Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Purists? - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
Ian Holm is the perfect Bilbo Baggins. He is an accomplished actor and he thoroughly understood the material. But what most impressed me about Bilbo was the fact that nearly all of The Hobbit was recapped in several scenes across the movie. I don't mean they acted out the story. I just mean that most of the events from the earlier story were mentioned or referred to. I liked that.
Holm's Bilbo is charming, reassured, comfortable, and entirely believable. I can't think of a single moment where I would have wanted something done differently.
Nonetheless, the best performance came from Ian McKellen. I don't know if he has enough Oscar-quality material in this movie to actually win an Oscar, but he should be nominated for the little statue. It's not because he is Gandalf, or because someone thinks he should be Gandalf. It's because, when McKellen delivers certain lines, he makes them sound so real and convincing. It doesn't matter if the character speaking them is Gandalf. What matters is that they don't sound like some character in a movie is speaking them.
Gandalf absorbed some lines from other characters due to compression. But the sentences were often lifted right out of Tolkien. What amazed me, however, was the way I was pleased with the delivery of several out-of-context lines. And I mean, with respect to "proper Tolkien context", some of the dialogue is widely moved from where it occurs in the literary story that no purist can help but notice.
But I do not say it is displaced. One of the most effective alterations in the story occurs in the scene where Gandalf utters the famous line to Frodo about not being so quick to deal out death in judgement. It's an incredible scene. All of the emotion and moral fortitude that I have pictured in Gandalf, when he cautions Frodo about judging Gollum (in the book), is right there on the screen. And it's not because Peter Jackson and the other writers found a clever way to use that material in a different place than in the literary story. It's because Ian McKellen understands the momentity of what he is saying. He clearly and obviously feels comfortable saying it.
One of the most frequently voiced concerns over the past four years (in my experience) dealt with the necessary compression. I and many other purists have wondered if the 17 year gap between Bilbo's departure from the Shire and Frodo's fateful conversation with Gandalf will be cut down to a few months.
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