Just what is it about J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series that makes it so irresistible? That drives thousands to wait in costume for midnight releases of the next book, the newest film incarnation? To hold marathon gatherings where the entire text of the increasingly longer novels are read from start to finish in one sitting? Perhaps because so many of us can relate to Harry’s plight: an orphan raised by ignorant and abusive muggles who is whisked away to a community where he is welcomed and revered for the very attributes that branded him a freak. Don’t we all secretly long to be cherished for what makes us different?
Perhaps it is Rowling’s gift for making sorcery and everything that implies, the fantastic and enchanting and astonishing world of extraordinary humans (and other marvelous, terrible beings) plausible. She intertwines just enough of the commonplace with the wizarding world to make it feel feasible, genuine. Wizards and witches have their schools, too, their trains, postal system and shops down Diagon Alley. They have their hierarchy, their government, their regulations, and sadly, their own biases, politics and petty grievances. Most impressive is Rowling’s skill at balancing plot and character. development. Her ability to keep us involved in the emotional lives of the principals, with their eccentricities and torments and foibles, while the action propels us like a perpetual motion device.
It is this interdependent relationship between the psyches of Rowling’s extensive cast of “players” and what happens to them that his been most challenging in bringing Harry Potter to the screen. Christopher Columbus (who directed the first two films) recruited Alfonso Cuaron to direct Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, too exhausted to move on to the next installment and highly impressed with Cuaron’s previous work. I won’t pretend familiarity with Cuaron’s work to date, but can tell you that Y Tu Mama Tambien (a very different, albeit impressive, film) in no way prepared me for the grace and finesse of Azkaban. Y Tu Mama is practically all character and very little plot while Azkaban is nearly the opposite. All the information vital to advancing the narrative is supplied and little else. And for this reason, the film doesn’t seem to get quite as bogged down as the first two. The movie hums and pops and soars and crackles and has some of the most bracing chills you’re likely to experience in a theater.
There is kind of a failsafe built into filming the Rowling novels. So many folks are so deeply and passionately invested in the text (including Columbus and Cuaron) that there is keen motivation to get it right. To do justice to the phenomenal reading experience. Cuaron has been extremely vigilant in preserving the key aspects of Harry’s third year at Hogwarts. As Harry approaches adolescence his desire to find his identity and direction his life will take becomes stronger and more urgent. So naturally he tries to bond with the wizards who were closest to his deceased parents. As with all the novels so far, his first catastrophic (and triumphant ) confrontation with Lord Valdemort, too early for him to remember, will continue to steer his destiny. Cuaron covers all this, sometimes with dialogue, sometimes in less obvious ways, by implication or situation. Where Columbus was grappling with Rowling’s complexity and depth, Cuaron goes for movement and impact.
There is a vibrant, credible feel to the milieu in Azkaban. The forest, Professor Lupin’s study, the dining hall, the village where the students spend their outings, engulf us in shadow and torchlight, they submerge us in the moment. Cuaron hovers at the edges of hallucination, teasing the normal into the subtly surreal. The shape-shifters and specters he constructs are chilling and unsettling. In the crucial episodes, the special effects are spot on, not calling attention to themselves, but making our hearts bounce. Our nape hair tingle. It is a rule of thumb that most films are imagistically savvier than their scripts. The story may be one thing, the dialogue another. But is the manipulation of the images fluttering before our eyes that separates the brilliant directors from the ones who are just trying to make sure the camera winds up in the right place. Cuaron has a visual sophistication that is dazzling and spectacular and serves the material well. It may sound like I’m casting aspersions on Columbus but please understand, I’m not. Both he and Cuaron have their strengths, neither one has gotten it just right, and as I suggested earlier, Columbus had the acumen to pass the torch to someone who could handle this daunting task with eclat’.
Further credit should be given Columbus in his casting of the three key characters, Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger and Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley. Grint has great comic instincts and often serves as the reality check for Radcliffe and Watson, whose characters are loftier or more introspective. It’s as if Hermione were the Super-Ego, Harry the Ego and Ron the Id. Ron never hesitates to say what his friends are too tentative or guarded to reveal. When everything’s going to hell, he’s not afraid to be terrified. He just is. Watson makes Hermione formidable, her anger, her pride, her outrage at injustice. Her impatience with stupidity. But she also makes her sympathetic, helping us understand what drives Hermione. The injuries she can’t brush aside. Radcliffe has the most demanding role. Harry Potter is a boy who lives inside his head. Years of degradation and antagonism have forced him to use detachment as a means of survival. He is repeatedly subjected to ordeals and derision but is never the object of pity. So then it falls to Radcliffe to let just enough of Potter’s spirit and anguish come through to make those subtle changes in his face. The camera makes this kind of understatement possible; often our clues to Harry’s state of mind are in reaction shots and Radcliffe is meticulous in these.
There are a few quibbles I have with Azkaban. One of the reasons that J. K. Rowling’s novels work so well is that she resists the temptation to continuously confront us with the supernatural. The Harry Potter series has reached the crossover audience of readers who would never otherwise have picked up a novel that dealt in sorcery and enchantment. The magic happens, and it’s never dull, but she weaves it organically into the character’s lives. We don’t need constant reminders that Hogwarts is a school for sorcery. It didn’t spoil the movie for me by any means, but I think Cuaron might have pulled back a bit from this compulsive need to distract us. A great deal of Azkaban is agreeably funny, it breaks up the looming sense of menace, but in the end, I think for Cuaron it’s all about momentum. Movement and trajectory. Sometimes expediency is highly effective, other times it comes off as shorthand or shtick. I cringe when I see broad strokes like a cloud in the shape of a dog or Snape calling Hermione an insufferable “Know-it-all” or Dumbledore speaking in homilies. Or a choir singing the Weird Sisters’ incantation from Macbeth ! (How many times we heard that?) But by and large Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban is a glorious, sumptuous plunge.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Starring: Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) Michael Gambon (Albus Dumbledore) Gary Oldman (Sirius Black) David Thewlis (Professor Remus Lupin) Robbie Coltrane (Rubeus Hagrid) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón