Summary:
The boy wizard Harry Potter continues his education and misadventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
My Thoughts:
Fair warning; this is going to be one of my longer reviews. I’ve a bit to say about this one, and since my connection to this film and the story it tells is so strong and it’s impacted my life so much, I inevitably wander off on bunny trails. Alright, you’ve been warned.
I love to read. So far this year I’ve read fifteen books- classic literature, pulp fantasy, poetry, graphic novels- doesn’t matter, I read it all. When I find a book I love I fall through it; reading it is easier and more relaxing than sinking into a hot bath. But every once in a while, I feel like I come upon a book that just doesn’t vibe with me, and whenever that happens it really slows up my reading pace.
I had just finished the first four books of Frank Herbert’s Dune (amazing, by the way- though the fourth one gets a bit weird) and decided to tackle Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery. I generally like Victorian novels (my favorite book is Crime and Punishment, and for a long time before that it was Wuthering Heights), but William Makepeace Thackery’s writing didn’t grab me as Bronte’s, Austen’s, or Hardy’s prose did. I slumped into a reading loll, and whenever that happens I feel myself grow restless and irritable. I needed something to read, desperately.
As I stared bitterly at my shelf, looking for something to jump off the shelf at me, my eyes fell upon the Harry Potter books. It had been years since I’d read them (twelve years, to be exact), and I’ve always said that great art can be looked at multiple times in your life and, depending on where you are, you will see that art from a different perspective than you did when you first saw it. Great art is dynamic; it changes with you. I figured I could give the Harry Potter series a reread. It wouldn’t take long a remarkably long time and then I could get back to whatever new stories awaited… I found myself excited, and I pulled the second book from the shelf (the first book I’ve read so many times when I was in middle school that I had practically memorized it- I didn’t want to start there again).
I reread Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets over a leisurely weekend and I’m happy to say that, while the second entry is still aimed more at children than it is adults, it still maintains its ability to absorb the reader completely. Rowling’s writing style is fun and easy to get into; her world exudes magic with every paragraph; and the characters simply jump off the page. While I don’t think Harry Potter really reaches the level of a great fantasy series until some of the later entries, Chamber of Secrets is a very solid book. Having just finished the book, I knew there was no better time to sit down and rewatch the second film. For this excursion, I was a bit more nervous.
Chris Colombus (“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”) is a director in whom I don’t have a lot of faith. In fact, last year, before “Crimes of Grindelwald” came out, I had intended to watch and review all of the Harry Potter movies, but after rewatching “Socrerer’s Stone” my motivation to do so was quashed. These first movies are rough, and while some of that is due to the world and characters being developed and the actors still growing up and learning how to better perform, a huge portion of the blame falls on the man at the helm; Colombus himself.
Columbus doesn’t know how to drive a scene forward; he doesn’t know how to stage his actors; and he certainly doesn’t know how to bring Rowling’s magic to screen. This movie is not horrible, but it was dangerously close to receiving a 2.5/5 star movie from me. There’s just so much in this film that is executed in a pulseless way that the film itself feels like it shambles through events from start to finish. The pacing is just abysmal; where Rowling was able to draw a through line in the events and make it so that all of them connected and I had to know what was going to happen next, Colombus’ version simply shows us these events and fails to give us the details on why these events are important.
Columbus relies so heavily on his viewer’s prior knowledge about these worlds that he really fails to make any of the emotional connections on screen, and he seems more intent on making a book to screen translation than he does a good adaptation. What do I mean by that? Whenever you adapt a book you’re inevitably going to loose some bits in the translation, but in this film there are so many scenes that are directly lifted from the book. That’s not inherently a bad thing, in fact, many people would argue it’s a good thing; however, just because the same events are occurring, doesn’t mean they boast the same amount of magic. This feels like a Frankenstein’s monster version of Harry Potter; all the parts are there, but whenever the film moves it’s stiff and unnatural.
“Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts this year!”
We join the Boy who Lived, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe, “The Woman in Black”), as he waits for summer to come to an end, trapped at the Dursley’s home. Harry receives a warning from a house elf named Dobby (Toby Jones, “Berberian Sound Studio”) whom tells him that he cannot return to Hogwarts or his life will be in danger. Soon, Harry’s friend Ron (Rupert Grint, “Moonwalkers”) breaks Harry out of the Dursleys and after a series of adventures, the two make their way back to Hogwarts, where they meet up with friends like Hermione Granger (Emma Watson, forthcoming “Little Women”), enemies like Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) and take classes from teachers like Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith, “Clash of the Titans (1981)”), Professor Snape (Alan Rickman, “Robin Hood Prince of Thieves”), and the infuriatingly annoying Professor Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh, “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”). As the school year gets into swing, a message is scrawled upon the walls, warning muggle born students (non-magic folk) to beware, for the Chamber of Secrets has been opened.
As a story I think “Chamber of Secrets” is better than “Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone”. While “Sorcerer” introduces us to Harry’s world, “Chamber” begins to expand that world, and its here that we really get to see some of the more interesting parts of the Wizarding World; the Burrow, more parts of Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley, more parts of the Forbidden Forest. We see cooler spells and potions, from the dueling club to the polyjuice potion to Harry’s debonified arm. Overall, there’s just more magic in this world.
However, as I’ve already stated, Colombus has a hard time bringing that magic to the world, and, honestly I have a hard time illustrating this unless I reference the other entries in this series. Wherein the other later entries like Alfonso Cuaron’s adaptation of “Prisoner of Azkaban” there is magic that seems to constantly be onscreen, in these first two entries every time magic makes an appearance it’s the focal point of the frame. It makes things less magical if you focus on them; if you just let them happen in the background, it feels far more magical. An example from this film; As Harry walks into the Burrow for the first time he looks around at the home, seeing various magical items including a pair of knitting needles that knit by themselves. Harry stops and watches these needles for a moment as they knit while his friends just kind of lurk awkwardly behind waiting for him to finish staring at them. If you were a wizard, things like self-knitting knitting needles would be rather commonplace; I don’t turn on a faucet and stare at it in wonder every time the water comes spilling out. That would just be silly. If you leave the magic in the background it feels more at home in the world you’ve created, and I think the later directors knew this and executed it far better than Chris Columbus ever did.
I do think that, for the most part, all of the actors have improved. As the Harry Potter series deals with kids, you sort of have to give them some leeway as far as expectations for acting. You can’t expect every child to give an Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) or Anna Paquin (“The Piano”) level of performance; some of them are going to be a bit rougher than others. However, the main actors have all improved. I also think that Kenneth Branagh as Gildroy Lockhart was an amazing choice, and I’d be remised if I didn’t at least mention that Richard Harris (“The Count of Monte Cristo”) was a perfect choice for Dumbledore, though, in the later entries, Michael Gambon (“The Book of Eli”) suffices quite nicely as a substitute.
I actually watched the extended cut of this movie, which I had never seen before. That version adds thirteen minutes of extra footage, but I honestly don’t think it did much to improve the film. Pacing is perhaps this film’s biggest flaw other than directing. The story just creeps by, slowly going over the events of the book without ever really instilling tension or excitement. As I mentioned before, there are plenty of parts that are lifted directly from the book, using exact dialogue and showing events exactly as they transpired. The problem with this is that it never shows anything other than exactly what J.K. Rowling described; Colombus has no imagination himself.
In Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’, he talks about how reading is a cooperative kind of magic; in a way its like telecommunication. When the writer writes something down, he or she pictures it in their mind, and using twenty-four different characters they form words, and those words form emotions and pictures in the mind of someone else. Both parties bring something to the table- their own prior experiences- so that in the end, no one really ever reads the same book more than once. Reading and writing are about as close to magic as we get in the real world. But when the interpreter of the fiction brings nothing else to the table, what you end up with is a flat, emotionless story that may look like Harry Potter, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it.
Verdict:
Though I feel like I said far more negative things about this film than positive ones I do not hate it. In fact, for most of this film I found myself enjoying my rewatch (though near the end I grew a bit bored and restless). However, I enjoy this film because I enjoy the source material. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a very good book, and this is about as middling of an adaptation as we could’ve received. I’m sure in twenty years (or less) we’ll hear rumors of reboots, and I personally look forward to that era.
I know plenty of people will look at that last sentence and scream “What about original stories in Hollywood?” Look, here’s the thing; I’ve come to terms with the fact that Hollywood is going to reboot/remake/reuse ideas until they no longer can wring a cent from said ideas, so I’ve also come to terms with the fact that plenty of my favorite properties will probably get the reboot treatment. If we’re going to do that, I’d like to see the treatment given to movies that were middling, not great. This version of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” is fine, but there’s miles of room for improvement.
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