The long awaited release (it’s been years for me), of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, has been, like almost every anxiously expected event, disappointing. Why?
Let’s hop on the wayback machine and travel twenty years in the past when the name Peter Jackson meant nothing and most of his current fans weren’t even born yet. By 1990 Jackson had already released two essential movies in the world psychotronic filmography, Bad Taste (1987) and Meet the Feebles (1989). The first, apparently, just a simple exercise in what Jackson called splatstick, a mix of splatter and slapstick, took him four years to complete by shooting it on weekends with his friends as he played two hilariously antagonistic roles (fighting himself to the dead atop a cliff). What seems like an absurd and demented sci-fi comedy, is on one hand, a cinema’s great moments referential fest (covering from Ed Wood to Kubrick) and on the other hand a criticism of imperialism and globalization represented by greedy extraterrestrials that plan to use humanity as the main ingredient for their intergalactic fast food restaurants.
From this first feature Jackson displayed his technical mastery through the movements of his unstoppable camera while establishing some of the recurrent main concerns of his filmography.
For the fans of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Bad Taste was a delicious treat, sent all the way from New Zealand, which would only be topped by Braindead, Jackson’s planned next film. After not being able to get financial backing, the plan was delayed and the failure spawned a new screenplay full of cynicism and black humor. Meet the Feebles, which could only be described as the Muppets on acid, is a gory romantic comedy starring puppets that murder, take drugs and engage in all kinds of sexual acts, basically a Jackson styled romp.
In 1992 Braindead is released, considered as the apex of splatstick and gore and proudly bearing the world record for most artificial blood ever used in a movie (300 liters). Behind all the blood, zombies and delirious humor the film presents a story of repressed love by a castrating and murdering mother, where liberation is at the hands of a most improbable hero. Braindead is thematically and stylistically essential in Jackson’s career, solidly cementing his signature.
With his fourth film, Heavenly Creatures (1994), Jackson delves into more mature content, creating a veritable masterpiece. Not just anyone can make a poetically romantic vision of forbidden love and a place beyond reality, the fourth world, where anything is possible through imagination, out of a true story of matricide.
That autumn night in 1994, as I walked out of the cinema, I wasn’t just drunk on Jackson’s cinematic achievement I was also completely in love with the discovery of a superb teenage Kate Winslet in her film debut.
The following year, alongside Costa Botes, Jackson shot the hilarious mockumentary, Forgotten Silver (1995), which tells the story of kiwi filmmaking pioneer, Colin Mckenzie, precursor of the greatest achievements in film history. When the movie was aired on New Zealand television a lot of people thought it was a real documentary and felt very proud until they found out the truth and were outraged at the mockery.
Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures had caught Hollywood’s eye and he decided to take advantage of it by selling a screenplay written with his wife for a Tales from Crypt movie
to Universal. Robert Zemeckis decided to produce the script hiring Jackson himself to direct it, who convinced the studio to let him shoot in New Zealand. The Frighteners (1996), speaking as a huge Jackson fan, was a bit of a let down. Despite the huge Hollywood budget and the presence of Michael J. Fox, the final product didn’t work, the mix of supernatural comedy and serial killers didn’t quite gel. What we got to see again, was Jackson’s interest on the themes of homicide, the afterlife and love conquering evil, even beyond death.
It is notable that Jackson, like Hitchcock, has an interest (obsession) for murder and its motivations, entering the minds of killers and telling their side of the story. Curiously, like Hitchcock, Jackson also has cameos in all of his films.
After The Frighteners Jackson was ready to shoot a remake of 1933’s King Kong, the movie that inspired him to become a filmmaker as an eight year old, thanks to its wonderful stop motion animation. Ultimately the production fell through and he decided to focus on his epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
A few years of production and legal battles later, the rings trilogy was released: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and Return of the king (2003). The saga is really a single, twelve hour film (in the complete versions) and that is the way it is meant to be seen, that is also the reason why Jackson received the Academy Award for the final chapter of the trilogy. Not only did Lord of the Rings make Peter Jackson a household name the world over, it also defined him as one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers proving his capability at a scale that very few directors reach in their lives and most importantly doing it all on his own terms by producing and shooting, once again, entirely in New Zealand.
