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A discussion emerged in Voronwe’s Best Scene Poll thread, concerning the “framing” of a scene, in the sense that what precedes it and follows it should not disrupt the mood of the viewer and disturb the flow of the film. Jnyusa gave an example from Lawrence of Arabia and how it could have been disrupted. That is one way to disrupt a viewer, but there are others and I think they can mostly be discussed in terms of restraint on the part of the director. Lean is the perfect foil for this discussion since his favorite theme was restraint and he consistently practiced restraint in his career.

This isn’t intended to be a discussion of film vs book or directorial decisions about what to include or leave out. It is about whether or not enough restraint was used when presenting a scene, within the context of the director’s other choices about the film. I am not implying PJ is not a good director. He has great moments like the Departure of Boromir and yes Voronwe, Arwen’s Fate, but his work is uneven because of lapses in restraint.

In my opinion, PJ did an incredible job with LOTR and has given us as good a set of films as we are likely to ever see of the subject. They will always be very dear to me. However, I think the films suffered from a lack of restraint and they could have been improved dramatically with a few relatively minor changes.

Examples of PJ excesses are:

- The Final Tally
- The Corsairs of Umbar
- The End of All Things – ignoring physics
- The Lighting of the Beacons – comic prelude

I think we all agree on The Final Tally. It was totally inappropriate for the film and I can think of no excuse for leaving it in.

I think most of us agree on The Corsairs of Umbar. It is a true example of self-indulgence. I like that Hitchcock was in each of his films and the unobtrusive way he chose to do it.

The End of All Things is an example that Voronwe and I discussed in the other thread. Absent the knowledge and recognition of a simple physical problem, it is a great scene, especially with the eagles swooping down for the rescue. Ignoring the laws of physics, that mandate roasted hobbit on the menu with eagle on the side, was not necessary. I expected to see Sam and Frodo wading in the molten lava to get to safety. Simply putting a little distance between the hobbits and the lava was all that was needed. This made the scene a caricature, which disrupted not only this scene, but also infringed on contemplation of the prior scene of the destruction of the ring. PJ reduced the scene to the kind of destruction you see near the end of many films like Temple of Doom, Red Sonja and countless mediocre fantasy and SF films. This can be tolerated in Temple of Doom because it is already a caricature. Red Sonja and many other fantasy and SF films don’t have much else to rely on, so the overdone disasters are sometimes the high point of a film or at least a distraction from the acting. Yes, PJ does it on a grand scale, which only makes it a grander cartoon.

The Lighting of the Beacons is fine in itself. It starts with the awkward attempt to get things started which may be intended to be funny, but left me wondering. It’s reminds me of the use of comedy in some films that have a large light hearted streak melded with the action, like Curtiz’s Errol Flynn films (Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Sante Fe Trail). Curtiz went on to show an even more mature approach in Casablanca a very few years later. It has a lot of understated comedy mixed in with the serious themes. John Huston is another director who seemed to have a good feel for how to mix lightheartedness in with a serious film (Key Largo, African Queen) and seriousness in a lighthearted film (Man Who Would Be King), or seriousness in a serious film (The Dead).

Jnyusa provided Lawrence of Arabia as an example of a film created by a director who understood the importance of restraint. LoA may be my favorite film and it is precisely because of the director’s understanding of the importance of restraint. Lean's career gave us several films that are good examples of directorial restraint. Lean started as an assistant to Noel Coward.

- The first of Lean’s films that carry his stamp is Brief Encounter. It retains a consistent mood of quiet desperation for most of its length.

- Lean’s first film away from the shadow of Noel Coward was Great Expectations, a fairly somber film also consistent throughout.

- Hobson’s Choice was his first attempt at comedy around a serious subject. Since the prior films I mentioned don’t try to encompass humor, this may be his first real test of restraint.

- This was followed by Summertime, his first real romance. Interestingly the subject is the main character’s restraint.

- The Bridge Over the River Kwai is considered one of the best film’s of the ‘50s by some. It is 3 separate character studies of 3 forceful individuals with intersecting missions. Other than the reconsideration of the position of Alec Guinness’ character early in the film, the characters are consistent.

- Then comes Lawrence of Arabia which is itself composed of several studies of restraint and the need for and causes of it. Several times it develops the consequences of a lack of restraint. This may be the best film of the ‘60s.

- Lean carried his theme of restraint through the ‘70s with Ryan’s Daughter and into the ‘80s with Passage to India.

Obviously, Lean had strong opinions about restraint in our lives and provided us with many examples from is own directing. I always thought the scene in LoA when Lawrence is questioned by his assistant about the trick of putting out a march between his fingers was a summary of a Leans view of life in general:

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“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts”.

A scene in the middle of the film contains some words of Prince Feisal that I think are indicative of the difference between PJ and Lean.:

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“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable”.

Lawrence provides a demonstration shortly afterward. Lean is very good at providing us with a statement of what is important in what is about to happen and following the idea through to a consistent conclusion.

A brilliant director, who suffered from threatened lack of restraint, was Kubrick, although in a different way. Most of his films show remarkable restraint and restraint is a frequent theme of Kubrick’s. 2001: A Space Odyssey is an example of a restrained film. Others are unrestrained like Clockwork Orange, which I consider his worst film. In between is Dr. Strangelove, which survives it because it is a black comedy and excess is to be expected. It is one of my favorite films, but the title character gets very close to the edge sometimes. All of these films, including Orange, received critical acclaim. I’m not saying Orange is a bad film. I am saying that compared to his other films, Orange suffers because of this lack of restraint and that it could have been improved. Most of Kubrick’s films come across as bound and gagged, on the verge of exploding. Restrained, but barely.

