Harry Potter : British actors of the '00s :: Roots : Black actors of the '70s

[jlh]

Announcement: ali_wildgoose, a very good friend of mine, was friended by someone named "harry pooter" and the LJ turned out to be FULL OF SPOILERS. And then in the comments scrabble pointed out that you could make an LJ called so-and-so_dies and spoil people without their even looking at the journal itself. So I've turned off notifications of when people friend me or communities invite me, and suspended non-friend commenting. Five more days, people.

I saw the film on Friday night but it took me a little while to work out what I wanted to say about it. I liked a lot of things about the film, but it would be difficult for me to say "I loved this movie," mostly for reasons that are more about the book than the film.

Things that aren't the film's fault:

• I didn't enjoy the book OotP, so the movie was going to have to work really hard to not make me feel like A Series of Inexplicably Harsh Things that Happened to Harry Potter One Year. Foolishly, when I saw so many people loving the film, I thought that perhaps it could-forgetting that a lot of you felt that OotP wasn't so harsh on reread (I have not reread and do not plan to) or plain liked it to begin with. But walking out of the film, I felt almost as battered as I had when I read the book and I don't really look to my media to beat me up, thanks. The plot was absolutely streamlined in a good way, but then it became the hits just keep on coming. So as a general statement, I can't say I liked the movie, though it was well made.
  
• Seeing the occlumency scenes again, I find myself right back where I was when I read the book. I cannot forgive Snape for what he does here. Yes, Snape has issues, and yes, he's just been left to his own devices by Dumbledore, and yes, Snape has every reason to hate James Potter. But Harry isn't James, and he's just a kid. A kid who is relying on Snape to teach him something, when Snape is a lousy, unwilling teacher. Let's face it: if Harry had been able to learn that skill, we wouldn't have had the battle at the Ministry-and as Ziggy pointed out, if Snape IS on Tom's side then he very effectively weakened any defenses that Harry might have had. I was so angry and frustrated watching those scenes again, so furious with Snape for not being able to put his own shit aside for the sake of, well, anything outside himself. I'm sorry, I try not to talk about Snape in this journal because I have friends who are big Snape fans and they big time don't appreciate it, but there it is. As Lupin said, dude, that was high school. He's had 15 years now to get over it. Enough already.

What I didn't like about it:

• Because there was so much PLOT there wasn't much time for the sort of small character moments that give richness and really are what I like in any story. I really missed that. We couldn't get a sense of how yearning yet awkward things were between Harry and Sirius, for example. I know the film couldn't slow down, but it felt like just a skeleton because of it.
  
• I'm not one to be "they shouldn't have cut this from the book" but I will make that claim for one thing: They should have kept Sirius fighting back against Molly's overprotectiveness, which they did show. I think it's an important moment for the structure and balance of the film, because Sirius is the only one who wants to give Harry as much information as possible, as opposed to particularly Dumbledore. It's a key coming of age moment in this book, which is essentially about the adults not being sure if Harry is a child or an adult, and Harry not being sure himself.
  
• Oh, Hermione. Emma is clearly the weakest of the three actors, which is unsurprising since she hasn't done any other acting and doesn't appear to want to. Hermione can be shrill and annoying, particularly in this book where she's almost always right, and Emma really doesn't help much with that. Also, while I'll note below that I found a lot of the Ron/Hermione to be charming, one thing I don't like about that ship is the implication that Hermione is like Molly, so that little moment on the stairs at Christmas made me cringe.
  
• Um, where was Ginny? From the poster I was looking forward to kickass!Ginny (one of the few things about the book that other people had a problem with but I actually didn't) but she didn't appear. Why wasn't she in the carriage with the rest of the "OotP Six" at the start of the movie? Why was her introduction of Luna given to Hermione? How does this set us up for HBP?

What I really liked about it:

• All that 1930s pre-WWII Britain imagery. The first two films seemed a bit more Victorian, or even older in moments, but from PoA forward we seem to have landed squarely in England Between the Wars, which is entirely appropriate. The scenes at the train station at Hogwarts and going to and fro, Umbridge's wardrobe (and Lupin's back in PoA), the look of the Ministry, even the look of the film itself was so steeped in that era. And beyond that, the nods to fascism-Fudge's banner, the radio broadcasts, the loudspeaker announcements-BRILLIANT. My favorite thing about the film, absolutely, making the Fudge-as-Chamberlain parallel that much starker.
  
• Thank GOD Dan Radcliffe figured out how to act by this movie. I thought he was great and I really look forward to the next two films. I adored the DA scenes, had forgotten how much I loved them in the book, and Harry really is a wonderful natural teacher. While I found the GoF shag to be amusing, I'm also glad he cut his damn hair.
  
• Ron keeps getting robbed but I thought Rupert was fantastic as always. I just wish they'd give him a lot more to do. Though, since he's just so adorable, he makes the Ron/Hermione stuff a lot sweeter than I read it in the book.
  
• Luna rocked my world. I thought she was just nutty enough, more sort of spacey and odd than actually crazy, and I loved every single Harry/Luna moment (though in a nonshippy way). I'm all about Neville/Luna in a shippy way, though.
  
• Neville! I was wondering how they would be able to convey his essential Neville-ness when he's grown so much bigger than Harry, but the really bad hair and shuffling awkwardness-the sense of "my arms and legs are too long and I don't know where to put them"-was brilliant, and you know that was mostly acting rather than anything else. He was adorable showing up with that silly plant at the beginning and I don't even mind that they gave him that silly line to Bella in the fight scene.
  
• Fred and George! Selling joke treats! Comforting small children! Leaving school with a bang! Go them!
  
• Oh, Sirius, you are so crazy, in such a cringingly unexpected way, where we can go along thinking that you're not crazy and then suddenly oh, yes, you are. I'm going to say some harsh things below so let me say here about Sirius: My problem really with his arc is that he doesn't have the same real chance for redemption and growth that other characters have. He finds a way to deal with prison, but note that when he dies he's been out of jail for less than three years, spending one of those years still mostly as a dog stalking Hogwarts, the next hiding out with Lupin or again, at Hogwarts living on rats in a cave as a dog, or back in his childhood home where his abusive mother screams at him all day. Not really theraputic environments. If it had gone on longer, or more importantly, if he had let his own issues truly get in the way of his helping the Order or Harry (which he never does) then that would be one thing, but for Sirius, mostly, I'm just sad.
  
• Lupin! Holding a screaming Harry! OMG that scene was so amazingly done! Just, perfect on all fronts!
  
• Dumbledore, so frustratingly absent, so completely off base, so strange that he thought he was more of a target than Harry. It's like this weird moment where he realizes that he has to pass on the mantle, that it really ISN'T about him anymore, he isn't the one the Big Bad is gunning for. It's a weird, sad moment that I understood better from the film than from the book, I admit, perhaps because reading the book I was more in Harry's head than Albus's.
  
• Umbridge was really creepy and scary and so much a personification of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil. I loved her Chanel-like suits and the cat plates and her weird smile and the way she had to have a flash of pink at her throat even at the Wizengamot.
  
• Poor Cho. I thought the change in that plot was appropriate for the film, which has enough characters really. And I was glad we didn't have to see Valentine's Day. But I thought the first kiss was sort of cute, at least.
  
• I'll end with my boys. I got everything from Seamus that I wanted to. He did his thing, it didn't get cut, he got to glower a lot, Dean got to be sympathetic, I love them both. And Seamus is still working that short tie, which I find adorable.

One thing I will say is that, mainly because of OotP, I didn't want to do a reread before DH. But I am looking forward to rereading the books after I've read DH, to see how they all fit together once I know where we're headed. Onward!