Spiders and Snakes

Well, in every life a little rain must fall, and it’s been raining here in Atlanta for weeks now. Friday evening, a little before seven, UA Midtown, a day in the life. No line for the 6:45 screening of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; everyone else having got there before me, apparently. Nobody’s idea of good seats in nobody’s idea of a good theater, fifth row, far right. Worse, there is this guy sitting behind me. You know the one.

The guy I am talking about is not the worst offender in your modern movie theater — he did not have a cell phone, he was not a pack of giggling teenage girls, he was not three years old and kicking the back of my seat — but he was bad enough. He is the know-it-all, the spoilsport, the kind who must open up his mouth to give away every salient plot point. Let, say, Draco Malfoy hiss the dreaded word “Mudblood” to poor Hermione Granger, along comes our friend to announce — to no one in particular — “That means her parents aren’t wizards.” As though no one could figure it out from the context, or as though no one hadn’t read the books, or could possibly interpret the movie, at any level, without his personal and expert and unwanted help.

It says something admirable about Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that it can conquer not only the dark forces of wizardry surrounding Hogwarts School but that it can also overcome rainy weather and rude theatergoers. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a delightful film, delightful enough that the reviewer is tempted to hang back, to not over-praise the film, to let audiences discover it on its own merits (as if they wouldn’t anyway). Every element of the movie works, and nearly every scene works. The sly humor and the magical tale and the fast-paced action all work together to create a movie that can both please every audience and stand up to any critical blow.

First, there is the story, which is as faithful to the text of the J.K. Rowling book as was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, although the latest movie is perhaps more in sync with the spirit of the books. That should, of course, be enough for everybody; it is certainly what the Harry Potter fans in the audience want. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets succeeds primarily because it is faithful to the story, while throwing in the odd wrinkle here and there to keep its fan base slightly off kilter. However, the movie is utterly unconcerned about trifles like plot exposition and character development; if you haven’t read any of the books or didn’t see the first movie, you may have very little idea of who the characters are and what all the funny words mean. If Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has a fault it is that, like Hogwarts School itself (or, say, the University of Virginia Law School, or the Augusta National Golf Club), it is not sufficiently inclusive in its outlook.

However, exclusivity often connotes excellence, and everything about Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is excellent. The visuals, of course, the look of the thing, are simply outstanding; everything from Harry’s spartan bedroom to the sumptuous hallways of Hogwarts to the damp horrors of the Chamber of Secrets itself is just right, just as it should look. The costumes are fabulous, especially Kenneth Branagh’s 1890’s fashion-plate garb (which proves, if nothing else, that he would have been better suited to play Artemus Gordon than the villain in the horrid Wild Wild West remake). The special effects are a revelation, easily outpassing anything that George Lucas put forth for Attack of the Clones.

Of course, all of these are the things that big-budget Hollywood studio movies usually do well. Even horrid movies, like The Majestic, tend to have unimpeachable production values nowadays. With the amount of money that the Harry Potter franchise earns for the greedheads at AOL Time Warner, one would expect that no expense would be spared in making sure that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets would look as good as it possibly could. That this mission is accomplished so well is important, but insufficient. The greatness of the story and the wonder of the special effects must be buttressed by the skill of the actors. Without them, without their ability to bring the movie alive with a beating, magical heart, the movie would be an empty vessel, signifying nothing.

So you have the grownups, first of all, who are consistently outstanding in their small, but telling roles. The universe at Hogwarts is filled with so many characters that everyone other than Harry Potter gets short shrift in the film treatments; all the adult parts are underwritten to an extent. (The same is true with the other students; Fred and George Weasley, for example, are almost invisible in this installment.) However, the performaces are so excellent, so completely in line with how they are portrayed in the books, and so perfectly cast that it almost doesn’t matter. Robbie Coltrane, magically enhanced to play Hagrid the gamekeeper, has a less showy role here but still incarnates his giant-size character fully. He has just enough humor and goodwill to make Hagrid, who otherwise might be scary and intimidating, a delight. The late Richard Harris (RIP) is wheezily effective as Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts; he combines dignity and power with a certain frailty that is very effective. Maggie Smith is invaluable as the tart-tongued Professor McGonagall. Alan Rickman is perhaps the most chronically shortchanged of the current cast, but he is sneeringly effective as Professor Snape, and squeezes every drop of nastiness out of his limited screen time.

Even with this stellar supporting cast, the two best performances in the movie are turned in by two newcomers. Kenneth Branagh plays the vain and conceited Professor Gilderoy Lockhart as though he were some undiscovered Shakesperian character, a comic fop suffused with self-importance. Branagh is undeniably brilliant, but his best work (Henry V and Dead Again) is ten years in the past, and he has been spending an inordinate amount of time doing voice-overs for documentaries lately. It is wonderful to see him on the screen again, in a really juicy role, doing a stellar job. Equally as good is Jason Isaacs, best known in this country as the evil Colonel Tavington from The Patriot. Here, he is handed the meaty role of Lucius Malfoy, dark wizard, and he all but uses those dark arts to steal the movie.

Then there are the younger set; Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger. Watson is the most restrained of the three; she keeps a stiff upper lip most of the way through. This removes a lot of the elements that make Hermione Granger both so endearing and so annoying at times, and the movie could have been better by showing off a little more range from Watson. But she’s so adorable that it’s hard to knock her, entirely. Grint has been getting terrible reviews, which I blame completely on director Chris Columbus. Grint appears at times as though he is auditioning for Rowan Atkinson’s old Rubber-Face Revue; he engages in an astonishing level of mugging that a good director should have taken pains to correct. He is otherwise a stalwart sidekick to Harry, and an occasional good comic relief, but the pained facial expressions detract from the movie.

Then there is Radcliffe, who has the toughest job on the set. The people at Microsoft’s Slate online rag described poor Harry Potter as a “fraud”, a “glory hog”, someone who “skates through school by taking advantage of his inherited wealth and his establishment connections.” (One detects a little bit of envy on the part of the author; and maybe an unseemly spillover of bile from the Microsoft/AOL battles.) It is to Radcliffe’s credit that he doesn’t portray Harry this way; except for one mysterious moment in a wizard’s duel, Harry never appears anything but honorable, stalwart, and true to himself. In the books, Harry is often filled with self-doubt and fear; qualities that Radcliffe never lets show. He turns in a fine, understated performance, for which he will get much less credit than he deserves.

Outside of a few odd flaws here and there (the homage to the third Alien movie, of all things, and the self-congratulatory nature of the final scene), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a masterful work, full of dry wit and magic and Quidditch, along with some exciting, creepy scenes featuring snakes, spiders, and Dark wizards, and all sorts of mayhem and mischief. It is that rarity; a movie that can be enjoyed (if not fully understood) by all audience members. (And, yes, even the loudmouth jerk in the row behind me seemed to be having a good time, for what that’s worth.)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 7:34 am and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.