A movie review... or something.
As the movie began the room fell silent and still, and as
the subtle music filled the air the whole of us held our breath. Upon sight of
that mysterious serpent of which only true fans knew the name, Nagini, my mind
flooded with memories of the first time reading through the wondrous novel of
which this film was based. Unfortunately the enchanted thralldom did not hold
for it was not long in when my fond memories were met with a re-invention that
did them no justice.
Harry Potter and
the Goblet of Fire: the long awaited and greatly anticipated film version to
what many Potter fans hold as their favorite of the J. K. Rowling series so
far. I sadly admit disappointment with many things in the last movie, The
Prisoner of Azkaban; things I felt could have easily been amended if only the
screenwriter, Steven Kloves, spent a little more care and patients towards adding
hundreds of pages of extra dialog and scenes so that all the aspects and
reasons that I loved the Prisoner of Azkaban book would be present in the movie
as well. So naturally my largest grudge with movie three had more to do with
the usual let-downs found in film adaptations, such as beloved scenes and
moments cut and lost from the screenplay, leaving the movie in a bare-bone
format but ultimately functional for cinema.
Goblet of Fire,
however, was a film possessing most, or many, of my most cherished moments and
events, it was a film whose form I could understand and appreciate and whose
content did the novel great justice. Atop this achievement Goblet was also endowed
richly in visual triumph; effects, special and practical alike, that were
created beautifully and looked flawless. So what then could my issues with it
be? If its content held enough for a true fan, and all of its many effects left
nothing but pleasure and excitement, where could it have failed?
It was in the
delivery of the content, in the performed interactions between characters that
left me irritated and sad. This is a fault I do not lay on the actors, I did
not leave the theater feeling their performance was cold and poor, but rather
that the pacing of the delivery was forced and rushed. In most of the film, in
almost all of the dramatic and important scenes, including those that were my
favorites from the book, I was bombarded with over-lapping dialog and sentences
that had not finished when another character began his or her important line. This
was Mike Newell’s fault; the director.
A decent
example of
where a little direction could have done a vast amount of good can be
seen
right after the Yule Ball, by the stair-case where Hermione and Ron
have their
big row and where Hermione tells Ron to ask her next time “and not as a
last
resort”. Understandably this scene would be hard on the young actors, a
moment
portraying many emotions and delivering a monumentally important line
to the
whole of the series. This is where a good director would direct, he
would take
as long as he needed and as many takes as it took until it no longer
felt hurried and each line held the sort of weight that it needed.
Even if this were
the only moment in the film that felt rushed and confused and the lines jumbled
together I would still be of the opinion that Mike Newell is a rotten son of a
bitch, if only for destroying such a memorable scene from the books. But that
was not the only chapter of Goblet that was hurt by the film; almost the entire
movie had that sort of chaotic, over-lapping and hard to fallow plot-delivery.
Another highly
strange and poor direction the fourth Harry Potter movie took was in certain of
the storie's most notable characters. Dumbledore in particular was quite
different from the headmaster we see in the books. He was not the fatherly,
protective character to Harry that he has to be in these tales. His loving and
guarding relationship with Harry is of great importance to the overall plot of
the series; but his film counter-part failed in nearly all his inherent
qualities, and left him a Dumbledore relatively useless to the chapters to
come.
As broken as this
version of Albus Dumbledore was, the most bizarre and upsetting interpretation
goes to Ralph Fiennes’ Voldemort, who was so far removed from that cold,
calculating and horror-invoking figure from the graveyard that he might as well
have been played by Count Dracula from Sesame Street. Other than Dumbledore and
Voldemort, Bartie Crouch, also, was performed wrong. It is as simple as that… he
was done very, very wrong.
Now I have read the
books three times through, so admittedly I was not “lost”, per-say, by the
movie. Anytime the dialog became muddied my memories from the novel always kept
me fast on track. I am a thundering and enormous fan of the Harry Potter
movies; I watch them all the time. So for me being able to vaguely follow the
plot is far from my deepest reasoning for putting in one of the Potter DVDs and
watching them. I love them for the dramatic moments, for the character
interaction and growth and for the adult way these young witches and wizards
handle these dark and deadly events. And if a director does not spend time
caring for those moments in the film, moments that are in essence the very
heart of the story, then what does that leave me?
-~ÿ~-Pinky-~ÿ~-
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