Another director who seems to be able to avoid rough transitions is Sydney Pollack. He even managed to keep Robin Williams under control in Dead Again.

I want to be clear that I think PJ did a remarkable job. I can’t imagine anyone, other than himself, doing it better. It is by comparing those things he did well, with those he did not so well, that I conclude he did not always restrain his impulses as he could have. PJ’s passion is what caused this project to happen and the consequence of passion as the prime mover may be just as Lean says: unreliable.

I agree Idylle. One aspect of the lack of restraint is that of gigantism. Sauron, the trolls, the balrog, the height of Isengard and Saruman's discourse from the top, the Mumakil, take away from a sense of being in a believable place. Shelob is an honourable exception. Another aspect is the size of groups; the orcs in Moria, the numbers at Helm's Deep, the Pellenor and before the Gates of Mordor remove us from the real world that was such a strength of the book.

IdylleSeethes wrote:

A discussion emerged in Voronwe’s Best Scene Poll thread, concerning the “framing” of a scene, in the sense that what precedes it and follows it should not disrupt the mood of the viewer and disturb the flow of the film.

Idylle, I wasn't able to find this discussion scrolling through the last few pages of that thread. Does it occur earlier on?

I emphatically agree with the idea that lack of restraint -- or self-indulgence -- is one of PJ's main failings as a director in these movies, and that the inability to use humor appropriately -- that is, in a way that doesn't grate against the serious mood -- is another. I think the latter may be in part due to the fact that he (apparently) couldn't decide whether he was making a Star Wars style romp or a serious film.

The only film I've watched recently except for my viewing of the LoTR films is 'Flatliners' (Joel Schumacher). Leaving aside the differences in scope and nature of the material, it struck me that ‘Flatliners’ is a better-directed movie. It is extremely atmospheric, has a consistent tone, has some very funny moments that yet do not interfere with the tone or mood, the acting is consistently adequate, there is no extraneous disconnected dialogue or plot threads that begin and go nowhere, my attention never flagged for a moment even though I’ve seen the movie before, and it brought me to tears at one point. None of the directorial techniques took me out of the film or struck me as contrived, forced or inappropriate. In short, I think all of the director’s decisions served the film and story well, which unfortunately cannot be said, IMO, for PJ and the LoTR films.

I also want to make it clear that I sincerely appreciate PJ and co.'s efforts and the fact that we have these films to discuss at all. I'm glad it was PJ who did them and not someone else, because it seems clear to me that he is just about the nicest person in the whole world and had a loving attitude in dealing with the books, which is even more important, IMO, than the particular pitfalls and failings that he is inclined to as a director.

You could start with my second post on page 11. It is a response to a question posed somewhere earlier. The discussion is scattered over the next several pages. I don't have time to make links at the moment.

I think that there would be general agreement that PJ's directorial style is not restrained. But I think his lack of restraint is probably his greatest attribute, as well as being his biggest liability. I think that, perhaps, over time he will mature as a director (although the Lucas example does not bode well). But I for one am glad that he tackled LOTR at this point of his career. Successfully filming LOTR required the lack of restraint that PJ demonstrated, in my opinion. I have said this before (and Sassy never quite can figure out whether I'm serious) but I honestly believe that the lows of the films are necessary for the highs to exist. A more mature director would have, in my opinion, turned their nose up at this material, deeming it to "un-serious" to make into serious films. We of course know better, but that does not change the fact that it really took someone that combined irreverence with an almost unimaginable dedication.

I think when you use the word "responsibility" you have to look at what the goals were. Did PJ have a "responsibillity" to make films that would stand the test of time as classics in the mold of Lawrence of Arabia or The Seven Samarai? I would say that no, he did not have that responsibility, nor was it has intention to do so. Indeed, it appears to me that he quite intentionally did not try to do so. It seems to me that PJ's intention was to make entertaining ("fun?") films that nonetheless at times raise (almost despite themselves) to a level of high art.

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I think the latter may be in part due to the fact that he (apparently) couldn't decide whether he was making a Star Wars style romp or a serious film.

Indeed, and that's his worst, and possibly only mistake; but a big one. Didn't Tolkien warn about the need to take fantasy utterly seriously or fail terribly in his essay on fairy stories, or does my memory completely fail me?
At any rate, my mother, who loved the movies and never read the books. complained highly about the "funny" scenes, saying they weren't funny in the first place and felt completely out of place (dwarf jokes, surfing legolas etc...) in an otherwise fantastic trilogy.

The worst of the worst I think, was the skull avalanche in the extended ROTK (bad enough in the theatre version). It was a cringe moment, truly. But PJ is a B movie director first and foremost, and he probably thought he could get away with it, as a personal treat, maybe. While it works in something like brain dead, it does not in LOTR. It could be argued then that the subject of the film needed restraint, as personally I find lack of restraint in brain dead part of its greatness.

My opinion is that PJ's great sin is of being patronising towards movie goers (listen to the commentary, it's sometimes eyebrows raising), by assuming most of them are dumb jackasses incapable of any enlightenment. It's also a fault of most contemporary directors, I find. Back a few decades, when people were no more or less dumb, but certainly even less educated as a general rule, great popular films like Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the wind, the Great Escape or you name it, made millions in the box office without having to sell themselves cheap.

Thank you, Idylle.

Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:

I have said this before (and Sassy never quite can figure out whether I'm serious) but I honestly believe that the lows of the films are necessary for the highs to exist.

I don't see how this statement is supportable. The notion that PJ could not have made the films at all or that he could not have excelled where he did without failing where he did (i.e., that he couldn't have made different decisions as a director) just isn't sensible, IMO. So perhaps that isn't what you're saying, V.

Niamh wrote:

Back a few decades, when people were no more or less dumb, but certainly even less educated as a general rule, great popular films like Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the wind, the Great Escape or you name it, made millions in the box office without having to sell themselves cheap.

Oh, this is so true. Nowadays it seems only the independent films that didn't cost 100+ million to make are allowed to challenge filmgoers. Otherwise they feel (speculating) they have to appeal to that lowest and broadest common denominator in order to make back the investment?

Idylle,

Thanks for starting this thread!

I wish I had more time now to write ...

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“With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable”.
Lawrence provides a demonstration shortly afterward. Lean is very good at providing us with a statement of what is important in what is about to happen and following the idea through to a consistent conclusion.

Funny, I was thinking about the 'demonstration' as one scene that shows just how finely honed Lean's craft was ... it's the "no prisoners" scene, right?

When directors show a battle, they usually intercut between close-ups and long-shots, so that the viewer has a sense of scope without losing identification with individual characters. In what order should the intercuts be placed? In that particular scene, we see Lawrence on the hill issueing the charge, his face contorted with rage. Then the battle (a cavalry attack on a hapless, seemingly unarmed caravan) is shot entirely from the distance. At the end, Lean closes in on Lawrence again, who sits holding his sword and gazing into the distane in something like a catatonic trance. Lean relied very heavily on O'Toole's acting skills - wow that took total trust to rest the impact of the scene on O'Toole's expression.

Anyway, I was thinking to myself, what if the intercuts had been reversed, and he had shown Lawrence in the foreground slashing his way through the caravan (going crazy in other words), then, at the end, panned back to show the scope of the destruction?

I decided that shooting the scene this way would have told a different story and that story would have been objectively disruptive within the context of the film. If the close-up came first followed by the long-shot, it would have created the message, "this is what Lawrence did to this situation; here is the scope of the destruction he wrought." But when the long shot comes first, followed by the close up, the message is the opposite, "here is what the situation did to Lawrence; here is the depth to which he has sunk."

The film was a character study of Lawrence - the perspective of the film was to show how the history in which he participated acted on him. Lean never deviates from this point of view, except near the very end when the center of action moves to Damascus and we are granted an omniscient view of just how futile Lawrence's vision has been.

The first construction of the 'no prisoners' scene would have contradicted the perspective of the rest of the film ... only for that one scene, but it would have become a non-contributing scene, a gratuitously violent throw-away. The second construction, because it is consistent with the perspective of the film, reinforces the film in a powerful way. It becomes, in fact, one of the most important scenes in the movie from a thematic point of view. The violence acquires meaning - namely, its impact on Lawrence - and that is a message that transends the individual character and reaches out to the audience.

I do believe that the success of that scene depended entirely on how the intercuts were done. Lean had to ask himself not only what would make an exciting battle but also what this battle was supposed to contribute to the whole of the film. He was an exceedingly careful director and never lost sight of his ultimate theme.

My impression of PJ is that he takes a more episodic approach throughout - not just in FotR as we were discussing in the other thread but in all three movies. The scenes do not lean upon one another for meaning. Each one is self-contained, exploited for maximum coolness, and whether it makes sense in a larger context does not matter much to PJ. The seams really show in his movies.

I find it very difficult to accept this approach ... Voronwe and I had a long conversation on TORC about 'sense' and I believe the conclusion was that sense is in the mind of the beholder ... just as Yov rejects my rejection of illogic in the other thread here ... but for me to feel the wholeness of a work, I have to feel that the director himself had a sense of the wholeness of the work. If he does, then the moments of illogic don't bother me; I jump over them and land back on the theme in the next scene. If the director does not see the work as unified but rather as a montage of maximized scenes, then I can't jump over the scenes that don't work for me because there's nothing to land on.

One of the hallmarks of restraint, in my book, is holding the camera still. There is simply nothing I hate more than having the camera assume a weird angle in order to convey imbalance or confusion, or even movement and scope. Thinking about the beacons scene, I mentioned in the other thread that I did not find the rotating camera to be particularly imaginative. PJ uses it to convey distance and movement. But compare it to the scene at the end of Kubrick's 2001 where the astronaut returns to earth in fetal form. That is shot straight on, and conveys as much distance and movement as one could wish for. So I don't think that PJ's choices were as inevitable as they are sometimes presented in our discussions. He did not, in my opinion, give as much thought to the meaning conveyed by a director's invisible decisions (like camera angle and intercuts) as really good director's do.

(Still, we are comparing him to Lean and Kubrick, not ... you know, chick flick directors or B-horror film directors, which he once was.)


Jn

jnyusa wrote:

I decided that shooting the scene this way would have told a different story and that story would have been objectively disruptive within the context of the film. If the close-up came first followed by the long-shot, it would have created the message, "this is what Lawrence did to this situation; here is the scope of the destruction he wrought." But when the long shot comes first, followed by the close up, the message is the opposite, "here is what the situation did to Lawrence; here is the depth to which he has sunk."

