This review from today’s culture section of The Sunday Times Magazine is intriguing in that it presents an reasonably alternative view on the film. Suffice it to say that is quite critical in some areas – some of which criticism might well be quite insightful and perhaps justified, whereas some might well be considerably illfounded. Needless to say, it is slightly spoilerish.
Greatest show on Middle-earth
The story line in The Two Towers is worryingly fragmented, says Cosmo Landesman, but you will be awestruck by the spectacle.
Yes, it’s good… But how good? As good as, or even better than, The Fellowship of the Ring? There’s been a critical trend of late to say, with a sigh of relief, that the latest one in a franchise – Attack of the Clones, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Die Another Day – is much better than the one we all suffered before. And I suspect that most people will think that The Two Towers is even better than The Fellowship of the Ring. So, on behalf of a small group of malcontents and movie misfits, may I say: they are wrong and we are right. All three of us. (this figure doesn’t include TORn Staffers – Ara 😉
The reason we are right is that The Two Towers is a bit too much like a conventional blockbuster; it’s action- rather than character-driven, and relies heavily on big set pieces and special effects to wow us. (There’s no doubt that, at its best, it wows wonderfully.) It operates on a visual scale that is far bigger than the first film’s. The director, Peter Jackson, and his camera seem to swoop and swirl in and out of shots like a man surfing the sky. He loves the big backward tracking shot that pulls up and zooms towards the heavens to reveal the majesty of nature or the malevolence of men at war. As for his crowd scenes, well, move over Cecil B DeMille, and tell Leni Riefenstahl the news: nobody does it better than Jackson. But The Two Towers is a triumph of spectacle over storytelling.
In place of the feelgood glow of the fellowship in the first episode, here we get something a little more edgy, a touch darker and a lot more obviously dramatic. But there’s something calculated in Jackson’s grab-’em-by-the-eyeballs opening, with its what-happened-next when Gandalf and the monstrous Balrog disappeared down a ravine in the first film. And it looks fake, so obviously computer-generated, that it undermines the realism of the whole Middle-earth world. It reminds us of what we most want to forget: that it’s only a movie.
Okay, it’s a rocky start, but there’s plenty of time for Jackson to weave his spell. The real trouble with The Two Towers is its structure. Together, hobbits, dwarfs, men and elves are a terrific team. But like a great rock band that pairs off to make different albums, the end product is never as good as the original combination. Here, the fellowship has been fractured into three separate story lines, with mixed results.
The best of the bunch involved Frodo (Elijah Wood), Sam Gamgee (Sean Astin) and Gollum (based on Andy Serkis) on their journey towards Mordor. This is a subtle, superb slice of drama. The darkness of this film comes not just from the hideous collection of creatures – orcs, Uruk-hai, wargs and Liv Tyler – but from the spectacle of Frodo’s mental and moral decline. Jackson presents us with a boy who is into heavy Rings addiction, and, like all addicts, denies that he has a problem. (Invisibility, Omnipotence, Eternal life? Hey, I can handle it!) But Sam is worried: “You hardly eat, and you hardly sleep.” The Two Towers brings into focus a central theme in Tolkien: the question of temptation and what a man will lose to gain the greatest buzz of all – power.
We can see Frodo’s screwed-up future in the hideous face of his new friend Gollum, who has the cadaverous, junkie demeanour of one who lives only for the high of the Ring. Gollum’s bulging blue eyes – which echo the innocence of Frodo’s – look as if they want to pop out of their sockets, rush off and score. For me, Gollum steals the show. It’s the first time a computer-generated character actually outshines real actors. There’s a beautiful pathos in the scene where Frodo reminds Gollum of his pre-Ring life as a hobbit called Sméagol. But best of all is Gollum’s frenetic, Hamlet-like soliloquy as good and evil fight for control of his soul.
The only other big personality on show is Gandalf (Ian McKellen). Obviously there’s nothing like a life-and-death struggle with a fire-breathing monster to put the wiz back into an old wizard’s step. Gandalf the Grey, who seemed at times like a tired old man ready to retire, is back as Gandalf the White, and this time he’s swinging his stave like a man half his age.
It’s the new characters and storyline that are a disappointment. Most of the drama is set among the humans of the Rohan kingdom, and, consequently, at times The Two Towers looks and sounds like second-hand, second-rate Shakespeare. Bernard Hill does his best with the role of King Théoden, the man who rules Rohan with a heavy crown and heavier heart. His face has that wonderful lost and wounded gloom of a Lear, but he’s let down by creaky dialogue incapable of eloquence. The manipulative Wormtongue (Brad Dourif), who has Théoden under his thumb, aims for slimy malevolence, but just seems creepy. We get a new beauty in the form of the king’s niece, Éowyn (Miranda Otto), but she’s nondescript.
