Muggles Muddle Magical Masterpiece in First Harry Potter Movie

Back in the fall of 2001, once I had recovered enough from 9/11 to think about other things again, my mind was occupied largely with one topic: the upcoming first installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as filmed by Peter Jackson. I had to wait until December for it, and as it turned out the holiday season was so busy that I didn’t see it until early January. But something else came along to stave off my appetite for that long-awaited adaptation. That something was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Of course, I’d only first met the bespectacled boy with the ordinary name and extraordinary fate a few years earlier; I didn’t have the history with him that I had with steadfast Sam Gamgee or industrious Bilbo Baggins. But the movie was still cause for excitement. Did it live up to its promises? I’m still trying to decide. I don’t have as much invested in Rowling as in Tolkien, but her vision is still more than worthy of being translated into high-quality cinema. The film was certainly a commercial success, but in comparison with Fellowship of the Ring, I would say that it falls considerably short.

The movie begins outside the home of the Dursleys, where a very special delivery is about to arrive. In the space of a few moments, we meet the infant Harry and three magical folk who will eventually play a large role in his life. For the time being, however, he is entrusted to the care of his thoroughly unpleasant relatives: overbearing Uncle Vernon (Richard Griffiths), sniveling Aunt Petunia (Fiona Shaw) and their spoiled son Dudley (Harry Melling). This is where we find Harry (Daneil Radcliffe) ten years later, cowering in a closet and waiting on his reluctant caregivers like a modern-day version of Cinderella. But in this case, it is not an invitation to a ball that has the mistreated youth in a tizzy. It’s an invitation to a school, an invitation to an entirely different way of life. But the Dursleys are even more unwilling to facilitate those dreams than that notorious stepmother. This introductory segment is handled well, though there’s an odd quality to the cinematography that I can’t pin down. I guess it reminds me of the Brit-coms I watch on PBS now and again; something about it just doesn’t seem quite movie-like. Still, we get just as much of the Dursleys as we need, including the beautifully done assault upon the house by a fleet of Hogwarts owls. Even better is the eventual appearance of Hagrid (John Coltrane), my favorite character. He makes a big impression at once, and he soon earns Harry’s trust and our affection. Harry’s scenes with Hagrid before he heads off for the Hogwarts Express are perhaps my favorite in the film.

The trouble is, from that point on, everything has a rushed, glossed-over quality to it. We meet Mrs. Weasley (Julie Walters) and her clan, but she only has a couple lines of dialogue in which to establish herself as a significant maternal presence in Harry’s life. Ginny (Bonnie Wright), meanwhile, seems supremely superfluous, standing shyly next to her mother and uttering a mere two words: "Good luck." If that’s all they were going to give her to do, why’d they bother casting her at all? Might as well have just waited until the next movie. Percy (Chris Rankin) gets to strut around campus looking superior and even bark out a couple orders, but Fred and George (James and Oliver Phelps) are tragically underused. They barely fare better than Ginny, which is a darn shame given their immense potential for comic relief. Ron (Rupert Grint) does get a lot of screen time in, of course, and he’s adorable but he’s also slightly pointless most of the time. His dialogue is the worst in the movie; he’s always making useless asides and exclamations as random and irritating as those uttered by Sunny in the film Series of Unfortunate Events. His character is not satisfactorily developed.

Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) at least serves a more practical purpose in the film. She’s a marvelous expository tool; if you ever want to explain something quickly, just have Hermione pipe up and say she’s read something about it. Even at this early stage of the game, there’s an interesting tension shaping up between her and Ron that will become amplified in later installments. Watson plays Hermione as a snotty know-it-all but softens up her performance by the end. She’s probably the character who undergoes the most noticeable change in personality. Several other students stand out in some way, among them disaster-prone Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis); Dean Thomas (Alfred Enoch), practically the only dark face among a sea of pasty Brits; loud-mouth Quidditch announcer Lee Jordan (Luke Youngblood); and Irish lad Seamus Finnegan (Devon Murray), whose marble-mouthed manner of speaking annoys me immensely. By far the most notable student, however, is Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), a sneering, self-important purebred Slytherin who quickly establishes himself as Harry’s pint-sized nemesis. Felton certainly has that obnoxiousness down to a tea, also revealing Malfoy’s cowardice in the scene where they must venture out into the Forbidden Forest.

