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Surprise, surprise- a Two Towers post!
Dec. 18th, 2002 05:27 pmRight off the bat: Gods, it's odd to think that Brad Dourif got his start in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He was nominated for an Oscar for that role- and other than Ragtime, I can't think offhand of a sympathetic role he's played since.
Some quibbles: (I'll just note, so far as choices made in adapting a long, complex book to the screen goes, that Jackson seemed to use a somewhat heavier hand here than in Fellowship, and leave it at that.)
Cinematically, it feels choppier than Fellowship did; we're dropped into the action right away, but it takes a while for the film to really being to flow- and Jackson uses lots of close-ups here, which doesn't help much.
I like that the Gimli/Legolas/Aragorn camaraderie is played up in this film- but I don't think Jackson missed one single, solitary chance to make a joke at Gimli's expense, and it does get irritating.
Gollum's performance is astonishing(!) but the whole shot/reverse angle close-up method for depicting a character in conflict with themselves is, to put it charitably, a rather hoary cliche.
...that said, it's an incredible, astonishing movie. Helm's Deep is an action sequence to put the village attack in Apocolypse Now to shame; Viggo Mortensen has an emotional depth which grows more profound with each passing film, as does that of the other actors; Jackson manages to interweave human drama and sheer, jaw-dropping scale in a manner which invites- demands- comparison to Kurosawa, Coppola, or Lean. Taken as a whole, the film has made me want to write a (rather overdue) note to another director in the middle of a trilogy, along the lines of:
Dear George Lucas- For the love of all that's holy, stop saying that they're "just movies." They are not "just" movies- they're a substantial part of the cultural mythology of my generation, and they've also made you a billionaire in the process. Not only is denying the cultural significance of your own work disingenuous in the extreme, but it's letting you off the hook for making feckless crap that's not the equal of any number of shows on tv these days. You don't need the money, and we don't need to see a great film trilogy strip-mined.
Cordially,
me
Some quibbles: (I'll just note, so far as choices made in adapting a long, complex book to the screen goes, that Jackson seemed to use a somewhat heavier hand here than in Fellowship, and leave it at that.)
Cinematically, it feels choppier than Fellowship did; we're dropped into the action right away, but it takes a while for the film to really being to flow- and Jackson uses lots of close-ups here, which doesn't help much.
I like that the Gimli/Legolas/Aragorn camaraderie is played up in this film- but I don't think Jackson missed one single, solitary chance to make a joke at Gimli's expense, and it does get irritating.
Gollum's performance is astonishing(!) but the whole shot/reverse angle close-up method for depicting a character in conflict with themselves is, to put it charitably, a rather hoary cliche.
...that said, it's an incredible, astonishing movie. Helm's Deep is an action sequence to put the village attack in Apocolypse Now to shame; Viggo Mortensen has an emotional depth which grows more profound with each passing film, as does that of the other actors; Jackson manages to interweave human drama and sheer, jaw-dropping scale in a manner which invites- demands- comparison to Kurosawa, Coppola, or Lean. Taken as a whole, the film has made me want to write a (rather overdue) note to another director in the middle of a trilogy, along the lines of:
Dear George Lucas- For the love of all that's holy, stop saying that they're "just movies." They are not "just" movies- they're a substantial part of the cultural mythology of my generation, and they've also made you a billionaire in the process. Not only is denying the cultural significance of your own work disingenuous in the extreme, but it's letting you off the hook for making feckless crap that's not the equal of any number of shows on tv these days. You don't need the money, and we don't need to see a great film trilogy strip-mined.
Cordially,
me
