The Hogfather – Sky One

The first entry in a new blog and it’s a tricky one. Whenever I watch something good – or better still when I watch something that could have been good – I want to understand why. What makes the difference, what spoils it, what can you get away with and what mistakes drag a story down with them?

The Hogfather is a difficult one because even as I sat watching I was trying to work out what they were doing wrong – and they were definitely doing something wrong – but I couldn’t put my finger on it. That’s actually the first clue right there, though: I was supposed to be absorbed and instead my mind was wandering and I was trying to find the mistakes. Normally I have to look back on something I’ve seen to understand the way it worked, but The Hogfather had acres of breathing space in which the viewer could reflect and review, before the story took another step forwards. Somehow a good story with good actors became a disappointing and dull muddle. I’m going to go back over Vadim Jean’s approach and see if I can get to the bottom of the problem, at least to my own satisfaction.

One theory I’ve got is that hacking it down from 172 minutes to somewhere in the 100-120 min. range might have helped. Certainly long periods of time pass in which nothing becomes clearer and none of the characters appear to move closer to their goals. But then it’s difficult to be sure, because the goals of each of the three main characters remain opaque almost to the end. Susan has some unspecified problem with her Grandfather (Death) and wishes to have nothing to do with him, but she changes her mind. Is her big problem just the desire to be normal which she mentions? Only she’s not exactly normal when we meet her: stand-offish, forceful (in a fetching way) and spending as much time battling supernatural creatures as caring for children. So why she does she change her mind about avoiding her Grandfather’s world? And what’s motivating her from then on? It’s unclear. It might be curiosity, but then for a curious person, the world Death inhabits should always have fascinated her, so why was she initially so reluctant? Her powers, too, remain undefined. She’s not exactly human, but what else – besides walking through walls and being able to stop time (but only when it’s of no help to her) – she might be capable of we never learn. She’s certainly got slower reactions than Teatime despite what you might have imagined was a bit of an advantage: her occasional ability to control the flow of time.

Death too is a difficult character to follow. We gradually learn that he’s rather a nice guy, but I don’t know what’s driving him most of the time. He’s covering for the Hogfather, but the circumstances are difficult to follow. The Hogfather disappears well before Teatime’s plan gets anywhere near fruition; why is that? Someone broke his hourglass early on and by the end I’d concluded that Death must have done it – but why? And what effect did it have? Or did it break on its own for some reason? I assumed at first that it was either the Auditors or Teatime who broke it, but by the end there was no mention of that, so belatedly I decided Death must be to blame. Breaking the hourglass seemed to remove the Hogfather from the world – which was what the bad guys were trying to achieve – but why would Death help them and then try to foil their plan. Teatime’s roundabout plan seemed an attempt to achieve something that Death had already made happen. Or was the broken hourglass nothing to do with the Hogfather’s absence? Was it actually an attempt to protect the Hogfather? And did Teatime’s plot somehow start eroding belief in the Hogfather long before he had the teeth and the spell was cast? The plot hinges on these things, but they are never clearly explained.

With Death’s role in the disappearance of the Hogfather such a muddle in my mind, the fun of him dressing up as the Discworld Santa and trying to be jolly was somewhat reduced because it was unclear what he was trying to achieve and why. He needed to keep belief in the Hogfather alive, but why couldn’t the Hogfather himself do that? The tooth spell hadn’t yet been cast which lead me to wonder at the nature of the problem that Death spent so much of the movie trying to overcome? Was he merely trying to undo his own earlier actions? Argghh. It’s all so unclear.

Teatime was the only one of the three main players whose plan was eventually revealed, but that didn’t make him much less opaque as a character. Marc Warren’s choice in how to play Teatime resulted in a performance both irritating and boring. I couldn’t wait for each of his appearances to come to an end. But, setting that aside, by the time the credits rolled we were still none the wiser about his personality. He killed and was good at it and took it seriously, but in his frequent confrontations with others it was difficult to tell if he was enjoying his attempts at intimidation or indifferent to them. Was he killing for fun or simply a professional taking a pride in his work? He remained an unknown quantity throughout. Was he intended just to be a cipher? A plot robot with no story of his own?

