And now, something lighter…

Okay, so this is the obligatory HP6 movie post, and why I thought that the movie was closer to an adaptation of the Cliff-Notes version, and not the book itself.

Blockbuster film directors and Hollywood movie studios have very low expectations of their moviegoers.  They know that people go to the movies to be entertained, and very rarely do they break out of the molds: romantic comedy with attractive leads, action films, and movies with Will Smith and Sandra Bullock (although hopefully, never at the same time).

The films that break out of the mold, the ones that take dramatic risks are the ones that we see come out of the Sundance Film Festival or an “independent wing” of a major Hollywood Studio to get wide acclaim or win Oscars.  The thing is, most movie studios aren’t looking to win Oscars. They want to make money, to recoup their investment, and then some.  Slumdog Millionaire, the winner of the Best Picture Academy Award for 2008 and widely acclaimed as one of the best films of the year, does not come close to cracking the list of the top-10 grossing films of the year (a list that includes such cinematic masterpieces as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Madagascar 2).  In fact, none of the 5 films nominated for the award cracked the list.  The last time a Best Picture nominee also was a high-grossing film was 2003, when the final Lord of the Rings movie took the Best Picture Academy Award and was also the highest-grossing film of the year in the United States.

The Harry Potter movies, like the Lord of the Rings movies, have been built on a series of books and mythology far too large to translate word-for-word to the screen; anyone who expects a faithful re-creation of every detail is setting themselves up for disappointment, because they will never find exactly what they’re looking for.  But, because of the wealth of backstory and the richness of the narrative, both film series have had great potential for conveying the most important parts of the books and elevating the drama in a way only cinema can.

For me, the parts of the Harry Potter movies that have fallen flat are their attempts to increase the drama over fidelity to the themes of the story.  I understand leaving out large narrative arcs like Aragog’s death and Fleur/Bill, and I know that there is a necessity to get through all of the major plot-points that drive the narrative of the story.  The inclusions that diverge from the major plot points, though, are often total fabrications within the context of the book and do little to advance the themes, and are added to the detriment of some of the major thematic elements of the book.

I got the impression right from the beginning of the movie, during Harry’s encounter with the cute barmaid on the London Underground.  This is not a Harry Potter profoundly upset by the loss of Sirius Black, a close friend, and the only person in Harry’s life who resembled a father figure.  This sense of loss is replaced with… well, what is this supposed to tell us about how Harry feels?  It’s unclear that the director even knows what he wants to convey.

The scene where the burrow is destroyed by Death Eaters, another (imho superfluous) addition with no relation to the books, is included solely as a chance for cinematic fireworks.  This is the logical place in the flow of the movie where we need an action scene; forget the fact it makes no sense for Bellatrix to lure Harry out of the house only to firebomb it later.

These additions (among others) come at the expense of more time spent with the (less cinematically inspiring) backstory of Voldemort.  Although we don’t see Voldemort at all in the sixth book, he is certainly present throughout, as Harry and Dumbledore recreate a portrait of his youth and the decisions that led him on the path to splitting his soul.  The director made sure that the audience was made aware through Dumbledore’s memory excursion about the horcruxes, but that was only half of their purpose in the book.  Gone is Voldemort’s penchant for collecting odds and ends, the parallels to Harry’s troubled childhood and absence of parents, and allusions to the formation of the Death Eaters during Riddle’s time at Hogwarts, all of the things that made Voldemort as much a character in the 6th book as he was in all the rest.

J.K. Rowling has created a series of books that do so many things well, from creating a unique world to telling a story of epic scope and craft.  But, the best part of the books to me is their soul, their ability to discuss some of the deepest and most profound subjects with subtlety and hope.  In my opinion, the movie is a clear reflection of the low expectations that the movie studio had for its audience.  They wanted to deliver a movie that had the marketing pull of the Harry Potter franchise and enough comedy and action to get people to come out of the theater saying “Awesome!”.  They weren’t looking for a work of art that attempted to capture the soul of the books; they wanted to cash in, and are succeeding.

Don’t get me wrong.  The HP6 film was fun.  I enjoyed watching it, just like I enjoyed I Am Legend and Two Weeks Notice.  Standing on its own, it deserves to be a summer blockbuster, and I know that my quibbles aren’t going to resonate with anyone who hasn’t read the books.  But, in my humble opinion, the movie (like the others I’ve seen), while doing miraculous things to capture the magic and grandeur of the books, do little to capture its soul, and miss out on the potential to keep the soul of the books intact.