If I didn’t love you before, Richard Armitage, I will love you forever now
This is the next little piece of the interview, below. What is making me so emotional is that I was thinking about the resemblance of the scene at Bag End with the Passover dinner, last spring at Passover. And Armitage brings it. He supplies that missing piece.
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What are your favorite moments in Thorin’s scenes that we will see in this first episode?
Oh, it’s very hard to choose … I would say it would be the moment where Thorin finds out some information that he needs at Bag End, and where all the pieces of the puzzle finally come together before his eyes, to allow him to take the journey that he has foreseen. It is one of the key moments in the character’s life. And this song that all the dwarves sing then for Bilbo is a moment of almost religious fervor, that marks the beginning of their quest over the misty mountains. When I recorded the song, I imagined that it had been sung many times to Thorin, when he was a little child again in his cradle, and that it awakened very strong feelings of identity in all the other dwarves as well. In singing it with all their hearts then the group is formed for the first time, they express their indelible attachment to their community, and at the same time to the kingdom they have lost. It is a very beautiful sequence.
Me + Richard Armitage 
Oh, Serve. That man. I’m all teary.
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Oh wauw, just wauw and thank you! Either you’re much better than you let on or you must have used a dictionary A LOT, difficult vocabulary. Bravo, well done and thanks for sharing! What an intelligent artist and great questions too..
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Glad it was helpful to you. Please reread the polished translation that will be published at RANet to make sure you get the whole gist of things.
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gulp. To loosly quote a famous movie, “What a man.”
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I’ve read inteviews with actors before but I don’t recall any of them going into the depth of detail that are in these interviews. Why is that? Because it’s the Hobbit, the way RA responds, or something else?
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I’ve read a lot of interviews and rarely do you see an actor discuss a role or movie like RA does, given the opportunity. He analyzes everything and then relates it to something tangible. And his vocabulary is exquisitely precise. He is a storyteller. And he loves what he’s doing.
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First of all: foreign press. Second: This is a magazine aimed specifically at fans of fantasy films. Third: he’s never had a role this significant before.
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Lovely comments from RA and they makes beautiful sense. I’d thought of that song (when reading the book) as more of a folk song, but RA makes a deeper connection that estends forward into the story. Reminds me of the speech he gave with the Maori phrases at the powhari (sp?) to mark the beginning of the making of the movie. A benediction. And yes, like a Seder, too. Though the ones I have attended aren’t so somber as Thorin’s song.
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Thanks for the comment, boffieb and welcome. Most of the seders I’ve gone aren’t that somber either — thankfully. 🙂
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I agree, his love for what he’s doing shines so bright in this interview. And the idea that this song is part of Thorin’s dwarven identity, both a burden and a blessing, is just lovely.
There are so many cool ideas percolating under the surface of his portrayal — sometimes I think it’s a pity we never get to know them all, but the depth they give to his portrayal is what makes the difference. It’s always there, and he’s happy to explain it, but it’s only when he gets an interviewer who asks the right questions that we all benefit.
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yeah, that gets exactly the vibe of many driven people and also of many very religious ones — like your identity is something you can’t escape from. I am going to have to write more about this, because it had been on my mind efore because of something he’d said and now my mind is racing.
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The man is a writer. Maybe he’ll never publish anything, but he is a writer. He has such vivid imagination. Love the way his mind works.
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Maybe now he can take fewer series roles and write a few novels 🙂
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I’d bet he’d be really good at writing a novel, but he would probably miss the collaborative aspect of making a film. Writing a book is a solitary process. Directing a movie, now, I can really see him doing that — he seems to absorb so much from the top-notch people he works with, and I’m sure he’s been observing how Peter Jackson manages all the different elements of movie direction.
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yeah. I almost feel like he could be at a crossroads: go for it in terms of bigger roles in Hollywood? Or take some of the money has now and find his way to independent filmmaking? There was a phase in 2009 when he said he was really sick of being “the gimp,” and I wondered when I became a fan how much longer he’d be acting. But since the Captain America interviews he’s seemed more positive about acting.
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“Key moments”. Ha ha ha!
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which is really what he is quoted as saying: “moments-clef”
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Thanks so much. The detail he gives in this interview of his childhood and destiny is very moving …….got to love him 🙂
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yeah, he just makes himself more lovable, interview by interview.
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[…] this blog regularly, Richard Armitage’s remarks in that review pushed a lot of my buttons. Religion, filming in 48 fps, reading experiences, audience enjoyment, Tolkien’s view of his life […]
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Armitage leads with the feelings, or: How thick is Richard? A beginning. « Me + Richard Armitage said this on December 5, 2012 at 2:41 am |
[…] / 5773: My squeeing when Armitage said that the dwarf singing in Bag End reflected religious fervor and the … — filling in my […]
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Hours before Passover | Me + Richard Armitage said this on March 25, 2013 at 9:34 pm |
[…] my apartment (reflection on that and on how the Bag End scene of TH:AUJ is a bit like a Seder and Armitage’s remarks about a similar theme), I just have the ritual burning to do tomorrow sometime. (I also have to grade tomorrow, and write […]
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Status update | Me + Richard Armitage said this on April 14, 2014 at 3:49 am |