For those of you who have been living under the same kind of giant pop culture rock I did whilst going to graduate school (blissfully, circa 2001-2003, I thought in all seriousness that the term "Paris Hilton" referred to well,... a building of expensive, nightly rented rooms in Paris, France--and lo, it turns out the famous heiress is sort of like a building full of over-priced rented rooms)--be warned! For lo, we shall be venturing out of my beloved 18th-19th century (Kant and Hegel and Schleiermacher, oh my!)... and we shall now talk about how much I love the Harry Potter.
I know. It's pop culture. It's not Latin!
What can I say, fellow academic snobs: I slum with the masses on this one.
I unabashedly love the books and the movies.
I could probably do without the massive franchising and merchandising, but on the other hand, I confess, I have a Harry Potter mug, and a stuffed Scabbers rat.
And you know, all the books.
And... umm... the movies thus-far available on DVD.
And... err... Stephen Fry's recordings of six of the seven novels. (Hey! He's a thespian! It's like, art, or something!)
Therefore, my enthusiasm for the newest installment of the Potter flicks, David Yates' Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is dear to me in that slavish written-on-my-heart-as-Calais-on-Mary-Tudor's/Hermione Granger's-love-of-books sort way.
In other words, I'm about as objective about the Harry Potter phenomenon as a Beatles fan is of, well... The Beatles.
So of course, I had to read the seventh book just like I did books one through four: in one day, cover-to-cover.
And, I've seen the movies a few times.
The fifth cinematic installment I just saw this today, and it's the darkest thus-far of the movies (and fittingly so). Director of photography Slowamir Idziak's vision of Harry Potter's world is a chilling, paranoid one. Dr. Caligari's cabinet--or Azkaban, the cheerless wizards' prison guarded by soul-sucking demons known as dementors--might be a shinier, happier place to dwell, in fact.
Idziak uses chilling desaturated blues and often-claustrophobic framing devices to drive home the message that the wizarding world's adolescent inhabitants--and Harry himself in particular--is growing up in times which have become not only one long Perpetual Dark And Stormy Night, but one of the famed teenage wizard's soul as well.
Gone from the screen are the those sunny, annoyingly festive Quidditch matches, whimsical animated candy and happy house-cup tournaments; instead, the viewer is catapulted into a dreary world about to be undone by Evil, made perhaps all the more horrifying by the attendant incompetence and reactionary fear-mongering of its leaders.
And, who better than David Yates, whose directing career is most notable, apparently, for topics of political intrigue and corruption (albeit of the British television making sort) to give credibility to the heavy-handed and dismally clueless--not to mention consistently cheerless--bureaucracy of the Potter universe.
To that end, the master villian, Voldemort, (a cackling, noseless Raph--or it Ralph?-- Fiennes) is less disturbing in all his venomous glory than the newest teacher at Harry's beloved school: the pathologically pedagogical professor-in-pink, Dolores Jane Umbridge (played by an absolutely captivating Imelda Staunton).
Installed as a kind of governmental professorial spy at Harry's school, her sadistic punishments and drearily pointless curriculum are executed in such an efficiently ruthless way it makes the former Soviet Union's pre-Gorbechev era state propaganda look like a sunny-day plea for some much-needed perestroika. Staunton plays Umbridge like a female version of Dick Cheney dressed in a fluffy pink cardigan and violently fuchsia tweed tailored skirts. She's a humorless, hardened bureaucrat who hates children, and even when she plays her nastiness for laughs--and there are plenty to be had what with her impeccable comic timing--she's still an uncomfortably accurate caricature of a politically blindsided governmental official at its worst.
Daniel Radcliffe, who entered our collective imagination and pop culture icon status in 2001 as the owlish, wide-eyed and round faced screen version of Potter, has hit his stride as an able actor who handles the arenas of both stewing teenage angst and chillingly brute physical torture scenes with touching credibility. (And, I think he's eighteen now, so I can say this without sounding like an icky, lecherous adult--he's gotten quite chiseled and handsome as he's come of age, so much so that it's hard to pretend he's the fifteen-year-old kid of the book version).
His redoutable side-kicks, Ron Wesley (played by Rupert Grint, who has gone from jug-eared, camera mugging charm to a much more nuanced performance) and teh bookish Hermione Granger (played by the very pretty and charming Emma Watson) unfortunately, have much less to do on-screen except flirt surreptitously with one another and act as a sympathetic, cheerleading squad for Potter.
And, we must now give kudos to newcomer Ms. Evana Lynch, who plays the deliriously dreamy Luna Lovegood. As a novice actress with no formal acting background, she gives a quite simply delightful, whimsical performance.
Movie-critics have both faulted and praised the movie's grown-up cast list--which looks like a who's-who cast of British thespians--for under-utilizing its brilliant melange of actors and actresses. But, there's a reason the book and films are titled Harry Potter not Brendan Glisson's and Michael Gambon's and David Thewlis 'and Dame Maggie Smith's and So-And-So Forth's Cameo Movie.
And, I say: for once, who cares about the critics?
It's kind of like taking A.S. Byatt seriously when she complains bitterly about J.K. Rowling's ultimate lack of talent and cultural viability as an author of substantial literary validity. Curiously, two novels of Byatt's have made it onscreen as Hollywood movies. (Rowling is the gajillionare author of the Potter series if any of you need clarification, and are amongst those who still think, as I did back in my innocent student years, that Paris Hilton is an actual hotel in France. In fact, coincidentally, I was introduced to the Harry Potter series by a fellow grad student alumna, who had graduated a year prior with the highest academic recognition possible.)
Yes, Byatt, as one counter-critic wrote of your sour-grapes sniping, you have a point, but a small one, about the cultural and phenomenological value of Rowling's contribution to High Literature, etc. etc.
The rest of us will be over here, happily oblivious little fools with our well-worn copies of Potter-lore, spell-bound and enchanted, if you will.
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