An interesting conundrum

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

Rather than give everyone a typical review of the movie (with 
commentary on particular actors and scenes and whatnot), as I'm sure 
there will be plenty of personal takes over the next couple days, I 
am going to discuss one very unique and bizarre phenomenon.

I warn you that my explanation of this is extraordinarily shoddy.  
For some reason I can't seem to explain this properly--although I was 
able to do it just fine in person with someone I saw the film with.  
But anyway, if you find my explanation confusing or vague or just 
plain strange-sounding, it's not you, it's me--and I'm sorry I can't 
get this down in text in a coherent, well-argued fashion.  Perhaps if 
someone writes back for clarification of specific points, we will 
eventually muddle through.

This movie is the only film adaptation that I can think of that seems 
completely incapable of standing on its own two feet.  Don't get me 
wrong--I enjoyed it a great deal . . . but then, I've read the 
books.  And this adaptation seems to have relatively little to offer 
for someone who hasn't.  In the filmmakers' extremely valiant attempt 
to fit in as much of everything as possible, they have made the movie 
not only difficult to follow for non-book-fans, but pretty 
unfulfilling.  It's a strange instance, pretty much without 
precedent, because never before has a movie been so heavily geared 
toward appeasing people that are looking for a faithful adaptation, 
not just a good movie.

So, in other words, the question I have to ask myself here is not how 
faithful they were, but were they actually somehow TOO faithful?  Is 
that even possible?  Perhaps so.

Obviously they changed quite a bit and I approve of most of the 
changes.  But I am beginning to wonder if they actually needed to 
change more (heresy, I know).  Because the entire beginning of the 
film was horrendously underdeveloped.  And I am not talking about the 
scenes at the Dursley's, which were appropriately shortened, in my 
opinion.  I mean all the early scenes at school.  They tried to cover 
so much that they covered nothing *well*.  And this made the film 
feel . . . off-balance.

So what do I mean?  Well, here's an example: Neville.  At the end of 
the film we have all the stuff with Neville trying to stop the trio 
from sneaking out, and then getting petrified, and then as a result 
earning 10 points for Gryffindor.  Quite true to the book.  But made 
meaningless if you haven't read the book.  Why?  Because the movie 
never had the opportunity to fully establish Neville's general 
outward reserve and insecurity, his seeming cowardice.  The toad 
scene with McGonagall is the only scene that makes any effort to show 
this, and it doesn't get all the way there.  I also applaud Matthew 
Lewis' damn-near-heroic effort to convey all this about Neville when 
the script wasn't helping at all.

Or take the scene when Snape looks (past Quirrel's turban) at Harry 
and Harry's scar burns.  It went so fast it was practically glossed-
over and this is a critical scene.  But if you hadn't read the books 
you were quite likely to miss it, I expect.

And they did not provide sufficient impetus to explain Harry's desire 
to not be in Slytherin.  If you read the books, you understand.  If 
you didn't, all you have to go on is Ron's *extremely hurried* 
comment two seconds beforehand that (roughly) "All the dark wizards 
came from Slytherin".

So what is this problem the result of?  Two things: 1) obviously, the 
time factor and 2) ineffective use of the advantages of film as a 
medium

The time factor:

I really, really hate to say this, but Kloves or Columbus or whoever 
completely copped-out on some of the tough decisions about what to 
include.  They got in quite a bit.  But the problem here is that they 
had so many characters to introduce that they never spent long enough 
on several of the characters.  I fully understand this dilemma.  But 
in that event, they should have glossed-over more of them than they 
did.  Seamus Finnigan is a throw-away character in the books, so he 
really did not need an exploding objects gag attached to him.  This 
would have been more appropriate tied to a character that was more 
significant, like Neville.  These scenes could have been altered to 
illustrate how Neville never does anything right, which makes his 
victory at the end more fulfilling.  As it stands, it's hard to care 
unless you've read the book.

Or, if I was going to be even more hard-nosed, much as I love 
Neville, they could easily have written out his role almost entirely 
(as in, he would still be present, but do very little).  And yes, all 
the book fans would complain.  But it would give the movie more focus 
and ultimately make it a better film on its own merits.  The movie as 
it stands feels rambly, with snatches of things that seem very 
irrelevant if you aren't familiar with the book.  There's no 
*tightness*.

These are the tough choices I feel they avoided.  Yes, this part of 
the book is great, but can the primary story function without it?  
They cut the obvious things like the Norbert escapade, and combined 
several scenes together.  All of this I felt was very well handled.  
But some other things needed a bit of "de-emphasis".  There is simply 
not enough time to try and treat everything as important, like it is 
in the book.  Some things needed to be dispensed with for the greater 
good.  Like perhaps not bothering so much with the first flying 
lesson, or even less emphasis on the Harry-Draco rivalry.  Yes, these 
things DO matter in the book.  But they didn't have to matter so much 
in the movie.  Because leaving them in made them feel pretty "lost" 
in the movie, as they ultimately had no bearing on the mystery at 
hand.

Ineffective use of the advantages of film as a medium:

There is a scene immediately following Dumbledore's speech to Harry 
where Harry walks out onto the ground with Hedwig and he allows 
Hedwig to fly off into the sky.  This scene symbolizes how Harry is 
letting go of the dream of being with his parents, so that he can 
continue to live.  It's not in the book, but I wish there was more of 
this sort of thing.  This sort of thing, visual symbology, is one of 
the strengths of film as a medium and I feel it should have been more 
fully exploited in the film, because then you can capture in a couple 
images what it would take all sorts of description on a writer's part 
to achieve.

For example, the growth in Harry, Ron, and Hermione's relationship 
following the defeat of the troll could have been captured thus:

After McGonagall et al leave after chastising the trio, instead of 
wasting time on a totally pointless shot of Quirrel having 
a "disconcertedly frightened" reaction to the unconcious troll on the 
ground, this couple seconds could have instead been used to show 
Harry and Ron starting to leave the bathroom, then stopping and 
turning back to Hermione, and then they all three leave together.  
Boom!  They're now friends.  Simple image and mission accomplished.  
This is how films work.

In fact, this is my biggest concern.  Film and books are a different 
medium.  They do different things well.  And even the things they do 
equally well are still almost always achieved differently.  The movie 
seemed to ignore this reality a bit too often.

So all in all, I think the film functions well as purely ANCILLARY to 
the book, but seems to fall short when left to its own devices.  It's 
a wonderful addition to the Potter universe for those who are already 
fans, but is likely to be fairly unappreciable anyone that isn't.

-Luke