First I believe I need to give a full disclosure on my movie leanings. I like movies, but I am oddly picky and not in a good way. I like movies that have a backing, critical acclaim, or something familiar in them. That is why I enjoyed Green Lantern even though it was most certainly a bad movie. I liked Thor even though Natalie Portman has jumped from her Oscar high rise into grim movie purgatory (action movies and romantic comedies). I was a huge fan of Super 8 and make no apologies for it. I sat through Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides without falling asleep (Do you realize that this movie is now one of the top 10 highest grossing films in the world ever?! Do you realize 2012 is in the top 50? What is wrong with everybody???).
So with all that said there was no way I was going to hate HPDHP2 (dang that's a horrible name for it). It is officially one of my top two movies of the summer, but there are some lingering doubts about it.
There are a lot of people reading this blog right now (wait a minute that's not true) who already have figured out what my hang ups with the movie are. You are thinking that I am going to make the following points:
1. It was not completely faithful to the book and changed plot points around. Not crucial ones, but ones none the less.
2. The actors weren't very good.
3. There wasn't enough action.
4. There wasn't enough exposition.
5. It was too long.
You are wrong. I didn't mind what it changed. SPOILER ALERTS COMING! It didn't bug me that Grawp or the centaurs made no appearance. It didn't bug me that the Invisibility Cloak was not as much of a player. It didn't bug me that they felt the necessity to give various actors lines that didn't exist in the book because they had to pay the actor for something. Speaking of which, the acting is brilliant. Daniel Radcliffe is good at what he does and so is the whole cast. Not a bad actor in the bunch (or am I just saying that because that's what the critics are saying, so I must be missing something?). Also, there was plenty of action. In fact the whole movie was a giant action scene with three or four slower dramatic scenes. The exposition was fine. You can't do the amount of explanation that J.K. Rowling does in her books in a movie. That is totally understandable. Long? The movie wasn't nearly long enough. The precedent has been set for epic finale movies to be as long as they bloody well need to be. There was enough missing to make the movie a very short two hours and change (do you realize that the new Transformers movie is way longer than that?).
I also had massive beef with how many inopportune times people laughed and how many flippin' times they clapped. If you want to clap that much during a performance go to a jazz club. Wait. What? Jazz is dead? My bad I keep forgetting.
If I had any beef with the actual movie itself it would be the lack of intensified drama. David Yates is really good at painting scenery. Theses last several movies have been a visual marvel to behold, and one could waste plenty of time just staring at the beautiful bleakness on the screen. However, David Yates doesn't seem to know how to pull the drama out of a scene, line, or action sequence. I appreciate the minimalist approach to the music that they are using, but it is not appropriate for an epic like this. The cue has been given once again by our good friend Peter Jackson to take our emotions to a new level by letting the composer run wild with dynamic themes and development.
Now a couple of you might be saying how unfair it is to continually compare the world of Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings. How is it unfair to compare a child to their parent, especially when the child is like the parent. If you haven't seen or read the Lord of the Rings trilogy you are missing out. The stories are nearly parallel, with Tolkien's accounts a little more intended for adults. J.K. Rowling (sounds hauntingly like J.R.R. Tolkien to me) does a fine job in the books of playing to her strengths of simplicity and forward motion to get to the point, but it makes no difference. The story is the same, and it is epic and heartfelt and wonderful in both sets of books.
But I just can't say the same for both sets of movies, and I can't quite put my finger on it. I still feel like some of the dialogue was simply lifted and read without inflection. That is a bit harsher than it needs to be, but I stand by the idea behind the statement. When I read the seventh Harry Potter book my eyes welled up so many times it was laughable. Did I get teary or emotional at the movie? Of course I did, I'm not a robot, man. But I thought that my thoughts and emotions being displayed by real people on the movie screen with music and cinematography would just put my emotions over the top. However, it did not. I felt slightly cheated by a great performance that didn't meet my expectations. And I think I know why.
SPOILER ALERT!! (Seriously it's in the friggin' title of the blog, and I bet there will still be a couple people annoyed at my detail in this next paragraph-- just go read the book or see the movie already and be done with it. Despite my complaints, it's totally not a waste of your time to stop what you are doing RIGHT NOW and go see it. Once you have done that-- keep reading).