That's very interesting. Thank you for posting this

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My impression of PJ is that he takes a more episodic approach throughout - not just in FotR as we were discussing in the other thread but in all three movies. The scenes do not lean upon one another for meaning. Each one is self-contained, exploited for maximum coolness, and whether it makes sense in a larger context does not matter much to PJ. The seams really show in his movies.

Agreed. Rhyuey Kitamura, of whom I am a great fan, and who also comes from the B movie tank, tends to have the same default I find. (though he's better than PJ ; meaning, it doesn't bother me). I haven't yet seen his Godzilla, but an awful lot of reviews specifically complain about it. I'm sure I won't mind


of course, let's bear in mind that if Lean or Kubrick had filmed LOTR, it would have been 100% Lean or Kubrick. Where would that leave Tolkien? The biggest seams in LOTR are where PJ completely takes over Tolkien, like mr Hyde in a way. It's obvious, it's disjointed, and it shows. And it's completely unnecessary.


added: Voronwë, by saying we need the lows in the film, do you actually mean that the PJ ugly bits serve to show off how good Tolkien really was as a storyteller?

Thanks, Niamh! Welcome to B77!

I haven't seen any of Kitamura's films. I think you're right that if Lean or Kubrick had done LotR their own signature would dominate the films. How much of Tolkien would have been left? ... they probably would have kept less, but they would have added less as well, I suspect.

Jn

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One of the hallmarks of restraint, in my book, is holding the camera still. There is simply nothing I hate more than having the camera assume a weird angle in order to convey imbalance or confusion, or even movement and scope. Thinking about the beacons scene, I mentioned in the other thread that I did not find the rotating camera to be particularly imaginative. PJ uses it to convey distance and movement. But compare it to the scene at the end of Kubrick's 2001 where the astronaut returns to earth in fetal form. That is shot straight on, and conveys as much distance and movement as one could wish for. So I don't think that PJ's choices were as inevitable as they are sometimes presented in our discussions. He did not, in my opinion, give as much thought to the meaning conveyed by a director's invisible decisions (like camera angle and intercuts) as really good director's do.

I completely disagree with this statement, Jn. This is really where we part company. When we talk about inappropriate humour, or the excessive "Leggy" moments, or the self-indulgent Corsairs, skull avalanche and MoS scenes (to name just a few), then I think I think we can fairly say that these things are objectively poor filmmaking. But the type of thing you are talking about here really comes down more to subjective taste then anything. To say that PJ did not give as much thought to issues like camera angle and intercuts (and lighting) as really good directors do is something wrong, IMO. I think its more a question of his style not being to your taste. Almost every example that you give of things of this nature that you say you don't like, I find very effective. Is it just that I am an idiot? True I am not a filmaphile, but I do know what I like and what I don't like. Certainly the relevant material in the EE DVD appendices detail how much attention was paid to these kind of details (not to mention the care paid to detail in every other aspect of the films). And it certainly appears to my eyes that both PJ and Andrew Lesnie are well respected by their peers in the industry. So I really don't believe that this statement is supportable.

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My impression of PJ is that he takes a more episodic approach throughout - not just in FotR as we were discussing in the other thread but in all three movies. The scenes do not lean upon one another for meaning. Each one is self-contained, exploited for maximum coolness, and whether it makes sense in a larger context does not matter much to PJ. The seams really show in his movies.

Jn, I understand what you mean here, and I agree to some extent, but in other ways I disagree. There is no question that PJ's approach is episodic. But I disagree that the scenes do not lean upon each other for meaning. This is one area where I really do believe that watching all three extended editions in close sequence really makes a big difference. Your statement that whether it makes sense in a larger context does not matter much to PJ really is borne out by his editing decisions in crafting the theatrical editions. So much of the material that he cut out of the films is explanatory material that ties things together. Two good examples are the Sons of the Steward and the Voice of Saruman.

But I have to say, overall, PJ's story really holds together well for me. And its not just because I am so familiar with the source material, because it is not the same story that Tolkien told, for sure. Despite the chaotic nature of the way these films were produced, I do believe that PJ had a very clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish. I do not believe that the mixing of the high and the low is accidental, I think that is exactly what PJ intended to accomplish. Whatever else one may say about Peter Jackson, he is a shrewd and driven individual, with an emphasis on "individual". He has a very irreverent attitude, which I actually find quite refreshing. I think his attitude in making these films is, "yes its a big deal, and yes we are all going to put a lot of effort in creating this alternative universe and in making a film that is often sublime and deeply moving (at least to most people), but lets not take it (or ourselves) too seriously."

When I say that the lows are necessary for the highs to exist, I mean that one has to take Peter Jackson as a whole. In theory, could PJ have made different decisions that led to films that were less uneven in tone then the films that we got? Of course he could. But my point is, that it took the peculiar mixture that makes up the complicated mind of Peter Jackson to produce both the highs and the lows. Someone else might have made those different decision, but that someone else (even be it the holy Lean or Kubrick) might not have successfully produced the types of sublime, deeply moving moments that many of us experience through most of the films.

Sorry I'm not explaining myself very well. Perhaps I said it better in TORC, when I started the thread I called The Children of PJ: Great Evil but Also Great and Glorious, back in April 2003 before ROTK or the TTT EE had been released:

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I was thinking about these words from the Silmarillion this morning, talking about the breach in the House of Finwe:

If Finwe had been content with the fathering of his mighty son ... great evil might have been prevented ... . But the children of Indis were great and glorious, and their children also, and if they had not lived the history of the Eldar would have been diminished.

Except I was thinking about these words in the context of the breach in Tolkien fandom. Something like:

If PJ had been content with making as faithful an adaptation of the LOTR, great evil (dwarf jokes, clunker lines, the perceived diminishing of favorite characters, and all of the bickering between purists and revisionists)might have been prevented. But some of the scenes created by PJ (the Elves arriving at HD, Aragorn's temptation after Boromir's fall, the Nazgul over Osgiliath) are great and glorious, and others that PJ has expanded on from the text (Gandalf's battle with the Balrog, the flooding of Isengard, Arwen at the deathbed of Aragorn, and the beautiful rendering of virtually all of ME, particularly the Shire) also, and if they had not been created the history of Middle-earth would have been diminished.

That still stands as an accurate description of my feelings about the film, although I could add quite a few scenes to both the list of the great evil (Final Tally, Corsairs, skull avalanche, the parting of Frodo and Sam) but also to the list of of the great and glorious (the Eagles, Frodo's struggle up the side of Mt. Doom, the Beacons, the Ride of the Rohirrim, the Faramir telling Denethor that he would not use the Ring, and so many more).

What was PJ's responsibility? If it was to make films that will ultimately be hailed as among the greatest of all time, then he probably failed. If it was to make the films that he wanted to make, then I think he met his responsibility. And more importantly, if it was his responsibility to make films that entertained people, and that at times moved many of them deeply, and even stimulated some thought about deep and important things, then yes, I still believe that he met his responsibility.

Jnyusa wrote in this thread:

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One of the hallmarks of restraint, in my book, is holding the camera still. There is simply nothing I hate more than having the camera assume a weird angle in order to convey imbalance or confusion, or even movement and scope. Thinking about the beacons scene, I mentioned in the other thread that I did not find the rotating camera to be particularly imaginative. PJ uses it to convey distance and movement.

and in the Best Scene thread:

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The 'purest Tolkien moment' - without any plot deviations, additions or subtractions, without any distortion of the story, with a still camera and a perfect angle and perfect pace and movement, wonderful light and sound, conceived with proper magnificence and shot straight on by a director who had gotten exactly the picture he wanted ...

The Argonath.

But the Argonath scene does not use a still camera. In fact, it does use camera movement to convey the scope of the great statues. Even in the initial head-on shot of the two statues, the camera is slowly zooming in and gently rocking back and forth to emulate the approach downriver in a boat. Then the camera tilts up at an angle to reveal the great height of the statues from below and then pans up and rotates around the heads and outstretched arms to reveal the lake beyond. To me this scene is a perfect example of how to effectively convey scope through camera movement.

Unless I'm misunderstaning you and you mean the kind of jerky "NYPD Blue" style camera movement?

But the type of thing you are talking about here really comes down more to subjective taste then anything. To say that PJ did not give as much thought to issues like camera angle and intercuts (and lighting) as really good directors do is something wrong, IMO.

We have to agree to disagree.

And I don't think this is entirely subjective or a matter of taste if the topic is restraint. A bouncing, twirling camera is an unrestrained camera, and you would be hard-pressed, I think, to find scenes where any of the 'great' directors loose control of their camera angle.

Scenes where the movement of the camera matters very much to how the audience experiences the scene ... in 2001, for example, when the one astronaut (I don't remember either of their names now) is exercising in the ship and the camera follows him as he runs 'upside down' to give the audience the experience of the gravity field that the character is experiencing ... Notice how slowly the camera turns. The human eye needs to orient itself to this unnatural perspective and Kubrick chooses a pace that allows the audience to do that. Generally, the pace of the film throughout makes the unnatural gravity of the ship and non-gravity of outer space quite palpable. The pacing of the film is brilliant and Kubrick did not hit on this by accident.

Camera angle is one thing Lucas also does very well, and when his mounted camera moves around the spaceships, in the opening scene of the first Star Wars for example, you really feel that something totally innovative is going on. Again, notice how slowly the camera moves. That is what gives a sense of vastness to the ship. He doesn't whip all over the place - whee! look at me, my camera's on wheels! That pacing also required a lot of thought to create just the right effect.

PJ overdoes the close-ups (I think that most of us agree on that, from discussions on TORC), his camera jumps around too much, zooming in and zooming out more often a seasoned director will do this; the camera rotated too quickly during the beacon scene in my opinion; and he uses a slanted camera much too liberally when he wants to convey depth and movement (the moth, the eagles, the cavalry charges, the fell beasts over MT, the orcs in Moria). I can't think of a single scene in Lean or Kubrick where the audience is forced by the camera to lie on their side, or stare at moving feet or anything like this. The eye given to the audience may be omniscient but it is never neurotic.

All director decisions are going to be a matter of taste to some degree, but I think it is possible to objectively compare scenes that are trying to achieve the same thing using the same camera technique and say that some directors do it more successfully than others. This is a matter of skill and maturity. In the beacon scene, PJ had powerful material to work with and he squeezed very little out of it, in my opinion. How much he squeezed out of it is going to be a matter of opinion, but I think that if you try to remember your first viewing of Kubrick's 2001 and how that running astronaut made you feel, you'll agree that Kubrick squeezed a heck of a lot of audience impact out of mundane scene that had no particular emotional content or significance at all. With much less score, to boot. Just by the way, I believe that Kubrick's camera in that scene and PJ's camera in the beacon scene are doing almost exactly the same thing, but Kubrick's is rotating vertically and PJ's is rotating horizontally. My memory of both scenes is not perfect, but I bet if you watch them together you'll notice a significant difference in the speed with which the camera angle changes.

