I guess I'm an oddity among Harry Potter fans. I'm an English professor (which should mean that I always compare Harry with Shakespeare), and I saw the movies before I read the books. I'm not like one of my colleagues who has been complaining about the Lord of the Rings movies for years because they "left out the important stuff" and didn't match up with his imagined landscape. I had no imagined landscape of Hogwarts aside from the material in the movies. To me, Harry will always look like Daniel Radcliffe.
For a Harry Potter nut like me, a new movie is always a treat.
For a Harry Potter nut like me, a new movie is always a treat.
Last summer, a friend and I were among the first to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when it hit the movie houses. It was great stuff. Kids zoomed around on brooms. Fire shot out of wands. We updated the old cliché of smart kids triumphantly defeating stodgy adult stupidity. My friend whined a bit about inaccuracies, but I didn't let that bother me. I even overlooked the age discrepancies—Radcliffe and the other principals are all 18 (and look it), but they are playing 14-year-olds (and people in the movie keep mentioning their ages, apparently in an attempt to convince us that these strapping young men and women are still in their early teens).
Then I read the book.
Mind you, it's quite a book (870 pages) to cram into a movie, even a long movie. The book plods along slowly, but I think it's supposed to. It's the story of the bureaucratic machinery of the Ministry of Magic steadfastly eroding the fighting spirit of those who oppose the Dark Lord through an endless series of regulations and interferences. There's something about Cornelius Fudge that reminds me of Neville Chamberlain. Fudge's refusal to deal with Voldemort somehow parallels Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Adolph Hitler. It all makes for a richly-textured book, but one without a great deal of fireworks or magic until the end.
Then I got the DVD.
Eagerly I slipped it into the player, only half-remembering the movie from last summer. While it's a great tale and a lot of fun, I kept being amazed at how little the movie actually says. Who is that woman with the changing hair color? Why do people start believing in Harry again? Why is Harry so upset when he dreams about the snake attacking Mr. Weasley? Over and over—even more than in previous movies—details appear that only make sense to someone who has read the book.
I'm not like my friend the LOTR nut (who has never forgiven the movie makers for dropping Tom Bombadil). I realize that some complexities of the book (for example, the whole subplot of the centaurs) aren't even necessary for the main flow of the plot.
Movies are ultimately visual, and need to be simple and fast-paced. We would never have endured a movie that conveyed the long, grinding oppression that we feel in the book. But we are rewarded with the scenes of Mr. Filch nailing up dozens and dozens of framed proclamations and fruitlessly spying on the kids. And can anything ever be as deliciously scary as the noseless white face of Voldemort?
I just wish would stand on its own, though, and not act like a series of wonderful illustrations for the book.
I'm not like my friend the LOTR nut (who has never forgiven the movie makers for dropping Tom Bombadil). I realize that some complexities of the book (for example, the whole subplot of the centaurs) aren't even necessary for the main flow of the plot.
Movies are ultimately visual, and need to be simple and fast-paced. We would never have endured a movie that conveyed the long, grinding oppression that we feel in the book. But we are rewarded with the scenes of Mr. Filch nailing up dozens and dozens of framed proclamations and fruitlessly spying on the kids. And can anything ever be as deliciously scary as the noseless white face of Voldemort?
I just wish would stand on its own, though, and not act like a series of wonderful illustrations for the book.