Opaque baddies can sometimes be forgiven (that’s why Hollywood invented the psycho), but without any understanding of the missions that the two good characters (Death and Susan) were on, there was little excitement to be had from trying to follow their progress. Susan’s initial set-up as a tough, capable, impressive character gave way to confusion and reluctance on her part as she began to investigate the Hogfather’s disappearance. For a long while she ceases to be a dynamic character because she doesn’t either understand what’s happening or want to be a part of it. When she finally tracks down Teatime, it is her first chance in a couple of hours of screen time to take firm action and to do something other than pull back from her mission – and instantly Teatime disarms her. In fact all she succeeds in doing is taking an unstoppable psychopath and giving him a weapon of incredible power. So when she’s not clueless, she’s a phenomenal screw-up. And she’s the centre of the story. She has the attitude of a heroine, but her actions are anything but heroic – until the end of the story, that is. In the penultimate showdown, she rides a large pig for a while (which you’d think would really slow him down) encourages him to jump a chasm (with her on his back which can’t be helpful) and then defends him – except it seems actually he’s dead and so doesn’t presumably need defending. And once she’s protected a dead pig from wolves for a few moments, Death takes over and destroys the attackers – and that’s Susan’s role almost concluded. Not that impressive for all the sleuthing it required to get her there.

When Death steps in, he gives a speech about how the wolves/auditors broke the rules thus allowing him to intervene, but which rules they broke is not made clear. If they broke them early on, then presumably Death could have cleared the whole mess up before it got started, so we have to assume it wasn’t the plot to kill the Hogfather that was their crime but something they do right at the end. Was it taking the form of wolves and trying to do their own killing instead of hiring a third party that broke the rules? Who knows? And why was the Hogfather back in his primal form at this stage? Was it the tooth magic at work? But weren’t the teeth cleared away and that threat eliminated by then? And what allowed the Hogfather to rise again? Was it something that Susan and Death did? The good guys won, but why remained unclear.

Other plot points that eluded me included the reason Teatime appeared in the Unseen University after falling to his death. Everyone else who died landed on a roof somewhere. Was there a reason? And did the wizards bring him back to life? I wasn’t sure.

Have you noticed how sometimes people living in a foreign country revert to their mother tongue when swearing or distraught? Well, lately I’ve noticed period characters seem to do this in historical dramas, reverting to modern English when they get worked up. Susan spoke like a Victorian governess until menaced by wolves, at which point she demands to know ‘Who else wants some?’ like the feisty, 21st Century London actress she is.

So, looking back on it, how could things have been improved? I think three things needed to happen. First we needed to understand what each character was trying to achieve and why. That wouldn’t mean giving away everything at the start: you could know that a character had a cunning plan to achieve a clearly defined end, without revealing the plan’s details. Secondly we needed to understand the rules. I suspect that Susan couldn’t stop time in the Tooth Fairy’s castle because Death has no hold there. But having her click her fingers and say stop – only to have the world continue – in contrast to having her do it earlier, when it works – would have made things clearer. Otherwise you wonder why she doesn’t sort out Teatime and his thugs. Death too could have been challenged (perhaps by Susan) to explain his actions and spelled out the limits to what he was allowed to do. And finally, when an important plot point occurred, like the breaking of the Hogfather’s hourglass, it would be nice if we understood as much about its significance as the story would allow. I suspect if I knew how and why the hourglass was broken, I’d have been able to follow much of the rest of the plot, but nothing within the story seemed designed to answer that question.

One way to achieve a little more clarity might have been to use close-ups a little more. Many scenes had a half a dozen characters in motion, making noise. Belatedly I’d realise one of them had just muttered something important. Maybe plop them square in the frame and have them speak their line occasionally. Just to make sure no one gets totally lost. The camera can stagger around drunk the rest of the time.

And as a general rule, it’s nice to know whether a character is looking for clues or has worked it all out. Other characters can ask that question on our behalf, if needs be. If it’s the former, have them respond with something like ‘None of this makes sense, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it’. If it’s the latter, have them say ‘Just wait and see. All will be revealed’. Then we know what we’re watching. Then we can root for our heroes. Then we understand what’s a setback and what’s a victory. Then we’re involved.

And while all that was being sorted out, I’d give Ridcully a proper job to do. He’s a supporting character, but he still needs a mission. The bath scenes need to go – they tell us nothing. Ridcully must realise something is going on. He must look for answers. By the time he meets Death he can have information to share. And his tasking of Hexus to believe in the Hogfather works far better as part of that arc. By the time he meets Teatime he should have a real stake in the outcome and realise he must oppose him. He should have tried to capture Teatime – who could then have revealed Susan’s captured sword and cut himself free. Ridcully’s final words would be that he hopes someone will foil Teatime’s plan. Cut to Susan.

Of the remaining blunders, the badly cut/shot leaping of a pig over a chasm I can forgive.

After the dust settles, I do hope poor Vadim Jean is sacked and someone with a gift for solid storytelling takes over before Terry Pratchett lets someone try again with any more of his stories.

P.S. In case it’s not clear: I know I could watch it again more carefully; I know I could read the book it’s based on, but I shouldn’t have to. If the reasonably attentive viewer is confused then that’s the fault of those telling the story not the fault of the audience. As it happens, I’ve read a dozen or so Discworld novels, so it should have been easy to keep me up to speed.

~ by spoilercritic on December 20, 2006.