threat of insurrection is for his own ends, and their jealousy of his nobility might engender the Mayor's paranoia and their common antipathy; but it is true that the inhabitants of Laketown are not being treated kindly and that there are grounds for insurrection. Here I wish that the film had not tried to be 'relevant.' ('"Elections?" What fresh hell is this!')

Spies surveil the abode of the Bard, yet the dwarves rest there and demand to be given the weapons they were promised. Greatly wroth at the pitiful armoury offered to them, they vanish into the town's armoury to equip themselves more grandly (since dwarves must be snobs). Once the Bard has figured out that these dwarves and their leader in particular herald both spectacular joy and catastrophe in his town, according to an ancient prophecy, it is too late in any case.

For Thorin and his company are captured and brought before the Mayor, who is enchanted with them once he hears that they intend to go spelunking for treasure on Lonely Mountain and that this treasure is to be shared with the town to restore it to its former glory. Like Cassandra of Troy the Bard stands, unheard, as the townspeople embrace the travellers enthusiastically as well.

Thorin decides to part with Kili for the present, since he is injured and weakened by the imperceptible waxing of the toxin, in the first sign (or perhaps not the first; I didn't see the first film) that his duties and sympathies as a leader have been lost in the pursuit of the Arkenstone and his destiny as King Under the Mountain. It lies not only in himself, it seems, but in the corrupting influence of the object itself. Kili's brother Fili and another dwarf, uncorrupted, stay behind, and seek refuge in the Bard's home.

. . . So that not everything is given away, and because I have run out of time and energy of course, that is the end of this recapitulation.

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Altogether I think that the Hobbit is a book which deserves a loving and analogue approach in its filming. In presenting it in Lord of the Ringsish fashion one may be doing the intentions of Tolkien honour, but I rather prized the book's absence of 'sweep' and portentousness. But I liked the film as a film, and in aspects like Beorn's house and in the wandering through woodland before the dwarves reached Mirkwood there were nice non-computer animated touches which resembled the way I had imagined things when reading the book, too. So I am quite pleased that we went, despite many quibbles!