13 December, 2012

Thoughts on the last three Harry Potter movies



Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (2009)

What a sure-handed opening!  I'm talking about the Millennium Bridge, along with Harry and the attractive waitress down in the Underground.  Darkness and enmity, juxtaposed with and countered by youthful hopefulness.  The special effects are spectacular, but always subordinated to character and theme.  (Unless they’re just being fun, which is another thing altogether.)  Hilarious Horace turns out to be the way into death, and maybe transfiguration.  It seems to me that in terms of technique and range and all, Mr. Radcliffe finally arrives. He's really good!  He also finds these formidable old actor guys awaiting him.  Broadbent pulls faces wonderfully; Gambon is effortlessly, practically, awe-inspiring.  

In Mike Leigh, Another Year, 2010


(A discussion on a few more Broadbent films: http://dunfam.blogspot.com/2012/10/british-film-mike-leigh-and-jim.html)




From there great thing follows great thing, exquisite balance and judgment follows ex. b.& j.  Look how comedy leads to poignancy (the smoochy Lavender episode giving way to the apotheosis of Miss Grainger; Slughorn's mugging to that simple, stirring speech about responsibility and honour).  Look how direness creates depth of feeling.  The conclusion to that Hogsmeade visit is right out of Asian horror, perfectly designed and executed, shocking.  Unlike much Asian horror, however, it is also fearsome and pitiable.  That burrow sequence is for the ages, I think: the trembling stasis of burgeoning romance giving way to utter malice (and stupendously kinetic cinema), then to mournful, exalting solidarity.  The burrow burns, and everything good seems threatened, except that the real good is ultimately unaffected by the threat. 


Kandinsky's Development in Brown, at the Barbican Bauhaus exhibit, 2012


WK/A good man...

Etc., etc.  The Inferi sequence is disappointing, because it feels like it comes from another franchlse, or at least from the Chris Columbus parts of this one.  Too much, and too little as a result.  But the aftermath!  The combination of melodramatic elements—Bellatrix—and rounding and rounded characters (watch Malfoy become interesting, watch the effortlessly monumental Rickman) is really effective, and really right.  That plus that equals actual tragedy, and Dumbledore’s demise is both devastating and exalting.  The event, rendered in that setting, manifest in that brief indelible falling image, is as good, as affecting, as mythical as Gandalf’s expiration in Moria. 

Is the aftermath to the aftermath too sentimental?  It is not.  We’ve invested, and they’ve been worthy our confidence, and we commiserate together.


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pt. 1 (2010)

The Empire Strikes Back.  This feels interstitial.  That’s acceptable, and you don’t blame anyone, but it’s still interstitial.  I’m recalling that the book felt similar, which is to say that by this point the filmmakers are faithful, whatever JK might be doing.  There are tremendous things amid the scatter.  There is also that dubious Dobby episode.  Recall Ginny, from the second book.  They haven’t earned this, and you feel to resent their piling it on.  Compare this dubiousness with the shattering minimalism of the opening, in which Hermione removes herself from her parents’ lives.  Same with the graveyard sequence.  Peter Mullan!  That long camping section is pretty brave.  Stasis, even temps mort in a blockbuster.  These kids dance to Nick Cave, do they?  The vaunted/abominated nudity sequence is actually an animated nudity sequence.  In other words, no actual exposure or objectification, but obvious technology to illustrate a concept.  Is it unseemly?  Sort of, as such actual things can actually be.  Or, it's an acknowledgment of a reality that isn’t only awful or sinful.  Maybe it's appropriate for young people after all.  

The Malfoys’ estate, as well as the Lovegood compound, reminds us of how tremendously designed this whole thing has been.  One looks forward to the last episode, which will undoubtedly be just as all over the place.  That is becoming decreasingly the point.           

A terrific movie, I thought (also Windermere, this time 2005, w' Caitlin and Drew):


     

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, pt. 2 (2011)

They start with a couple of stately-paced dialogue scenes.  These young actors are now on par with whatever distinguished Thesp that they might encounter, and the design and camera continues to be wildly above reproach.  And the whole world is on tenterhooks, essentially a captive audience.  Still, that’s a kind of daring way to begin, isn’t it?



After the opening they all go to the bank.  The Hermione-as-Bellatrix thing is kind of fun, both textually and intertextually.  (The later cleavage components might be slightly questionable.)  Now we get that temple-of-doom-like roller coaster, some coat-turning, and some pyrotechnics.  Then it’s back to Hogwarts for a whole bunch of battling, which takes us all the way to that sort of sheepish, slightly dubious epilogue. 

That’s about it.  What impresses here isn’t so much the movie itself, though if you were splice it with the last one the result might feel more balanced.  There are shortcomings.  The horcruxes may work as symbols—techno-devices, kids!but in terms of plot they kind of peter out.  The same goes for Molly W.’s long-anticipated victory over Bellatrix.  Whiff!  There’s a six films' worth of lead up, all for nothing.  Also they might have redrafted Neville’s speech a time or two more.  But why niggle?  I won't, anyway.  As has been the case throughout this whole dynastic/nostalgic journey, what impresses are the moments.  These were once rooted in the source material, but now they emerge just as much, and quite organically, from the films themselves. 


Edinburgh, from Calton Hill

Can you picture them, or replace these with your own?  The way that Ginny steps in front of Harry in the banquet hall, or the way the adults join her, magnificent seven-like, just a few minutes later.  That exhilarating, electrifying moment when Maggie Smith stops restraining herself.  (“Hez neem ez Voldemor-rt!”)  That Rickman/Snape gets to act.  Something about his patronus, and where we’ve seen it before.  Something about decency out of difficulty, or impossibility.  Harry’s whispering reunion with his dead.  His mother’s Celtic countenance.  His Narnia-like self sacrifice.  Dumbledore’s return, that whole graceful, peaceful, sweetly painful scene.  “You dear boy.  You brave, brave man.”

So a few plot things, a few motifs and mechanics have gone by the wayside.  But these last bits remind and represent how well Ms. Rowling and her offspring have done with her first, final, most fundamental themes.  They’re not that unusual, though that’s not anything to reprove.  It’s not cliché, but the familiarity of archetype and all the great moral systems.  How tribulation and death would seem to be antithetical to loyal friendship and abiding love.  How they actually reinforce and deepen each other.  This has been an awful part of the world’s history, and every individual must eventually pass through valleys and shadows as well.  What a thing, then, to see those former children, now so big and on the brink of everything else, stand in the ruins and look hopefully toward the future.  It need hardly be said that all of our and everyone else’s children shared furiously in the whole of this.  You can ask yourself some questions.  For instance, what if the whole world had followed Lloyd Alexander like this?  In the end, though, the result is the same: them, plus us, plus all of our best efforts, equal sufficiency, even apotheosis.  What a run!