Into this world come Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), the elf archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Middle-earth’s answer to Brian Blessed, the dwarf Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) – and they end up overshadowed by the story of the king trying to save his people. But the weakest link of all is the story of the two missing hobbits, Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd). They have entered the magical forest of Fangorn, and are being carried along by a giant walking, talking tree called Treebeaerd. (Talk about a wooden performance!) Treebeard looks about as real as the Jolly Green Giant.
Jackson may lose some fans in the middle of the film, but he’ll win everybody back with the climactic battle scene at Helm’s Deep, involving the evil Saruman’s 10,000 Uruk-hai soldiers storming the Rohan fortress. It’s one of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, yet free of blood and gore. These days, any film that involves anything more than a slap on the wrist is said to be connected to 9/11 or the impending war on Iraq , but it’s hard to ignore the similarity between this film’s talk about resisting “evil” and the rhetoric of George W Bush. It’s surprising that the “love generation” of the 1960s should have taken Tolkien to heart: clearly he was no hippie-dippy pacifist.
What’s so interesting about both Ring films is that they deliver an old-fashioned message you rarely hear in popular culture any more: that it is through struggle with adversity and sacrifice to a greater cause, and not a life of comfort and consumerism, that we bring out the best in ourselves.)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. 12A, 180 mins ***
Update: Ringer Spy James writes in to point out that I had incorrectly assumed that the Sunday Times rates its articles out of 5 stars – a rating of 3 stars seemed in keeping with the tone of the review. But in fact, the key to the star system overleaf states:
*** Outstanding ** Good * So-so No star Give it a miss.
Which perhaps makes the review a little easier to stomach.. 🙂
Howard Shore gave a nice two hour discussion today on how to turn a movie image into music. It was a very informative talk on just how a musician puts images into sound. So, here is a little review of the event, and I’ll try my best to remember all the really cool and interesting points Mr. Shore brought up.
First off, the event was not sold out, but the room seemed pretty darn full by the time it did start. It was held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which had actually been showing several films that Howard Shore wrote the score for. After this discussion, they screened The Two Towers, which was the final film in the Museum’s film schedule for the year. The screening was sold out within hours of going on sale, but that didn’t stop people from lining up in the hopes of snagging any spare seat that came along. I’m not going to review the film at all, since this is about the music and the man who created it.
So, back to the discussion. There was very little preamble to the event, Howard Shore and a few other walked in from the balcony, he sat down, and started talking about what he was going to talk about. He found the microphone, which made life easier, and launched right into his discussion. Because the museum had been showing several of his films, and the whole film series was about Music in Movies, he did not talk exclusively about Two Towers. That was fine with me, turns out his written music for over 60 different films. He discussed how he approaches creating a score as such:
Talks with the creative team and reads the script or book it’s based on, or whatever will give him an idea of the story and the people in it. He goes on set and get’s a feel for the creative process going on there, and starts formulating ideas. Once the film is shot, the director screens a copy of it, and it’s this point in time he really starts to write the music. He demonstrated this with a very Improvisational piece he recorded the day after watching the directors print of Crash. He then played a tape from the next day, which was a little more refined, and then a tape two days later. All this improvisation was done on the piano, but the tape he played before showing us the final version was of Guitars. Finally, we got to see the opening credits with this improvisational number played on guitars, and then the same number used in a scene involving the aftermath of a big car crash. It was fascinating to hear the slight progression the music made from a Searching pattern to a more urgent and emotional final version. He starts this improvisation right after seeing the film the first time, to start writing down the emotions the film elicited. He really seems to feel that they only way to write a film score is from an emotional base, put the feelings on page and play them.
It was at this point that he explained how he arranges the music after he has begun to write it. Howard Shore grew up around repertory theater, music (he was in a rock band in the late 60’s, early 70’s), and finally went to a lot of opera. When sitting in an audience, watching an opera or a musical, the musicians are placed in a specific manner. You hear the violin on the left, the percussion in the back, the woodwinds in the center, etc. Because movies have surround sound nowadays, he arranges his musicians the way they might be if the film was a live performance. This also helps when there is ambient sound in the scene coming from a person or thing, so that the music is coming from someplace else. I found this concept of placing the musicians in the recording the way it would be in a live performance quite fascinating.
There was then a lot of discussion about his interest in music, learning new forms and sounds all the time, and how he sees his whole life as one big progression preparing him for the next step in his life. Aside from writing the scores to over 60 films, his rock band opened for the likes of Jimi Hendrix, and he was one of the original creators of Saturday Night Live. I knew there was a reason I thought Howard Shore was cool, but could never put my finger on it.
Because of the scope of working on Lord of the Rings, which he is actually enjoying working on such a large project, he sees working in Opera to be a natural progression from this. He can’t imagine there being any other place to be able to work on such a grand scale again. Right now, he’s got 200 musicians at his disposal, and he’s loving that.
He knows he can just use one vocalist or instrument for something delicate, or the full power of the orchestra to fulfill his needs for a scene. OH, and when he’s feeling a bit burned out on scoring films, he writes Chamber Music, just for fun. He says it’s because he has no one telling him what to do, or what to cut out or change, he writes it just for himself.
In regards to the Lord of the Rings music, he did say there were times he was very nervous about it’s scope. At least, in the beginning he felt this way, but there was so much support from Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philipa Boyens. He mentioned that he knew he was really writing a 9 hour piece of music, broken down into shorter pieces, and that he had to get the first one right, because it sets the tone for the following segments. He also mentioned the performances of the Fellowship music at the Hollywood Bowl, in New Zealand and coming up in London. He also mentioned how it is highly likely that in 2004, there will be performances of the entire set of music, which made several people in the audience quite happy.
After taking more questions and running over time longer than they had planned, he stayed around and chatted with anyone who came up. Those of us with tickets for the screening didn’t stick around too long, but it was necessary to at least say hello and thank him for such a beautiful piece of music. Howard Shore is a very nice man, and very eloquent on creating a musical tapestry for films. I’d highly recommend that anyone who has a chance, goes to see him in the future.
I’ll have pics of the audience the Mr. Shore fairly soon, I hope, so I’ll send those when I have them.
Ringer Spy Rubin sends along these scans from the latest issue of Stern Magazine. The text was not translated and is apparently same old same old news…however some of these pictures are really interesting!
Ringer Fan Jim writes of his experience at the London premiere:
Having attended the UK premiere of TTT at the Odeon Leicester Square last Wednesday night, I can confirm what Luthien said about the NYC Premiere. Most of the stars turned up in spite of appearing the night before in Paris. Peter Jackson made the same point about deviation from the book (he’s obviously concerned about reaction to the interaction between Faramir and Frodo/Sam/Gollum, but this does lead to a great (shocking) scene – I won’t say where for those who don’t like spoilers.
Running three story threads is obviously difficult, but he pulls it off; though I did read in my local paper that the reviewer couldn’t follow the complicated plot (obviously someone who has never read the books).
The major element is the battle of Helm’s Deep which is almost overwhelming,but the actors manage to avoid being lost in the hugeness and loudness and sheer scale of the setting.
This is a much darker film than FOTR; few idyllic scenes, though there are odd moments during the move to Helm’s Deep, but it gets through a lot of action and stays more or less faithfuill to the book. Gollum is a triumph; I always found it difficult to be sympathetic to the character, but Jackson manages to make a CGI almost human and certainly vulnerable.
Ringer Spy Ataahua writes: Tonight One Network News in New Zealand carried a story on how Peter Jackson, losing precious TTT editing time attending awards ceremonies for FOTR, used new technolgy built by Weta to help him keep working on the film while overseas.
One News presenter Simon Dallow: “Two Towers is a tribute to Kiwi special effects wizardry. But director Peter Jackon only made his deadline thanks to another bit of Kiwi innovation, involving the Internet and video conferencing. Here’s economics reporter Mike Jaspers.”
(Shot of Peter Jackson at a sound desk)
Mike Jaspers voiceover: “Peter Jackson in London in September, finishing the sound track for Two Towers. Back in Wellington, the final special effects are being added. Time’s running out – the director’s already lost five weeks thanks to the Oscars and other awards. He needed more time.”
(Shot of Barry Osborne talking to Mike Jaspers) BO: “Put simply, it was crucial…”
MJ voiceover: “Barry Osbourne’s the producer, on a video link from New York via the Internet – technology vital for meeting deadlines. Each day, hours of editing were emailed to Jackson in London.”
Duncan Nimmo, ‘computer expert’: “In normal circumstances that footage would have to be put on a plane. So being able to do it overnight bought the process three days each time.”
MJ: “The huge volume of data needed a big Internet pipe. Telecom’s Southern Cross cable links us to the northern hemisphere. It funnelled sections of film to Jackson’s computer.”
BO: “Even though he was in London and we were in Wellington, it would be just like he was in Wellington.”
MJ: “Jackson’s computer wizards designed the system to synchronise the video links.”
BO: “Weta built some software to allow us to control the playback on video footage at either end – to slow it down, to play it slowly. And it also had a pointer so Peter could say, ‘Gee, Mordor shouldn’t have all those green trees on it, I want to really have this black rock there’.”
MJ: “It’s all part of Jackson’s vision for Wellington as a one-stop shop for world-class film making. That’s why he’s building a $30 million post-production facility near his other studios. Peter Jackson’s Internet technology removes one more worry for Hollywood moguls considering projects here in Wellywood: they can simply log onto the Internet and view the day’s filming or editing, from the comfort of LA. Smart solutions, all part of Jackson script for success.”
I happened to be watching Headline News and unexpectedly saw a short interview with Andy Serkis. He mentioned how he took on the role of a heroin addict to get into his character who we all know is Gollum.
He was asked to give the viewers a teaser of Gollum, and Andy proceeded to do “the voice”!!! It was a nice little surprise. The transcript of the interview might pop-up on HN’s website later.
