[Spoilers!] What I would have said last night about The Battle of the Five Armies, if it hadn’t been two a.m.

I’d have gone again tonight if I could have made the 7 p.m. show. I learned last night that I can’t be staying out till 2 a.m. on a work night.

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Thorin Oakenshield’s Caspar David Friedrich moment in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Source: @RCArmitage. I actually wanted to post that picture of Thorin having just retrieved Orcrist from the orc who was attacking him as he hangs off the side of the ice cliff but for some reason I can’t find my copy of it. And yeah, pirated stills are starting to appear but I think I will wait awhile with that.

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We’ve had discussions before about the sorts of roles that are perfect for Richard Armitage (as in the case of John Proctor), and it’s hard to escape the notion that with Thorin Oakenshield we are yet again confronted with something epic that could have been tailor-made for him. From things he’s said this time around it sounds as if this role found him — and it’s hard to imagine an actor in his professional position in 2009-10 refusing a role like it. But Armitage knows not only how to choose and accept them, but also how to play them as well.

For last night’s two watchings I was in the absolute IMAX 3D sweet spot for my vision — no blurring or motion problems when I moved my head by watching — and the feeling of being under, surrounded by, enveloped in Thorin Oakenshield’s face was overwhelming. Under the influence of Thorin. It’s interesting how the film tries to contrast the story of Thorin’s madness and redemption with the stable story of Bard’s family, but the images from the latter story are outbalanced by the former. The mad face, the twists and turns of Armitage’s features, are impossible to tear my face from.

There are couple of places where this effect seemed particularly obvious to me — for instance, in the scene where Thorin thinks Bilbo has the Arkenstone and discovers an acorn in his hand instead. The mobility of his face is astounding, from the crazed suspicion of his eyes under that built up brow, to the gentleness as he imagines, playfully, what Bilbo will do in his garden in Bag End (which recalls for us the delight on Thorin’s face when Gandalf rescued the dwarves from the stone trolls in TH: AUJ), to, in turn, the displeasure as he is interrupted by Dwalin — a displeasure that recalls the much more inherently menacing grimace of Guy of Gisborne, particular with the way his left cheek muscle wilts into a sneer. And throughout, I can’t help but respond to the way Armitage makes the gold sickness look like a wave undulating just behind Thorin’s eyebrows.

Throughout this movie, we see bits and pieces of earlier Thorins in the impressions that emerge in the first two thirds of the film. As the Durins decide to join the battle, we get an energetic Thorin the likes of which we have only glimpsed earlier in the series — the Thorin who gained the epithet, Oakenshield — who enjoys the energy of battle, of his prowess in war — in a way that one can only describe as medieval. (Upon three watchings, this seems seem to me the most consciously neo-medieval of all the films, which has something to do with all the fighting and the way that Jackson handles it.)

But that even the fighting Thorin has in turn been changed by his experience of the gold sickness becomes clear in the other scenes that simply make me want to drown in Richard Armitage’s eyes — namely the combat scenes with Azog, as over and over again, we see his eyes widen in disbelief, fatigue, the heat of combat, and simple worn-down exhaustion. It doesn’t hurt that his blue eyes are lit against that very atmospheric bluish-whitish background. Armitage makes Thorin breathe simultaneously like sex and like death, transfixed by his own respiration. His awareness of his prowess and his self-confidence increasingly mix with the desperation that motivates his battle, as he’s aware explicitly that his heir is dead and probably implicitly that Kili will be slaughtered as well.

In the end, we see emerging through Thorin’s eyes and his forehead, through his utter fatigue, the deepening, coalescing awareness that his true battle and thus the final meaning of his life will be not be as the defender of Erebor, a role to which he has devoted his life, but rather as the vanquisher of Azog. Thorin experiences a bitter triumph that he can accomplish this, even as he realizes he will pass into the annals of history as the winner of the quest and the loser of the kingdom. As Thorin lies under Azog, his face wide with struggle and then the knowledge that in order to win, he will have to lose, we see on his face the recognition that in order to pursue the goal he has always pursued, he will have to do the opposite of what he has always done. Rather than insisting and pushing, the true paradox of Armitage’s Thorin is that in the end, he will have to cede, he will have to let go.

[edited slightly for mechanics.]

~ by Servetus on December 18, 2014.