The only time you want to move faster than your audience can think is in horror movies where you don't want them to be quite sure what they saw. It often feels to me, while watching PJ, that he thinks the camera should be used to throw the audience off, to unsettle them ... this attitude is reflected in his lighting decisions, in his camera angle, and in his pace. That's a horror film technique that doesn't work at all for me in other kinds of film.

Jn

Jn, I'm not really qualify to debate this with you (although I think that fisssh makes a really good point above). I only know what I like and I what I don't like, and the things that bother you don't bother me.

Taking your specific comparison above, comparing PJ's beacon scene and Kubrick's running astronaut, its not even close. I find the beacon scene much more moving. And certainly plenty of others, many of whom are much more knowledgable about film than I am, were very impressed with it (how can I convince Telemachos to come here and take up the gauntlet? ). As much as respect you, I can't accept the proposition that because YOU say that it is inferior camera techniques, because it is not the way the directors YOU admire would do it, it is automatically objectively bad. (And I also think that the two scenes are not really comparable because their meanings and contexts are completely different, as is what is intended to be expressed.)

Edit: As I have said before (on this very Board!) I think that PJ makes great use of rhythm in his directing techniques. The Beacon's scene is a good example. Its not just that the music is so great, or that the imagery is so awesome, but also because they imagery and the music is so well coordinated. The credit for that must go to PJ (as well as to Howard). And the speed that the camera moves at is very effective in my opinion at conveying the sense of a message being conveyed over long distances over a short perior of time.

Its interesting that you think of the Beacons as a scene where PJ had powerful material to work with and squeezed very little out of it, whereas I think of the Beacons of an example of PJ taking a minor point in Tolkien's work and squeezing a huge, moving cinematic statement. I find it downright inspirational. Horizontally rotating camera and all

Fisssh: To me this scene is a perfect example of how to effectively convey scope through camera movement ... Unless I'm misunderstaning you and you mean the kind of jerky "NYPD Blue" style camera movement?

Voronwe: I think that fisssh makes a really good point above

Yes, of course. When I say a 'still' camera I mean one that moves quietly, not one that doesn't move at all. PJ could have 'swooped' up to the Argonath and zoomed around it like a bird or something like this but he did not do that (thank goodness). The movement of the camera allowed the majesty of the statues to reveal itself from the perspective of the Fellowship, and then gave the audience the omniscient closer view that probably everyone wanted at that point. (I know I did.) He personalized these ancestors of Aragorn by coming in closer once perspective from river-height was achieved. That's what made it a perfect camera, to my taste.

Voronwe: two things, not in order ...

because YOU say that it is inferior camera techniques, because it is not the way the directors YOU admire would do it, it is automatically objectively bad

But it is not my eccentric, subjective view that David Lean was a great director.

The only reason I'm asked to call this a subjective view is because the majority of people here are battle-ready to defend Peter Jackson. In the outside world film afficianados would fall on their bums laughing to hear such a thing. Doubtless there are die-hard fans of Wes Craven and he certainly knows how to grab an audience but no one in their right mind compares him to David Lean or Stanley Kubrick.

Is Peter Jackson better than Wes Craven? Yes, of course he is. He's better than George Lucas, in my opinion. He's better than probably 75% of the directors out there who are frittering away their time providing us with mindless drivel for the video and HBO market. And of the remaining 25%, most of them are not attempting to manage projects as large or themes as serious as PJ attempted in LotR. Spielberg is a good, even director - one can enter his movies without fear of having one's senses violated - but the bulk of his work is adventure franchises and only one of his movies will go down in history as a top-form serious treatment of a topic. And Spielberg did this at the end of his career, not the beginning. If he had jumped right from The Goonies to Schindler's List what a frigging mess it would have turned out to be.

On TORC I had people criticizing me for saying that Kurosawa is better than PJ. Pulleeeease! This is infantile. K. directed more than two dozen serious films, as apprentice and then on his own, before he directed Seven Samurai ... and I have serious criticism of some of his later work, but there is no question that his work shows maturity. PJ is a snivelling adolescent by comparison ... but so is nearly everyone else!

If I don't like a scene in PJ's movies because I think it lacks maturity, of course I'm going to to compare it to a similar scene done well by someone else. I don't feel obligated to then compare it as well to a scene in some schlock horror film that was done even worse.

comparing PJ's beacon scene and Kubrick's running astronaut, its not even close.

But I didn't say that that the running scene is the equivalent of the beacon scene! I said that the camera movement in the running scene is equivalent to the camera movement in the beacon scene, and the difference in pace makes a difference in the impact of the scene.

Gondor's cry for help to Rohan is a pivotal point in the plot. The scene is important independent of how PJ shoots it; not important relative to what Tolkien did with it but important within the plot of his own film.

The running scene is not pivotal to Kubrick' plot - if it were removed the film would be unchanged except that Kubrick makes such superb use of the camera that the scene ends up contributing a lot to the mood and perspective of the audience and to the power of the film as a whole. What I am saying is the Kubrick was able to take something unimportant and derive power from it.

PJ did not have to do this. All he had to do was shoot the film's turning point in a way that its natural importance was not muffled. So what does he do - he opens with a schlock comedy routine, then pans the camera around at a good clip almost (or completely?) 360-degrees to show distance. Most people say that the best thing about this scene is the score! But PJ didn't write the score, did he. He only tells Shore how long that musical passage has to last.

It's not a bad scene. I'm not saying that it is a bad scene. I'm saying that Kubrick extracted more from the same camera technique than PJ was able to extract in this scene because he was able to use it to promote a throwaway scene to importance, whereas PJ had only to not interfere with what was already an important scene.

I don't know how much thought PJ gave to how he would shoot this scene. I think that a rotating camera is not a particularly imaginative way to convey distance (and that is a subjective opinion) and I suspect (considering the number of times throughout the film that PJ uses the slanted camera) that this was his first choice and he did not consider (m)any alternatives. It is my suspicion that Kubrick spent more time thinking about how to convey gravity than PJ spent thinking about how to convey distance. But I don't know, of course. This is only my suspicion.

It happens to be my opinion that the time spent thinking about essential elements of the film - and certainly the scope of the landscape is one of those elements in LotR - is the difference between a passable director and a great director.

PJ is a good director. He is not a great director. I use the beacon scene as an example of the difference between a good director and a great director - imaginative technique, reliance upon plot importance, reliance upon score, etc. It is my opinion that in the hands of a great director this particular scene would have been shot differently. That's all.

Jn

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The only reason I'm asked to call this a subjective view is because the majority of people here are battle-ready to defend Peter Jackson. In the outside world film afficianados would fall on their bums laughing to hear such a thing.

Is this really true? Have you done a survey of film afficianados and determined this to be the case. I'm not asking this to be snide; its a serious question. It seems to me that someone like Tele would be considered a film afficianado and he certainly has a high opinion of PJ work the LOTR films. Outside of here and TORC I don't really know anyone who are film afficianados, so I am in a good position to judge.

Now don't get me wrong. I generally agree with you that PJ is a far more immature director then someone like Kurosawa in his prime. I do think that this is an objectively supportable conclusion. Whether PJ will develop that kind of maturity is an open question; it is much too early in his career to make that judgment.

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PJ is a good director. He is not a great director.

Forgive me for getting all lawyer-like on you, but this contradicts what you have said recently. In the Ultimate Best Scene Poll, on Aug. 15 at 12:15 p.m., you wrote:

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I truly think that PJ is a below-average film maker.

If, as you now say, it is your belief that PJ is "better than probably 75% of the directors out there" then our opinion on that subject is probably not very different. However, I do believe that he was the right director at the right time to produce the LOTR films. That's probably where we really deviate.

One other thing that I wanted to comment on:

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Most people say that the best thing about this scene is the score! But PJ didn't write the score, did he. He only tells Shore how long that musical passage has to last.

My understanding is that his involvement in the creation of the score was much more extensive then just telling Shore how long each musical passage has to last. Perhaps this is something that ttbk or someone else could elaborate on. If not, I'll try to do so.

It seems to me that someone like Tele would be considered a film afficianado and he certainly has a high opinion of PJ work the LOTR films.

Yes, but he does not disagree that PJ's place depends very much on the field of comparison. Tele does not think that PJ is better than Lean.

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I truly think that PJ is a below-average film maker.

Yes, within that field of film-makers who take on epic projects and/or serious themes, PJ remains below the average. Even among those directors with a large body of consistent, commercially successful work I think that PJ falls short in a number of areas, but I don't know quite how to make that comparison because the management effort involved in LotR was so much larger than anything that even most good directors undertake ... um, John McTierney, for example, whom I like very much, or Clint Eastwood. I can't imagine them undertaking something like LotR. They just wouldn't attempt it, and if they did, chances are good that they would lose control of the work as much as or even more than PJ did. That does not obviate the fact that PJ has a long way to go in terms of making a whole film cohere instead of just coming up with memorable scenes and managing complicated special effects.

He's not below average for all that exists in Hollywood, but we weren't comparing LotR to a Britney Spears movie; we were comparing it to other serious films. When you ran your survey, the average was ~7.8 and, as I said a couple times earlier, this is pretty close to the average ranking I would give to LotR among all films. And the median is a lot lower than the mean, of course, because there is an endless list of directors whose names are not worth the breath it would take to say them. If we had to rank all the movie scenes we had ever watched, the modal score for me at least would be zero!

When I get up to the 7s, 8s, and 9s, I'm talking about films I'm willing to see more than once and PJ is at the lower end of that scale, not at the bottom but below the average ... and then the directors whose movies will go down in history as the greatest of all time are the masters' classes, so to speak ... they are the 10's - the ones we look to for determing what a perfect or near perfect treatment might be. Certainly some of PJ's scenes came up to that level ... and I don't think anything done by Clint Eastwood, for example, has ever come up to that level ... but it's not a level that PJ can sustain. And he falls far enough below it often enough to say that, in my opinion at least, he's not really a mature director. Yet.

Whether PJ will develop that kind of maturity is an open question; it is much too early in his career to make that judgment.

Yes, well I mostly agree with this. In terms of age, Peter Jackson is not so young, but in terms of his body of work it's still early days.