While many of the child actors have no prior acting experience, the bulk of the adult cast consists of screen legends from the British Isles. There’s so much talent amassed here that it’s a great pity the adults are not used more. Richard Harris puts in an appearance as quirky headmaster Albus Dumbledore, but the only indication of his wit that remains is his disappointing attempt at finding a satisfactory jelly bean. It seems to me that several of his funniest lines from the book could have made it into the film; as it is, he comes across as something between mournful and simply dull. What a shame that in two of his final movies, Harris was given so little to do. Maggie Smith’s Minerva McGonagall is only slightly less strict than her mother superior in Sister Act. She’s a professor to be feared, but she is a reasonable woman and a valuable ally to have. Incidentally, Smith has a distinct Scottish brogue here, which helps this character to stand out from other authoritarian roles she’s assumed. We see more of her and Hagrid than we do of Dumbledore, but it’s still less than I would like.

By far the most intriguing character is Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), who remains awash in ambiguity even five books later. This loathed teacher gives Harry a concrete enemy far more threatening than Malfoy, and though his presence is a bit of a red herring, we’re not entirely sure by the end of the film that Harry’s suspicions were misplaced. Rickman is one of my favorite actors, so I’m not surprised he managed to make the most of his moments on the screen. Snape is silkily sinister, the sort of teacher every student dreads, and Rickman gives him such a commanding presence that I spend most of the movie in anticipation of his scenes, much as I do with Agent Smith in The Matrix. The guy is good.

What isn’t good is the fact that the adaptation tries so hard to be faithful to the letter of the book that it winds up being unfaithful to the spirit. A whole lot of stuff happens, and it’s pretty close to the text, but we don’t really know why it’s going on, nor do we care as much as we should. The pivotal background information and context is glossed over, leaving those unfamiliar with the books confused. Moreover, all this action leaves little room for character development, so none of the characters are realized as fully as they should be. There’s room for that in the sequels, of course, but if I had come into the film unfamiliar with the characters I would feel little of the sense of closeness with them at the conclusion that I felt upon finishing the first book. I don’t agree with all the decisions Peter Jackson made in his adaptation of Tolkien’s masterpiece, but in order to translate a book of that magnitude to the screen, he rightly realized that significant alterations had to be made. Screenplay writer Steven Kloves should have had that degree of faith in himself rather than fearing the wrath of devoted fans for not sticking strictly to the book.

The look of the film is magnificent once we step out of the commonplace world of Muggles and into the wizarding community. The noble educational institution of Hogwarts is especially impressive with its gothic archways, shifting staircases and walls full of paintings whose subjects wander about and talk freely amongst themselves. Some of the effects, however, come across as silly rather than splendid. The whole encounter with the troll in the girls’ bathroom, for instance, is a bit phony-looking, and the gross-out conclusion of the skirmish is accentuated so as to delight younger audience members. I can’t complain about the score, provided by veteran composer John Williams of Star Wars fame. Word has it that Peter Jackson wanted Williams to do the music for Lord of the Rings but that the composer was already committed to this project. I suspect that was for the best on all accounts, as I can’t imagine a better LotR score than Howard Shore’s or a better Harry Potter score than Williams’. It strikes just the right balance between eerie and fanciful, capturing the wonder and terror inherent in Harry’s strange new world.

All in all, it’s a good start, but it needs work. I guess you can think of this film as a practice run for the Harry Potter adaptation team. The biggest problem is with the screenplay, and that’s the easiest area in which to make changes. So far, it seems the second and third films have done a better job with characterization, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Let’s hope Goblet of Fire is the best yet!

Harry Potter books:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix