American Politics Journal -- Harry Potter and the Nattering Nannies of Voldemort

American Politics Journal

Harry Potter and the Nattering Nannies of Voldemort
A Political Take on the First HP Film
By Tamara Baker

WARNING: contains "spoilers" for those of you who have not seen the film.

Nov. 19, 2001 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJP) -- My name is Tamara Baker, and I'm a Harry Potter lover. ("Hi, Tamara.")

The most wonderfully subversive series of books in recent years, the Harry Potter novels, are now being translated to film. These books have made an entire generation of children -- even American children -- avid readers, and budding thinkers.

But the Dark Lord's forces, under the guises of "protecting the children" in finest Republican Southern Baptist fashion, are hard at work trying to undermine these wonderful tales. Can't have the kids learning to THINK, now, can we? They might begin to question why we need to give rich people all these tax cuts when two-thirds of all economic growth is generated by the spending habits of the non-rich.

Here are my thoughts, take them as you will:

-- The kids have the toughest burdens, and they shoulder them admirably. Daniel Radcliffe plays Harry with just the right touch: cheerful when called for, stoic when need be. The few false notes of his portrayal aren't his fault: they come from his being a good boy and following the few clunkers thrown out by the screenplay. Rupert Grint plays Ron a bit too much for cheap laughs at first, but his work in the Giant Chess Set scene is first-rate, on a level with Haley Joel Osmont's. And Emma Watson -- what can I say? For a total newcomer, she's very, very good, imbuing Hermione with the right amounts of smugness and lovability. She's going to be dangerous when she gets older, mark my words.

-- Richard Harris should have stayed away from this production, granddaughter or no. You can tell his heart's really not into it. He stumbles through the film as if he's just had a prefrontal lobotomy (if anything, he and John Hurt, who played Ollivander, should have switched places -- Harris' spaciness would have worked well with Ollivander, and we only would have had to put up with him in one film; meanwhile, John Hurt would have made a fantastic Dumbledore).

-- Alan Rickman OWNS every scene he's in. Period. And it's all to the good of the film. Has anyone ever discussed what an incredibly conscientious actor he is? It's almost as if he senses that he and Robbie Coltrane are the only two adult leads who really give a rat's ass (Maggie Smith's Miss-Jean-Brogue-ie take on McGonagall verged on the insulting and insipid, and I've already discussed Richard Harris' criminal phoning-it-in), so he knows that he has to take on one hell of a load here. And Robbie Coltrane -- well, Jo Rowling has said that she had him in mind from the first, and Jo Rowling has never yet been known to make a misstep in terms of literary judgements. He really is Rubeus Hagrid, and he cares about the kids -- especially Harry. By the way: Harris refuses to read the books, Smith has read one, the first one. Rickman and Coltrane have not only read at least the first book (and probably more, to judge from how they handle themselves in the movie), but consulted with author Jo Rowling about the aspects of their characters that she hasn't written about yet. Now, a theater friend of mine tried to excuse Harris and Smith by saying that actors don't like to read the books on which their movies are based because they want to create "fresh characterizations". Bollocks. Harris didn't read the books because he didn't take them seriously, and Smith isn't much better.

Some might say that Rickman, who is in his mid-fifties, is at once too old and too attractive to play Severus Snape, the famously greasy, hook-nosed Potions master. In Book One, Snape and Harry's father were at Hogwarts together, probably in the same year, and Harry's parents were in their mid-twenties when they died in 1981; also, Rowling has said that Snape is 35 at the time of the first book, which starts in 1991. (How do we know this? Because in the second book, Nearly Headless Nick's 500th Deathday Party is on 10/31/1992, and Harry is twelve at the time.)

However, in the books, and even (some might say especially) at his most unkempt, Snape still has a flair for the dramatic, and (like McGonagall of the books) the ability to keep a class hanging on his every word whilst using the softest (and, in his case, the silkiest) of voices. Besides, Rowling specifically wanted Rickman -- to play Snape, that is -- and she definitely knows best!

-- At the last minute, either WB or Columbus had a failure of nerve and gave in to the Dark Lord's nattering nannies -- though not enough to wreck the film.

In the book, when he's in the hospital wing of Hogwarts, Harry Potter does NOT wake up smiling and happy, as he does in the film. He wakes up scared to death. In fact, the first thing he says to Dumbledore is "Sir, the Stone! It was Quirrell! He's got the Stone!" (In the book, Harry faints before Quirrell dies, so he wakes up without realizing he's killed Quirrell.) After Dumbledore reassures Harry on that score (and we find out that Harry was out for three days -- even Dumbledore thought Harry was a goner), Harry feels better, but isn't all happy-dappy. That, I suspect, was added so as to dumb down the film for the kiddies -- which is stupid in the extreme, since the kids (both real and adult ones like me) loved the book ending just fine, thank you very much!

But, all that said, it's still a magnificent film (and the parts where Columbus stayed truest to the vision, and felt the least amount of WB pressure, are precisely those parts of the film you liked the best) -- and will be even better once we see the DVD director's cut.

The Dark Lord's dumbing-down forces are defeated once more, and Harry Potter's magic, put onto the silver screen, will cause more youngsters to read his adventures and absorb the strong ethical and logical lessons embedded therein. There is hope for us, after all!