[HPFGU-Movie] Neville and the Gillyweed

[Richard]

At 08:11 26/11/2005 , Steve wrote:
>I'm not sure where I read about this controversy, but there seems to
>be some 'believability' conflict with Neville giving Harry the
>Gillyweed instead of Dobby in the most recent GoF movie. Chiefly that
>conflict hinges around the very great unlikelihood of Neville having
>the courage to steal from Snape's private stores.

Certainly not here, and I've not seen anyone questioning it in anything 
I've read anywhere.

>Snape confronts Harry about stealing from his private stores AFTER
>Harry has already used the Gillyweed in the second task. In that
>scene, Snape says something to the effect, 'Gillyweed is
>[unintelligable],

"Innocuous", not unintelligible at all. :-)

>but Broomslang and lacewing are...etc...polyjuice'.
>While I couldn't make out exactly what Gillyweed is, it seems that it
>is inconsequential or irrelevant since Snape's focus is on the
>production of Polyjuice.

The point being (mainly to observant non-book-readers) that Snape is a 
miserable suspicious git who'll accuse Harry of stealing his Gillyweed 
without checking his supplies if any is missing. As for Boomslang, etc, of 
course, the serial movie-viewer knows that Snape isn't a million miles off 
the mark considering events of a couple of years/movies ago...

>I just saw the movie for the third time, and I watched and listened
>very carefully for exactly how the movie dealt with the issue of the
>Gillyweed. No where does it imply that Neville /stole/ the weed from
>Snape. My sense is that the movie makers anticipated this conflict,
>and used Snape's speech as a quick and easy way to gloss over it.

The movie makes a (very good) change in that Neville's book is "Magical 
Water Plants of the Highland Lochs" rather than "... Mediterranean", and 
considering we see him earlier in the movie fishing stuff out of the lake, 
we can assume that this is where he got it (loch being Scottish for lake).

I must admit that after my first viewing, I was a bit incredulous about 
Neville stealing from Snape. I thought (or rather, assumed) that 
Crouch!Moody had told Harry outright that Neville had stolen it from Snape, 
or that Crouch!Moody had stolen it on Neville's behalf (book preconceptions 
in action), but on my second viewing, I paid attention to Moody's speech, 
and what he said was "... if I hadn't given him the book that led him 
straight to it". Now, this *could* be understood to mean "where he found 
out about Gillyweed", but I prefer to understand it as "where he found out 
where it grows".

--
Richard previously AKA GulPlum, who'll be seeing the movie for the sixth 
full time tomorrow, but with friends rather than alone for a change.