MOVIE: Comparisons

[ZaraG]

No: HPFGUIDX 191132

> Alla:
> 
> See, I preferred what movie did so much to what was in the book during Snape's death, you know? I did not care that it was heavy handed, that one line would have made all the difference for me to feel something positive and pity like when Snape died. Yes, he acknowledged Harry as Lily's son to Dumbledore, but he never acknowledged that to Harry and I really needed to hear that. I would love to movie- contaminate Snape's death in my head :)

Zara:
In my opinion, one difference between a movie and a book which matters in decisions about how to tell s story, is that a book is designed so that you can flip backwards and forwards between scenes, if you so desire. Was the book death scene more bare-bones than the movie? Yes, because I think one goal of the author was that some onetime non-obsessive reader of her series would still have only the vaguest suspicions that something shocking was coming up, when Harry dove into the Pensieve in the next chapter. 

And also perhaps because of the way the author was writing about death. Did Snape plan to give Harry all those memories and/or tell him the whole story? In my opinion, yes, I think he has made his plan by Christmas of that year, and set it into motion when he sent his Patronus to Harry. Since I don't think this plan explicitly included his own death, his plan definitely included acknowledging Harry as Lily's son to Harry (and also admitting to him the big ways in which he had wronged him, e.g. contributing to the death sof his parents and misjudging his character) while he still lived. It didn't work out that way, because "death waits for no man". 

Did I flip back to the death scene? Yes, immediately after reading (and recovering from) the scene I posted an excerpt from. And that same death scene was now a heartbreaker, where on my first read it was just sad in a manageable and expected way. It's a thing the book can do, that a movie really can't.