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Daniel
Radcliffe as Harry Potter in
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's
Stone
Daniel
Radcliffe as Harry Potter,
Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley and Emma
Watson
as Hermione Granger
Richard
Harris as Professor Dumbledore
Maggie
Smith as Professor McGongall
Alan
Rickman as Professor Snape
The
Great Hall
Photos courtesy of Warner
Brothers
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By
C. Antonio Romero
NEW YORK, 19 November
2001 - The long-awaited Harry Potter film is here at last,
and of course it will be a smash at the box office—with a
built-in office of tens of millions of children and adults, it's bound
to be. The four novels
released thus far may not have the mythic depth of, say, the
Arthurian myths, or even Tolkien (whose Lord of the Rings will
get the Hollywood treatment in the coming weeks), but they do have a
magic that even Tolkien never achieved: they conjure into life
characters that audiences relate to, and in so doing become great
reads, if not great literature. As the series has unfolded, the
readership has flocked to bookstores to follow Harry and his chums
Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, as they grapple with boarding school
life at Hogwart's, growing pains, and graver menaces like the
half-living wizard Lord Voldermort. The magical goings-on are no doubt
as much of the charm for children as the funny-punning name games,
mock-Latin-cantations and the awful goings-on of Harry's Muggle aunt
and uncle, but, to be sure, for an adult reader the characters are the
real pleasure of Potter.
So how close is this film to the
Harry Potter of our imaginings? Compression has left a few loose ends,
but that's to be expected when a longish novel is squeezed into even a
rather lengthy film. One important element of the atmosphere that
survives is the sense of real danger that hangs over the world of
wizardry. Hogwart's, we learn, has a hospital wing for a reason.
Students really do get hurt—or even, rarely, killed—by
attempting magics they're not ready for; and the elaborate adult
situations that young Potter finds himself embroiled in by birth, it
is clear, can have even deadlier consequences.
Another
element that carries over is the atmosphere of the British boarding
school, and especially the terribly British class hierarchy.
Golden-boy Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) comes from one of the proper
families and joins the proper house, while harassing poor-boy
(possibly scholarship-boy?) Ronald Weasley, from an Irish family with
several other children at Hogwart's (magical birth control is
evidently no better than the other kind). A few token non-whites show
up in the student body as well (though none have speaking parts)—one
of the few concessions to modernity in the world of Hogwart's, which
seems to have no phones, no computers, no Internet.
The
school facilities look good, computer-generated creatures (a troll,
innumerable owls, and "Fluffy"), however un-natural-looking,
are nonetheless impressive. The magical trappings are perhaps a bit
much—Richard Harris' Albus Dumbledore in particualr is overdone
(though not over-acted), with too much fake beard and wizard's cap—
and they are clich'ed, but they probably please the children in the
audience. Likewise, the faculty may seem one-dimensional and crusty,
but this may be how children see their teachers.
So, on the
whole, it looks like Harry Potter—at least superficially.
Essential locations, incidents and props are here—Harry's horrid
life in the cupboard under the stairs, owls bearing Harry's admission
letter to Hogwart's, the school-supplies shopping trip to Diagon
Alley, platform 9 3/4, run-ins with Fluffy, the Quidditch match, the
slain unicorn in the forest, the hatching of a dragon's egg, the
obligatory scar on Harry's forehead... the laundry list goes on.
But
a laundry list, alas, is what the movie often feels like. Most of the
expected scenes are there, but often they have no emotional depth
whatever, so the magic of character never takes hold. For instance,
Harry lives a miserable life, spending most of his time under the
stairs of his aunt and uncle's house, but he never seems sad or lonely—at
most, he's occasionally frustrated. Hagrid comes and informs him of
his true magical nature, and prepares him to leave for Hogwarts? No
astonishment, no trepidation, no elation. Harry and Ron spend
Christmas alone at school—Harry has no wish to go back to his
Muggle relatives, and Ron's parents are themselves away from home—
but there's little sense of loneliness or melancholy over this. And
the movie leaves out an important detail about Harry's Christmas gifts—the
first he's ever received, they are gifts from his friends and
classmates, not his family. Without that detail, the scene is
meaningless. Even a cloak of invisibility, a mysterious bequest from
Harry's long-dead parents, doesn't strike sparks. The
Potter novels are about an extraordinary group of children
coming of age, experiencing loneliness, solidarity, fear, bravery,
disappointment, exhiliration—but those emotions don't make it to
the screen.
Some of this may be the limitations of the child
cast—after all, Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, has only this
year's Tailor of Panama under his belt, and and neither Rupert
Grint as Ron nor Emma Watson as Hermione has prior professional
experience. (Not everyone can open like Haley Joel Osment.) But a lot,
it seems, can be blamed on Steve Kloves' adaptation and the direction
of Chris Columbus (who helmed heartstring-tugger Stepmom, and
the crowd-pleasers Home Alone, Home Alone 2 and Mrs.
Doubtfire). Rather than putting the characters' growth, change,
and emotional development up on the screen for the audience to respond
to, the movie seems to count on the score from John Williams to flip
musical cue cards at us so we know when to be pleased or touched. The
actors, meanwhile, move around the sets like pieces in a game of
wizard's chess.
Perhaps it was felt that a film for children
wouldn't need such depths, but this seems a serious misjudgement,
given the broader appeal of the film, and given, too, that even
children, it seems likely, find pleasure in seeing their wizard
protagonist feel events and then empathizing with him. Trimming a few
minutes of flashy busywork here and there would have left enough room
for the characterization needed to make Harry Potter a movie
worthy of the book.
With all the trimmings and trappings of magic, but none of
the real inner power, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone
ultimately fizzles like a mis-cast spell. Go, of course, if you have
children—you'll have no choice. But set your expectations
appropriately, and hope that the inevitable sequels will summon up the
spirit missing in this film. And if you're looking for the real Potter
magic, save yourself the price of admission and just re-read the
books.
Two stars.
Related:
Rowling’s Magic
Spell: Two Parts Fantasy, One Part Familiar?
C.
Antonio Romero is the Nouveau editor of Culturekiosque.com.
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