My understanding is that his involvement in the creation of the score was much more extensive then just telling Shore

Well I want to meet the composer who lets anyone tell him what notes to play. It may well be that PJ specified whether he wanted subdued music or militant music or swelling music for particular scenes ... and a conductor will ask a composer to clarify what 'english' to put on a passage if the composer is available ... it's not as if everyone works in their own vacuum. But PJ certainly did not write the score, and if the music is half the power of the scene then half the credit has to go to Howard Shore.

This is also ... I was thinking about this comparison before when fisssh mentioned that the camera does move in the Argonath scene. Pacing is just about the most subtle thing that happens in a work of art involving time ... it is perhaps comparable to spacing in a painting where the time element enters as the eye is drawn back and forth across the canvas ... Music scores almost always specify a tempo, but conductors will tell you that the tempo is never absolutely strict ... well, you know this, Voronwe, because you're a musician - there are places where you speed up a bit and places where you slow down, and this may even vary from performance to performace because every performance acquires its own emotion and its own dynamic. If the music has a conductor, he has to feel his way through the pace with a great deal of sensitivity ... I mean, this is a real talent. And some conductors are obviously a lot better at it than others.

I think that the pace of a movie is much like that ... it is a real gift to be able to find the proper pace for every scene. PJ's pace is uneven, and to my taste his slower scenes work better than his faster scenes. I do not like the script of Elrond and Arwen's discussing her child but I like the cinematography of that scene very much. Same thing with the Aragorn/Arwen scenes in FotR. They are very well composed. I really enjoyed watching them. And I know that PJ knows how to do a slower-paced pan because he did it with the Argonath ... so when I see a scene like the beacons which, to my eye, is rushed and somewhat unimaginative given its role as a fulcrum of the story, I wonder why he chose to do it that way. This is a legitimate question, I think.

Jn

Yes, I didn't mean to imply that it was not. I'm finding this discussion very interesting, and I appreciate you bearing with me.

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Yes, but he does not disagree that PJ's place depends very much on the field of comparison. Tele does not think that PJ is better than Lean.

Yes, I definitely think that we can objectively say that Lean's body of work is more impressive then PJ's to date.

But just wait until King Kong comes out!

Here's a good quote from Howard on collaborating with Peter:

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Speaking of symbiosis, Shore and Jackson worked incredibly close together in terms of the filmscore. Sure, Shore composed the music and conducted the orchestra during recording, but Jackson was an instrumental sounding board, so to speak. "Well we worked really close together," Shore says of his work with Jackson on the films. "I've never had a relationship like this, that's why I really treasure that relationship. He's actually such a good writer, he's such a good filmmaker that he would work with me like another writer. That's how we worked. So even though I was doing the composition and the orchestrating and the conducting, while I was doing that Peter was with me every step of the way. He knew what I was writing every day. We were talking about it or listening to pieces or discussing them. He was at all of my recording sessions. And he's like a fantastic producer; he'd show you how to find the great take or how to instill that in the orchestration. He'd talk about things like dynamics and weight and expression. He was always interested in that, because essentially the music was recorded live. It really is a 19th century world you're in with a symphony orchestra. There were no electronic instruments in it. There was hardly any overdubbing. So it's very much a performance oriented type of recording. And he's used to that working with actors. So he would work with me like an actor. You're conducting and the conducting is a form of expression because you're capturing…it's like photography, you're trying to get the great take. And he would watch that process, I mean he would watch me going for the great take and then he would just show me where to go to get the great take, you know? He'd say 'If you built it up to this point, then just bring it down quiet here and then a crescendo…' He's show you the shapes and things, he could see what you were doing and make it better. It was like having a great Buddha in the recording studio who is constantly showing you a better, more expressive way of creating the music. So once I knew that I was like 'Oh, this is fantastic. I mean it's like having this great god to oversee it.'"

http://music.ign.com/articles/446/446567p2.html (and then continuing to the next page)

Re your first post, Yes - I'm enjoying the discussion very much too! How long has it been since we've been able to have this kind of discussion here?

Re the Shore quote: That's very interesting! PJ is definitely a micro-manager; but a god? Forgive me if I consider that a bit of hyperbole.

I don't think the quote necessarily contradicts what I have said. If you get, you know, Maurice Jarre to do your score the music is going to enhance every scene and become famous in its own right; and Shore had an impressive list of credentials before doing LotR. In part, of course, the choice of music must be to the credit of the director because the director knows what he wants the scene to sound like; but as much as we give Lean credit for Dr. Zhivago we don't give him credit for Lara's Theme or for what that contributed to the movie. The fact that he may have said 'play it louder here' is ... um ... well , let's put it this way, if the music were mediocre nothing the director could do would save it. And when music makes a scene, it's not because the director picked the take.

But this is kind of tangential. I only mentioned the music because so many people found that to be one of the best things about the beacon scene.

The comparison to Lean and Jarre here is interesting in another way, though. You'll notice in Dr. Zhivago that Lara's Theme does not play when Lara is present but when Zhivago is thinking about her. That's the director's choice to use the music in that way. So to the extent that PJ decided what theme was going to accompany each scene, yes, his choices make all the difference. That's much more important than picking the take, imo.

Also, one last thing ... when discussiong PJ in a group where I am plainly one of the weakest fans, I do feel that I often come across sounding far more critical than I really feel. His work is too uneven for me to watch it over and over again. That's pretty much the worst I think of him. Not that he is bad, but that he is not yet good enough for me to get excited about his career or to enjoy multiple viewings.

As for King Kong - I'll probably do what I usually do: send my daughters to see it first.

Jn