Greed, Fear and Hobbitses

Bilbo contemplates all the money he could have earned, but didn't.

 There's going to be a lot of stories over the next couple of days about how "badly" The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is doing at the American box office. Those quotation marks are a small but essential part of the conversation, since any such talk ultimately boils down to the idea that the film has made staggering amounts of money - through 10 days it has earned roughly $150 million in the US alone with another $288 million coming from overseas; more money than the vast majority of us will see in our lifetimes - but not quite as much as people might have expected. Then again, the figures being dealt with are so vast that just doing okay might be the same as failure as far as the studio is concerned. It's the difference between an athlete being able to run 100m in less than or dead on 10 seconds; it's an achievement either way, but it's also the difference between a gold medal and nothing.

The Lovely Bones

Love does furnish a death.


Before I start, I'd just like to say what Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones does well. It gets Susie - the young girl whose death is the catalyst for the story - exactly right, with Saoirse Ronan perfectly capturing the anger and sadness of a girl watching her family experience everything she no longer can. It creates a beautiful, if sometimes perplexing, heaven for her to inhabit as she watches her family come to terms with her death. Finally, Stanley Tucci is spellbinding as her murderer, giving the character of George Harvey a sadness and melancholy that never quite disguises the awfulness of his actions.

Sadly, that's about it, as the rest of the film consists of lumpen melodrama, unsuccessful attempts at comedy and a tonal dissonance that prevents it ever turning into a cohesive film.

Focusing the story on the Salmon family - excising many minor characters that feature in Alice Sebold's novel - was a bold and interesting take on the material that could have made for a more intimate drama to anchor Susie's experiences in the afterlife, but Jackson and his co-writers Fran Walsh and Phillippa Boyens never strike a balance that allows each family member to express themselves and give weight to their emotions. We know they must be grieving because they have lost a daughter/sister/grand-daughter, but with the exception of Susie's father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) there is little evidence of their grief for us to relate to. They all cry and they all sigh and they all grieve, but we don't know who these people are and their sorrow rings hollow.

The way the film ignores Susie's mother, Abigail (Rachel Weisz) is symbolic of the problems caused by this lack of identity. Abigail's reaction to Susie's death is to grow distant from her family and leave because she can't stand to live in the same house where her daughter once lived. Her departure is meant to represent a great fracture in the family dynamic and her return is meant to be the emotional lynchpin of the story, but both moments fall curiously flat because we don't know her or her pain. Abigail's return lacks any power because we never noticed that she was gone in the first place.

Before anyone shouts SPOILERS, I'd just like to point out that revealing the identity of Susie's murderer as I did in the introduction does nothing to spoil the film because we know who it is very early on: we see him do it. Although I'm no fan of the book, I felt that one of its strengths was the dramatic tension created as we, through Susie, watched the two-fold story of her murder unfold; her grief-stricken father's search for the truth contrasted against the efforts of George Harvey to cover it up. This could have driven the film too, but that vital tension never materialises; Jack Salmon phones the police and assembles dossiers, but there is no sense that he is piecing the puzzle together. Eventually, in the final half hour, Jack has his 'Eureka!' moment but it comes too late; just as his discovery will not bring Susie back, it can not bring the film to life.

For all its faults I can't say that The Lovely Bones is an irredeemably bad film. It's a visually stunning film anchored by a talented cast, particularly Ronan and Tucci, and, although it misses most of the time, when it hits it attains a poignant beauty that can be dazzling. It's just a shame that for the most part it is so dull.

Reasons to be Cheerful: The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold's 'The Lovely Bones' is not a good book. It's an interesting idea - a young girl looks down from Heaven to watch her family cope with the aftermath of her murder, as well the hunt for her killer - that too often indulges in grandiose statements about the nature of existence. It's a banal exercise in faux-intellectualism wrapped up in the sort of pretty precious prose that guaranteed it a place of honour in Richard and Judy's Book Club.

If I have such antipathy towards the source, why then am I so excited about the film version? Two words: Peter Jackson.



The New Zealand director behind The Lord of The Rings Trilogy, as well as a diverse filmography that covers zombie splatterfests, sweary puppets, killer teens and wacky ghosts, has directed the film and I have a great deal of faith in him as a film-maker. He is one of the few film-makers currently working who understands how to ground fantasy in a real world and who can combine spectacle with emotion. The Lovely Bones seems tailor made to his sensibilities, encompassing the aspects of horror, mystery and vaguely supernatural drama that characterised his 1994 masterpiece, Heavenly Creatures, but which also allows him to display his visual talents and love of effects, as evidenced in the picture of Susie Salmon's 'Heaven' above, and in the trailer:

You can view the trailer at the official site for the film

The few glimpses we get of heaven suggest that Jackson and his team have let their imaginations go wild with this one; shifting landscapes, a field of stars and flowers that unfurl under giant ice-sculptures. If nothing else, the film promises to be a visual feast.

Jackson and his co-writers, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, also have a history of turning books that aren't that great into terrific films, as evidenced by their sterling work in turning Tolkien's hugely imaginative but languidly paced and turgid tome into three wonderful films. Turning Sebold's novel into a workable film should be a snap for them after that mammoth undertaking.

The mere fact that The Lovely Bones is a bad book may play into the film's favour, There is a long and storied history of bad books being turned into good or great films. Orson Welles quite famously took on the book Badge of Evil, a book he considered terrible, to prove that he could make a great film from a substandard book. The film he made was Touch of Evil, one of Welles' finest films and a strong contend for one the best entries into the film noir genre. If the adage that a bad book could be turned into a great film holds true, then The Lovely Bones could wind up being a classic.

It's also got an amazing cast. Saoirse Ronan, who shot onto the scene as a young girl who does a terrible thing in Atonement, plays Susie, the girl whose murder sparks off the events of the story; Mark Walhberg and Rachel Weisz play her parents; Susan Sarandon plays her grandmother; and Stanley Tucci plays her murderer. That's a hell of a collection of character actors, and that's before we even mention that further down the cast list we have Michael Imperioli (Christopher from The Sopranos) and Thomas McCarthy (writer-director of The Station Agent). That much talent should hopefully be able to bring the rather limp narrative to life.

I still have reservations about the film; early problems such as Ryan Gosling backing out from playing the father over creative differences, and rumours that production was stopped due to Jackson fighting with his art director, suggest that it may not have been the happiest shoot (then again, history is littered with great films that emerged from the unhappiest circumstances). And, of course, I am still worried that all the talent in the world could not make a good film out of a bad book (then again, I'm sure people didn't think you could make a good film out of say, The Godfather). We live in hope, as always.