December 2002
Liz Miller
hollywood madam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
When I first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by the
obscenely rich J.K. Rowling, I thought it would make a great movie.
It was a long time ago.
Curled under the covers, my eyes wildly skimming through the pages, I
stayed up all night following the adventures of Harry Potter, Boy Wizard.
The story was rich and full of detail. Lines of dialogue made me laugh
out loud. Delicate character moments such as Harry looking into the enchanted
mirror and seeing the parents he'd never known were deeply stirring to
me. Quidditch and the climatic battle practically demanded the big screen
treatment. And I truly believed that the treacherous Snape was the villain
- until the third act twist proved what an idiot I was.
It was just so... God help me... CUTE.
I'd purchased the book that summer on a whim, post-buzz and pre-phenomenon,
and it was a revelation, a joy, a surprise. A few weeks later, I was in
England, where the second and third books were in paperback. I devoured
them like a starving man would a steak, and then when I found myself back
in the States, it didn't take too long for me to pick up the doorstop
that is the fourth book.
Goblet of Fire was a five-course feast, delicious but a bit too
rich, full of plot points not digested immediately. In fact, all of the
books are deceptively complicated, full of planted details that you'd
never expect to pay off. Who could have guessed, for example, the complicated
role that Ron's pet rat would eventually play? Or the rich backstory that
explained why nervous Neville was so nervous? (Just nod along if you don't
know -- or remember -- any of this.)
It was a good summer, the summer of 2000, full of magic and likable characters
and Joseph Campbell gone very dark and British. But what I realized this
month as I sat through the interminable Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets, the second in the planned Harry Potter film series, is that it
was also a lifetime ago.
I'll be pretty frank about the fact that I think Harry Potter as an adaptation
does a lot of things wrong. Both the first and second films are so devoted
to keeping the fans happy that they ellipse all the important character
moments that we need to see. Of COURSE Harry, Ron and Hermione are friends.
Of COURSE Harry and the rather, um, preening Draco Malfoy don't get along.
So why bother explaining it again in the film, especially when there are
so many special effects yet to be showcased?
What character moments are captured are made awkward and hamfisted by
Chris Columbus's falling-anvil direction. If you know of a film directed
by Chris Columbus with any semblance of subtlety, please let me know.
Meanwhile, I'll be bemoaning a film series in love with its own CGI, to
the point of devoting precious screen time to overly extended Quidditch
matches and Big Giant Spider pursuits.
Because, yes, screen time is precious when the source material is so complicated.
I love the energy of Quidditch, and think that the basketball-on-broomsticks
matches are some of the best adapted parts of both movies - yet I would
have cheerfully sacrificed them on the altar of character development.
It had been a long, long time since I had read the Harry Potter books
when I saw Chamber of Secrets, and here's the thing - I had forgotten
why I even LIKE Harry. He spends the first scenes of the movie being surly
and sulking towards his adoptive family, the only people who dare speak
against him are very clearly Bad, he breaks hundred of laws and rules
throughout the course of the film and is barely punished. Chris Suellentrop
from Slate was right -
he really does have everything.
Perhaps the most interesting moment of Chamber of Secrets is also the
moment that deviates the most from the book - with a great deal of success.
During a wizard's duel, Harry tries to keep a snake from attacking a fellow
classmate in Parceltongue (snake language), a gift he wasn't even aware
that he had. In the book, the incident is played out from Harry's perspective,
and we share his alarm and confusion when his friends inform him that
not only was he not speaking English, but it sounded like he was egging
the snake on. In the film, however, we see Harry speaking a rasping, threatening
gibberish, his eyes intense as he moves towards the snake. In both book
and film, it's a moment that leads his class to suspect that Harry is
behind the story's great threat, and it plays more effectively in the
film because it gives Harry mystery. It gives him the faintest shade of
gray.
By the end of the film, of course, Harry's redonned his glowing white
aura via an simplistic moralizing by his professor about how the choices
we make are what define us. But if that's true, than Harry is Mother Teresa
meets Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, out to save those in need, but unwilling
to play by the rules. He's like Batman. Only boring.
However, the fault for that isn't necessarily on Chris Columbus. What
I didn't realize during my first eager read of Sorcerer's Stone was the
realization of exactly J.K. Rowling was doing with the character of Harry.
What exactly was missing from the book.
Many people have compared Goblet of Fire to the dark, downbeat Empire
Strikes Back, and the Star Wars comparisons don't stop there. Harry Potter
is, elementally, George Lucas's beloved monomyth - a young hero-in-waiting,
whisked away to a magical world by a mentor figure to develop his potential.
But that's pretty much all Harry is. Steve Kloves, the screenwriter of
the first and second films, mentioned in an interview how difficult it
was to write Harry as a character, for "all he does is WATCH." And that's
because in the books, Harry is our eyes upon the world of magic - he's
a thinly veiled cypher, a depository for our own hopes and dreams. He
acts heroically and always makes the right choices because we, huddled
with our paperbacks, want to believe that that's what we would do. That's
what we want to think.
As noble as that is, it really doesn't translate to film very well, protagonist.
We are Harry in the books, but film is mostly a third-person medium, and
the filmmakers seem to have decided that adding too much about him - giving
him the character flaws and changes that would make him a more interesting,
sympathetic character - could damage the precious illusions that we've
constructed. What do we know about Harry? He loves Quidditch, and is good
at it. He's an average student, an orphan who misses his parents and yearns
for some sense of family. There isn't much more to it. Luke Skywalker,
at least, was a bit whiny.
The Quidditch is amazing. The cast has done brilliant things with the
material. So much has gone into making the world of magic come alive -
and yet in some way, it's still hollow, facile. I thought that Harry Potter
would make a great film, and so far I've been proven wrong. But the film
that finally explores what makes Harry fly - that could really work.