Besides the evident anti imperialist theme already present in Tolkien’s original text, Peter Jackson emphasized the importance of friendship and loyalty between Frodo and Sam once more championing the triumph of love over the dark forces of evil.
In 2005 Jackson closes a circle in his life with his mega budget reinterpretation of King Kong where he gave free reign to all his childhood fantasies about the giant gorilla and the perfect way of reimagining it for the new millennium. In the end the story remains the same as seventy years prior, beauty and the beast and the love that transcends all obstacles but can only end with death.
The recently released The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold’s novel promised a return to Heavenly Creatures’ territory by Jackson, with its similar topics of teenage girls, love and murder. Unfortunately Jackson seems to have lost his touch. Maybe he lost it as he navigated all those sugary digital effects while trying to come up with the perfect way of showing the heaven/limbo that Susie Salmon inhabits. Saorsie Ronan’s portrayal of Susie is without a doubt the best element of the film which is at times an unsettling murder story, a teenage drama, a Hallmark channel movie and a Peter Jackson fantasy that never quite makes up its mind and never quite reaches the evocative moments of the novel nor the flight of a heavenly creature. Nevertheless the movie is not a total disaster but my twenty year old admiration for Peter makes me a harsh judge. There is in the end a sweet flavor that carries over from the original text, the strength of the love between a father and a daughter and the delicate healing that time brings to all wounds.
For the time being Peter has a very busy schedule with the upcoming productions of Tin Tin and his return to middle earth, The Hobbit, directed by Steven Speilberg and Guillermo del Toro respectively.
I am sure he will soon take us on another unforgettable journey. After all, for those who have the key to the fourth world everything is possible.
Let’s hop on the wayback machine and travel twenty years in the past when the name Peter Jackson meant nothing and most of his current fans weren’t even born yet. By 1990 Jackson had already released two essential movies in the world psychotronic filmography, Bad Taste (1987) and Meet the Feebles (1989). The first, apparently, just a simple exercise in what Jackson called splatstick, a mix of splatter and slapstick, took him four years to complete by shooting it on weekends with his friends as he played two hilariously antagonistic roles (fighting himself to the dead atop a cliff). What seems like an absurd and demented sci-fi comedy, is on one hand, a cinema’s great moments referential fest (covering from Ed Wood to Kubrick) and on the other hand a criticism of imperialism and globalization represented by greedy extraterrestrials that plan to use humanity as the main ingredient for their intergalactic fast food restaurants.
From this first feature Jackson displayed his technical mastery through the movements of his unstoppable camera while establishing some of the recurrent main concerns of his filmography.
For the fans of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Bad Taste was a delicious treat, sent all the way from New Zealand, which would only be topped by Braindead, Jackson’s planned next film. After not being able to get financial backing, the plan was delayed and the failure spawned a new screenplay full of cynicism and black humor. Meet the Feebles, which could only be described as the Muppets on acid, is a gory romantic comedy starring puppets that murder, take drugs and engage in all kinds of sexual acts, basically a Jackson styled romp.
In 1992 Braindead is released, considered as the apex of splatstick and gore and proudly bearing the world record for most artificial blood ever used in a movie (300 liters). Behind all the blood, zombies and delirious humor the film presents a story of repressed love by a castrating and murdering mother, where liberation is at the hands of a most improbable hero. Braindead is thematically and stylistically essential in Jackson’s career, solidly cementing his signature.
With his fourth film, Heavenly Creatures (1994), Jackson delves into more mature content, creating a veritable masterpiece. Not just anyone can make a poetically romantic vision of forbidden love and a place beyond reality, the fourth world, where anything is possible through imagination, out of a true story of matricide.
That autumn night in 1994, as I walked out of the cinema, I wasn’t just drunk on Jackson’s cinematic achievement I was also completely in love with the discovery of a superb teenage Kate Winslet in her film debut.
The following year, alongside Costa Botes, Jackson shot the hilarious mockumentary, Forgotten Silver (1995), which tells the story of kiwi filmmaking pioneer, Colin Mckenzie, precursor of the greatest achievements in film history. When the movie was aired on New Zealand television a lot of people thought it was a real documentary and felt very proud until they found out the truth and were outraged at the mockery.
Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures had caught Hollywood’s eye and he decided to take advantage of it by selling a screenplay written with his wife for a Tales from Crypt movie
to Universal. Robert Zemeckis decided to produce the script hiring Jackson himself to direct it, who convinced the studio to let him shoot in New Zealand. The Frighteners (1996), speaking as a huge Jackson fan, was a bit of a let down. Despite the huge Hollywood budget and the presence of Michael J. Fox, the final product didn’t work, the mix of supernatural comedy and serial killers didn’t quite gel. What we got to see again, was Jackson’s interest on the themes of homicide, the afterlife and love conquering evil, even beyond death.
It is notable that Jackson, like Hitchcock, has an interest (obsession) for murder and its motivations, entering the minds of killers and telling their side of the story. Curiously, like Hitchcock, Jackson also has cameos in all of his films.
After The Frighteners Jackson was ready to shoot a remake of 1933’s King Kong, the movie that inspired him to become a filmmaker as an eight year old, thanks to its wonderful stop motion animation. Ultimately the production fell through and he decided to focus on his epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
A few years of production and legal battles later, the rings trilogy was released: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and Return of the king (2003). The saga is really a single, twelve hour film (in the complete versions) and that is the way it is meant to be seen, that is also the reason why Jackson received the Academy Award for the final chapter of the trilogy. Not only did Lord of the Rings make Peter Jackson a household name the world over, it also defined him as one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers proving his capability at a scale that very few directors reach in their lives and most importantly doing it all on his own terms by producing and shooting, once again, entirely in New Zealand.
Besides the evident anti imperialist theme already present in Tolkien’s original text, Peter Jackson emphasized the importance of friendship and loyalty between Frodo and Sam once more championing the triumph of love over the dark forces of evil.
In 2005 Jackson closes a circle in his life with his mega budget reinterpretation of King Kong where he gave free reign to all his childhood fantasies about the giant gorilla and the perfect way of reimagining it for the new millennium. In the end the story remains the same as seventy years prior, beauty and the beast and the love that transcends all obstacles but can only end with death.
The recently released The Lovely Bones, based on Alice Sebold’s novel promised a return to Heavenly Creatures’ territory by Jackson, with its similar topics of teenage girls, love and murder. Unfortunately Jackson seems to have lost his touch. Maybe he lost it as he navigated all those sugary digital effects while trying to come up with the perfect way of showing the heaven/limbo that Susie Salmon inhabits. Saorsie Ronan’s portrayal of Susie is without a doubt the best element of the film which is at times an unsettling murder story, a teenage drama, a Hallmark channel movie and a Peter Jackson fantasy that never quite makes up its mind and never quite reaches the evocative moments of the novel nor the flight of a heavenly creature. Nevertheless the movie is not a total disaster but my twenty year old admiration for Peter makes me a harsh judge. There is in the end a sweet flavor that carries over from the original text, the strength of the love between a father and a daughter and the delicate healing that time brings to all wounds.
For the time being Peter has a very busy schedule with the upcoming productions of Tin Tin and his return to middle earth, The Hobbit, directed by Steven Speilberg and Guillermo del Toro respectively.
I am sure he will soon take us on another unforgettable journey. After all, for those who have the key to the fourth world everything is possible.
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