In one of the final chapters of the book/last scenes in the movie Harry get's wand-shot by Voldemort. It's cool though guys; all Moldy Voldy does is kill the horcrux that Harry accidentally had inside of him from the night Voldy killed Harry's parents (that's kind of the movie version; the book version is slightly more complicated but the same concept holds just fine). Anyway, when Harry wakes up from the sting of the wand-shot he sees an all white version of King's Cross Train Station. Then he sees his dear teacher Professor Dumbledore (it is now my intention to, upon the age of 65, grow my hair out as long as possible and then I too will be wise and loving to those younger than me). The two of them engage in a long-time-coming conversation (which covers a lot of extra stuff in the book), and then they exchange this important dialogue:
Harry: "Tell me one last thing. Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"
Dumbledore: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
HPDHP2 is a very good movie, perhaps a great movie. But it does not achieve something that it could not possibly that is simply impossible to do. It didn't feel real. I'm not saying that this universe Rowling created is real in the sense that you need to be on the look out for Death Eaters, giants, and house elves. But in my mind? It's as real as anything. In the movie Dumbledore talks about the power of words-- almost like he is imploring you to go home and read the book. When those contained words go from the page to your brain they are doing so for you alone. That way there is nothing standing between you and the movie inside your head. No interference. You can get lost in the reality on your time and experience the emotions and plot twists for yourself. Movies can get very close to doing that, but they rely on other people to create the reality for us which gives us more to judge and creates more barriers. In a book the reality is what you can make of it, and there is no critic that is going to put down the way you used digital animation on your giants. The world is yours to create and enter.
So is everything in our minds real? Most of us would hope not (although Kanye West seems to be cool with it). If so, it opens up a realm of possibilities, questions, ideas, and theories that I am frankly way too dumb to tackle. But if what is in our mind is not real; it certainly feels real. And that might be just enough.
I hope director David Yates gets some kind of Oscar buzz with this movie. I know my version has already won 10 Academy Awards (Super 8 took Best Sound unfortunately). Anyway, I guess this is my first movie review, so let's give HPDHP2 a grade: A-- (two minuses because a B+ just sounds too low). Go see it, and let me know what you think.
Why I thought HPDHP2 was masterful.
ReplyDeleteI agree that criticism for a movie based on a book cannot be simply that "they changed that" or "they left this out." It can be included, but a movie based on a book is by definition BASED on a book, not "the book on screen." It is necessarily an artistic rendition/interpretation of a piece of work done originally on a drastically different medium. Which is why if you want the book, read the book. Why, if you want (what is in) the book, would you go somewhere other than the book? And why, having done that, would you be upset about the fact that your not-going-to-the-book produced something other than the book? Now I'm confused. A legit criticism here is if they left out something crucial to the plot - which I don't think they did.
I thought the movie was heart breaking, triumphant, and quite funny. It balanced a dark, dark story with some much needed and well timed laughs (or obnoxious-over-the-top-laughs if you went on opening night/weekend because everyone's emotions are so tightly strung in anticipation - it's like those conversations you find yourself in where you're really nervous and excited and you end up guffawing at a joke that merely intended for a smirk).
One of the things that I thought was incredible was Snape's role. He (Rickman) has gone through 8 movies now with very little to go on, he's made the character his own, and then he stole the show: the flashback with him holding Lilly was gut-wrenching. Likewise, seeing Harry in the woods with his dead family, and asking if dying hurts, was touching.
What I've found so far is that in walking out of the theater most people LOVED the movie, but after sitting and thinking about it (read: which for many means analyzing it with what was in the books) they started to change their tone. I'm going to argue here that in this situation the sentiment of the moment is better (which is probably officially the last time I'll argue that point) than the later analysis. It tore at our heart strings, it made us laugh, cry, and jump with excitement and joy at the culmination of the greatest multi-volume saga of good vs. evil since the 1950s (read: LOTR Take that Star Wars! Good won and it was oh so good. We've followed this story from its adolescence (pun intended) and saw it come to a content end. I loved it. I know I just told you (Aaron) on the phone that I'm not sure if I did love it, but I did. I think back to last night and visceral rection I felt, and I have to conclude: it was masterful.
-Nick
Nick:
ReplyDeleteI see what you are saying and Alan Rickman was very good. Your final point is what gives me the confidence to say that I did not super love the movie. I didn't have that reaction at all. The parts to cry at I didn't cry all that much, and by the end I wasn't totally enthralled. It was good, but I didn't have a pure gut emotional reaction to it. Which means, based on that argument it wasn't the movie for me.