Gosh... Another Harry Potter op :-( (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (DVD))

Member Name: chris105

Product:	Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (DVD)
Date:	08/12/01 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's a beautiful film, Hadn't it been a film of the book, it'd be the best film of the year

Disadvantages: Too much deja-vu, No creative spark (apart from the overdose of creativity injected directly by Rowling, that is)

You knew you had this coming, didn't you? I know, I know, just what the dooyoo world needed was the seventy-sixth Harry Potter op... moreover by someone who's never written a movie op before. But still - you knew I'd write this, making two people at least turn in their casserole dishes...

Ok, so I went to the cinema yesterday to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the movie. Directed by Chris Columbus (who for us Maltese - though for no-one else - will forever be remembered as the guy who filmed Cutthroat Island in Malta), it runs at well over 2 hours, in the process pulling out all the stops to make this THE film of 2001. So much has been said about Harry Potter that the film was already the stuff of legend before its premiere. Probably never has a film been so massively anticipated - not even Titanic, which rose to gargantuan heights only after its release.

The monstruous sales of the books can't have harmed it, of course. Films usually have to spend millions (if they have a big enough budget) to create their pre-launch publicity, while this film had all the pre-launch brand-awareness they could have dreamt of... and then some. The Harry Potter book quartet (so far... eventually the series should result in a seven-volume extravaganza) is the best-selling series of all time in terms of per-year sales. No matter how much we love books, we have to admit that it IS a minority of children who likes to read - the majority make do with Playstation games and television. The books have managed the unthinkable, making children in previously undreamt-of numbers flock to buy the series.


Anyway, to cut a long story (oops, no allusion intended here!) short, the film is based on book one. Having a "describe-the-plot" paragraph here seems pointless really, however just for completeness' sake, here goes. In a world where wizards and witches co-exist with normal humans (aka Muggles), unbeknownst to the latt
er, the hitherto-peaceful magical world has been brought to the verge of chaos by the lord of all evil, Voldemort. In an attempt to kill a family of magical do-gooders, he exterminates the parents but their infant boy survives, destroying Voldemort's evil powers in the process. This infant, who has only a forehead scar to show for this encounter, is... you guessed it... baby Harry, who is left in the custody of his Muggle relatives. After 10 years of ill-treatment, Harry's fortunes change when he finds himself accepted in the Hogwarths School of Wizardry - arguably the best in the world.

What follows is the boy's exploits (as played by British actor Daniel Rutcliffe - whose similarity to the imagined Potter convinces) in his first year of studies, as he comes to grips with his magical powers, makes new friends notably Ron Weasley and Hermione Grainger, realises that he's a living legend in wizard-land, and uncovers a dastardly plan to resuscitate the evil Voldemort.


So there. That's the plot, insofar as it bears telling. Usually when reviewing a film of a book, pains are taken to distinguish between elements of the film that are not faithfully taken from the book, and vice versa. In this case I have to report that there are no such distinctions. The film is accurate to a frightening degree. This would presumably have a great deal to do with the fact that the author, JK Rowling, contractually had a say in the production of the film. Never has a book been so completely and unadulteratedly transposed to the big screen. As those who've read my op on "the film of the book" will know, I am very skeptical of book adaptations, and have praised Chocolat as one of those rare films where the spirit of the book is brought out in the film.

In Harry's case, the faithfulness is complete (practically - there are a couple of well-documented omitted subplots, and some truncated episodes). Not only is the story all
there, with no impromptu additions by the scriptwriters, but the atmosphere is just as the reader imagines. Hogwarths looks exactly like Rowling told us it would; ditto for Harry, Ron and Hermione. Even Quidditch looks like it's described in the book.

This is a tribute to Rowling's writing mastery, of course. It takes a very talented and descriptive writer to conjure up a world with words and have all her numerous readers "see" the same thing with their mind's eye. If Quidditch weren't so eloquently described, we'd be surprised to see the game played out on the screen. As things are, what I say yesterday was exactly what I'd read about in the book.

And THAT, my dear readers, is the problem with the film.

I had an acute bout of deja-vu while watching the film yesterday. Practically anything I saw, from the exterior and interior of Hogwarths, to Professors Dumbledore, Snape, McGonagall and Quirrell, to Harry, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy and Co., to Hagrid and his Forbidden Forest, even down to Diagon Alley, were brilliantly-filmed reevocations of what I'd already read. Do you know how it feels to watch a film you've only just watched? [...unless it's something brilliant like Moulin Rouge, of course, where you can watch and re-watch incessantly...] That weary feeling of knowing exactly what's coming next, in what colour and mood? Well, that's what I felt watching Harry Potter.

This is not to say, however, that the film was anything short of excellent. In any other film, I'd ben raving deliriously about the fabulous locations, filming, acting and special effects of the film. The magical powers of the wizards are brought out just right, without over-the-top dramatisations while impressive enough for children. The way the Quidditch game was shot was superb, and the game of wizard chess could've been the trailer for Lord of the Rings. In any other film I'd be ecstatic about all
of this.

Not in Harry Potter, though. It was so faithful to the original as to be practically a rerun. This is perhaps not fair on the producers and directors. After all we've been complaining for aeons (I have, for one) that film adaptations of books are not faithful enough to the original, in content or in ambience. Now we have a film that is 100% (ok, 98%) faithful to the original, and we whine that it's a photocopy, not an original film.

To be completely honest I was myself surprised at this. I admit, I appreciated the importance of the surprise element in a film (not as in plot twists, but as in the joy of being surprised at what we're seeing on screen, and wondering what we'll be seeing in a moment's time) when I saw Harry Potter on screen.


I still highly recommend watching the film. For the kids it's an extravaganza (yes, I've used that word twice) of magic and suspension of disbelief, with adventure galore. For adults, it's a pretty picture of an excellently-created world, with some incredibly beautiful effects. Of course, such is the expectation for this film that any cinema-goer is bound to feel some kind of let-down at the end. Just don't let that put you off going. So come on, Jill, pack the kids in the car and off you go to the cinema!

Summary: